What happens when you don't speak up

Here's an interesting column from the Detroit News about the Obama administration's move to require passenger cars to achieve better than 54 miles per gallon.  Notice that the automakers were apparently sparring over various credits to be given for hybrid and other technologies, but apparently no one opened up the most obvious objection:

There are no mass produced vehicles capable of meeting this standard, nor is there a plausible path towards achieving this standard without eliminating entire categories of vehicles while greatly increasing the cost of new vehicles.

Had the automobile makers simply united to point out this obvious fact, this debacle could have been avoided.  Instead, they chose to play the game of "this regulation will hurt my company, but I'll make sure it hurts other companies more.", and now the whole country gets to pay for it.