Under former President Joe Biden, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rolled out new, stricter fuel economy standards, which ultimately faced their fair share of scrutiny from various lobby groups. As such, the NHTSA revised those rules downward last June, calling for for fuel economy to increase two percent each year for 2027-2031 model year passenger cars, as well as light trucks built in the 2029-2031 model years. As for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans, fuel efficiency will increase by 10 percent per year for the 2030-2032 model years and eight percent annually for those produced in the 2033-2035 model years. Now, current President Donald Trump is working to nix those rules entirely.
According to Reuters, the Trump administration’s U.S. Transportation Department is now expected to declare Biden’s fuel economy rules illegal, on the basis that they exceed the government’s legal authority due to the inclusion of electric vehicles. The Biden administration “illegally used CAFE standards as a backdoor electric vehicle mandate – driving the price of cars up,” according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, as the NHTSA submitted its interpretive rule dubbed “Resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program.”
The idea here is that by removing EVs from the calculations for credits, as well as regulatory mandates, overall fuel economy requirements would be lower. Last year, lawmakers opposing the rules argued they “effectively mandate EVs while at the same time force the internal combustion engine out of the market,” adding that the NHTSA “accounted for EVs in its regulatory baseline and factored that baseline into its determination of the maximum achievable CAFE standards.”
The Trump administration has been working to roll back these stricter fuel economy standards for some time now, all while reversing many of Biden’s EV-related policies that were enacted while he was in office. Currently, the Trump admin is considering killing off the current EV tax credit, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin recently targeted automatic start/stop as something he believes automakers need to nix as well.
Comments
Ok, I’m confused. So if they’re removing EVs from the calculations, wouldn’t that been that all the ice cars would have to be more fuel efficient?
That’s my thoughts. The Reason Ford was able to get away with so many Raptors and V8 ‘s without fines like Dodge had was that they were offset by hybrid and EV’s.
Just read the article a couple more times, that always helps the kids at my school when their comprehension skills need work. In a nutshell, the standard for fuel efficiency increases are becoming so quickly untenable (outside of the use of EVs) that the Trump administration is doing away with them. The C.A.F.E. standards basically tied fuel economy requirements to, among other things, wheelbase length. The Trump administration is not just eliminating the use of EV MPGe from the calculations used by the NHTSA, they’re saying the use of EV MPGe in those calculations created an unfair and ever-unattainable standard for fuel economy requirements and should thus be illegal. This is pretty reasonable, as the NHTSA is a bureaucratic agency and their standards are indeed quite arbitrary. One doesn’t need to be voted in and is immune to the will of the people that have to buy the very vehicles that are regulated by the agency. One doesn’t have to be an automotive mechanic so they can understand how difficult it is to repair emissions systems or even have to have designed a vehicle so that they understand how hard it is to design a fuel efficient vehicle while being congruent with crash-test safety ratings. Just a 2.5 or 3.0 GPA and some “relevant experience.” It’s a bit of a scam.
Trump may drastically roll back CAFE standards to 2019 or do away with them altogether.