The new fuel economy standards would have a higher bar for trucks

Auto-Motoroles, Suspensers, and a Challenge to the Auto-Cleaning Act of the New Year

The new rule, announced by the Transportation Department, is designed to achieve the same goals as a separate proposal announced by the Environmental Protection Agency in April. That plan would require automakers to limit the planet-warming tailpipe pollution generated by the total number of cars each manufacturer sells.

Both measures might help defend the administration’s climate policies against legal challenges. The other could remain standing even if one of them is struck down.

Republican attorneys general are expected to challenge the auto rules too, because they have joined together to challenge many other climate rules.

The environmental law experts at Columbia University think that it’s belt and suspenders. There is an increase in the odds that at least one will survive because we have two different rules from two different agencies.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear the final rules. The new president will have the power to roll back the rules if the Republicans win the White House.

New Fuel Economy Standards for Gas-Powered and Diesel-Vehicle Vehicles as a Way to Improve Fuel Economy and Efficientness

“Better vehicle fuel efficiency means more money in Americans’ pockets and stronger energy security for the entire nation,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.

The department also estimates that the combined benefits of the proposal would exceed costs by more than $18 billion, chiefly by saving consumers money on fuel.

The Transportation Department estimates that the proposal would reduce the use of gasoline in the United States by 88 billion gallons through 2050 and avert more than 900 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Large, feature-packed, not-very-fuel-efficient trucks are a major money-driver for the Detroit 3. According to NHTSA data, over the past six years, General GM and Chrysler paid out more than $100 million in CAFE non-compliance fees.

Standards for vehicles helped drive that improvement. Critics said that having looser standards for larger vehicles contributed to the increase in SUVs and trucks.

“Given the pace of technological change and urgent need to conserve energy, it’s clear that these standards could be even more ambitious than NHTSA’s proposal,” Dave Cook, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program, said in a statement.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, while still parsing the rules, noted that it appears “at first glance” like NHTSA tried to align its standards with the EPA’s standards. The Alliance objected to those standards being unrealistic. On the other hand, the group does strongly prefer for the various standards to match up as much as possible.

Behind the new standards is a big question for the auto industry: how much money needs to be put into improving gas-powered vehicles if the future is mostly electric? Money spent on improving gas-powered vehicles won’t affect their ability to switch to EVs, according to some automakers. Currently, gas-powered vehicles are more profitable than electric ones for legacy automakers, and revenue from internal combustion vehicles is funding EV investments.

The rules were made so that they would be hard to meet, in part, because they wouldn’t be able to produce zer0-emission vehicles. The fuel economy standards of the NHTSA need to be designed so that they can be met by making gas and diesel vehicles more efficient.

At one point the three bodies coordinated to set shared standards, but they have since split back apart. But under the Biden administration, all three are pushing in the same general direction: EVs. Electric vehicles use no gasoline and have no tailpipe emissions, and even counting the emissions from manufacturing them and producing electricity, they are cleaner than similar hybrids, and significantly cleaner than conventional gas- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Currently, EVs make up just over 7% of sales. They are projected to hit 28% by the end of the next decade. That growth is not on track to meet the EPA target. Analysts have also found that even recent, significant announcements in charging infrastructure fall short of what a rapid transition to EVs would require.

Fleet-wide fuel economy for new vehicles could be pushed close to 58 miles per gallon by 2032. The current version of the rules requires 49 mph by the year 2026. The miles per gallon that drivers would see on the road is lower, even for compliant vehicles, because of how fuel economy is calculated.