Biden administration proposes to ratchet up fuel efficiency standards for passenger cars

The Biden administration on Friday proposed to increase the stringency of fuel economy requirements for new passenger cars and light trucks, as well as for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans.

This means new vehicles that are sold in the U.S. would have to get more miles to the gallon — something the administration said is good for the planet and consumers’ pocketbooks. In particular, officials said the proposal would save consumers more than $50 billion on fuel costs over the course of vehicles’ lifetimes.

It is also expected to prevent more than 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions through 2050 — the equivalent of taking 200 million cars off the road for a year. 

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

It comes after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed its own rule in April that would require automakers to ensure that their fleets emit less greenhouse gas pollution. In order to comply, automakers are expected to make two-thirds of their new vehicle sales electric by 2032, the agency projects. 

Chris Harto, senior energy policy analyst at Consumer Reports, said that if both rules are finalized, the new rule from the Department of Transportation’s rule is unlikely to have a significant additional effect. 

“It appears that any feasible compliance pathway for the EPA standards would very easily comply with these…standards,” Harto said. 

He added that if the new standards, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), were stronger, they could provide some benefits beyond what would be achieved by the EPA rule. 

“In a world in which these NHTSA standards were sufficiently stringent, they could act as a way to encourage efficiency for electric vehicles and also potentially prevent backsliding on the gasoline vehicle efficiency,” he said.

On the other hand, an auto industry trade group called Alliance for Automotive Innovation said it was “encouraging” that the new proposal appears to “sync up” with the EPA’s proposal. 

“Conflicting and overlapping rules are complex and expensive. If an automaker complies with EPA’s yet to be finalized greenhouse gas emissions rules, they shouldn’t be at risk of violating CAFE rules and subject to civil penalties that levy costs on consumers and manufacturers — but deliver no corresponding environmental benefits,” said John Bozzella, the group’s president and CEO, in a written statement. 

“The best policy would be a return to a single national standard to reduce carbon in transportation – one vehicle fleet and one national standard,” Bozzella wrote.

Under the rule, automakers would be required to increase the efficiency of their new passenger cars by 2 percent per year for model years 2027 through 2031; light trucks will need to improve by 4 percent each year. 

It also projects that for these vehicles, the fleetwide average would come to about 58 miles per gallon in test conditions — however, Harto said this is closer to 43 miles per gallon under real-world conditions. 

If the rule is finalized, heavy trucks would need to increase their fuel efficiency by 10 percent annually for model years 2030 through 2035.