Cars that hit the streets in 2017 through 2025 will run on far less fuel than they do now. Last summer, the Obama Administration announced a deal with automakers aiming to up the average to 56 miles per gallon and EPA-DOT proposed a new rule that would hold them to that standard.
The midnight deadline for public comments on this proposed regulation marks one more mile on the long road toward cleaner cars. Before President Obama announced upgrades to the nation’s CAFE standards in 2010, the American fleet had stalled out at an average of 27.5 MPG since 1990.
These rules have huge benefits to health, the environment, and consumer’s wallets that vastly outweigh the costs of compliance.
Unfortunately, the rule distorts incentives for manufactures to achieve the lowest cost fuel economy improvements and undervalues the climate change benefits brought about by the rule. We submitted suggestions to EPA-DOT recommending they accurately estimate climate benefits by accounting for catastrophic risks, and revise the “footprint” based standards that incentives inefficiently large vehicles. Corrected, the rules will prove to be even more worthwhile than they currently seem.