Since embracing tough new fuel economy standards in 2012, automakers have spent billions to develop more fuel efficient vehicles and have been so successful at meeting tougher regulations that they’ve become victims of their own success, USA Today reports.
Over the past four years, automakers deployed new cars and trucks with gasoline direct injection, more sophisticated transmissions, found ways to cut gobs of weight, improved aerodynamics and developed stop-start systems that reduce fuel consumption by eliminating idling.
Now automakers are pleading for a break on even more aggressive standards that will go into effect between 2022 and 2025.
Automakers have been aggressively lobbying the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Congress. The lobbying is part of a mid-term evaluation of Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE, Standards and greenhouse gas emission standards that were adopted in 2012 as part of a mid-term evaluation of the regulations.
The problem is that government regulators say automakers have proven over the past four years they’re able to meet tougher future standards.
“Manufacturers are adopting CO2-reducing technologies very rapidly. In fact, we are seeing technologies that reduce emissions and improve fuel economy entering the fleet at faster rates than we originally expected,” Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for the U.S. EPA’s office of air and radiation, said in a congressional hearing last month.
McCabe said automakers have already introduced more than 100 car, SUV, and pickup models that already meet 2020 or later standards.
“Carmakers can meet the standards at similar or lower costs than we had anticipated in our 2012 analysis,” she said.
Without changes, automakers say the industry could lose sales, profits, cut jobs, fail in their effort to sell vehicles that cost more to consumers and, ultimately, fall short of reaching the environmental benefits the government is trying to achieve.
