Hallelujah!

Government abandons 54.5-mpg CAFE standard

Turns out, the 2025 CAFE standard wasn't a mandate, but an estimate.

Not for lack of trying, but the US auto industry isn't going to hit the government's 54.5-mile-per-gallon fleet average fuel economy target. While the industry has made dramatic strides to improve its fleet-wide efficiency, it's the American consumer's infatuation with pickups, SUVs, and crossovers in the face of affordable gas that's sinking fuel-sipping efforts.

That's according to a report from Automotive News (and former Autoblog Editor-in-Chief Sharon Silke Carty), which claims that regulators are abandoning the 54.5-mpg minimum, due to come into effect in 2025. The EPA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and California Air Resources Board made the announcement in the latest Technical Assessment Report draft.

During a conference call with AN and other reporters about the report, government officials said the 2025 mandate isn't actually a mandate, but an estimate of where the auto industry could be in nine years. The EPA's original 2025 standard expected cars to make up two thirds of the new vehicles sold that year, while trucks, crossovers, and SUVs represented just a third of MY2025 sales. But with consumers buying the latter in increasing quantity, the original percentages simply were not realistic.

(AutoBlog.com)