Surprise! Over Five Full Years, Auto Fuel Effiiciency Barely Budged, From 24.7 To 25.42 MPG

[hatrack]

EDIT

The data shows the industry made very little progress on efficiency from model year 2016 through 2021, as cheap gasoline prices lured new buyers to purchase sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, making them the dominant choice for consumers. Nationwide fuel economy gained just 5% in that span, at a time when a deal with automakers originally struck during the Obama administration was supposed to require gains of more than 20%.

“It seems since the previous administration announced their intent to rollback … standards, automakers have basically done nothing,” said Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst for transportation and energy at Consumers Reports. “Policy is playing a role. If policy was driving automakers to do more, they would do more.” Cars and trucks from model year 2021 — the most recent with complete data, according to the EPA — averaged 25.42 miles per gallon, up slightly from the 25.38 of model year 2020 and higher than the figure for model year 2016, 24.7.

At the behest of industry executives, the Trump administration had eased efficiency rules on passenger cars and trucks, saying changing consumer demands were making the old standards impractical. The Obama administration had made those rules — following rules first pushed by California — a cornerstone of its climate agenda, its primary response as the transportation sector become the country’s top source of emissions. Passenger cars and trucks alone accounted for 15% of all U.S. emissions in 2020, according to EPA data.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the lobbying group for automakers and suppliers, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In recent years, the industry has been making a huge shift in manufacturing more electric vehicles, which have no tailpipe emissions and, according to the EPA, now regularly get the equivalent of more than 120 miles per gallon. But it could be years before those changes produce major improvements, analysts said. EPA said sales of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles and fuel-cell vehicles are projected to reach 8% of production in model year 2022, up from 4% in the prior model year.

“With the transition to electric vehicles, there’s a lot less resources being put into better fuel efficiency than 10 years ago,” said Jessica Caldwell, lead analyst at Edmunds, a car-shopping support company. “Automakers have hit sort of the ceiling on the levers they can pull to get better fuel efficiency for gas-powered engines that aren’t hybrid or plug-ins.”

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/12/cars-trucks-fuel-efficiency-climate/

[2naSalit]

1. Imagine that.

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. Automakers have hit sort of the ceiling

This was my FIRST thought when reading the title.

[hunter]

3. My wife's car gets 50mpg if it's driven with a light foot...

... and about 43 mpg if not.

My old tuck gets about 24 mpg but I really don't drive it all that much. I just like having a truck.

Like most American trucks it's vastly overpowered for my needs but I suppose most American truck owners believe they'll be towing a yacht or a space shuttle some day.

I don't know why we pretend things that are already accomplished, like 50 mpg cars, are somehow impossible.

If we mandated 50 mpg or more for all new personal vehicles life really wouldn't change all that much. The "high performance" market would simply move on to plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles.