By The Associated Press’s Alexa St. John
DETROIT Sean Duffy, the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Transportation, attacked the federal government’s primary method of regulating gas mileage for cars and pickup trucks, as well as its primary method of controlling air pollution and combating climate change, only hours after taking office. Duffy directed the federal agency responsible for fuel economy rules to immediately reverse them. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, the rules have been in place with the goal of conserving gasoline and saving consumers money at the petrol pump.
Five things you should know about the activity are listed here.
What is the Trump administration doing exactly?
In order to align the regulations with Trump’s goal of boosting oil and biofuel, Duffy directed his head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to suggest the repeal or replacement of any fuel economy requirements.
The instruction arrived Tuesday evening in a DOT document. According to Duffy, the current CAFE criteria issued by the NHTSA are against Administration policy, so the guidelines must better reflect the administration’s overall goals.
Duffy is a former Wisconsin Republican congressman who has no prior transportation experience. Earlier this month, at his confirmation hearing, Duffy pledged less regulation, safer Boeing aircraft, and support for American self-driving tech firms. He has questioned climate change in public.
To establish softer criteria, the NHTSA director would need to start a comprehensive rule-making process, which took two years during the previous Trump administration. By 2020, the DOT under Trump was able to relax the Obama administration’s requirements, which required a 5% annual improvement in miles per gallon when he first took office, to a 1.5% annual rise until model year 2026.
What does this mean for consumers and the climate?
Americans will have greater access to the entire selection of gasoline-powered automobiles they require and can afford if the regulations are repealed, according to Duffy.
Others don’t agree. No one voted for any of this, which would increase tailpipe emissions, hike consumer prices at the pump, and endanger the future of American automakers. According to Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign, the only people who would profit are oil executives and the Chinese auto industry, which will be pleased to sell electric automobiles globally with little competition from the United States.
Automakers have been making gasoline-powered vehicles with much higher mileage in recent years, which decreases driving costs and reduces revenue for oil businesses, both producers and refineries.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, transportation was the main source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in 2022. Each carbon atom that is injected into an automobile’s gas tank exits through the tailpipe, and many of them combine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which retains excess heat for over a century.
Why does Trump want to repeal fuel efficiency rules?
Duffy’s move is in line with several of President Trump’s pledges, most notably the lifting of the mandate for electric vehicles, which alludes to former President Joe Biden’s goal of having 50% of new cars sold be electric by 2030.
Duffy composed Since these fuel economy requirements are so high, automakers are almost unable to meet them without quickly switching from producing internal combustion engine vehicles to alternative electric technologies.
Instead of taking effect right away, the regulations give automakers time to modify their production and design to comply.
According to the new Secretary, manufacturers are forced to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles due to unreasonably high regulations, which increases car prices for consumers and eliminates their options at the dealership.
FILE: Traffic patterns in Leawood, Kansas’s Interstate 435 on September 25, 2024. (Charlie Riedel, File/AP Photo)AP
According to Roland Hwang, policy director at the University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, it is difficult to comprehend this action in the context of attempting to lower consumer costs and increase the competitiveness of U.S. business because it will have the opposite consequences.
“This regulatory uncertainty undermines the global competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry and puts a great number of automaker jobs and investments at risk,” he continued. To guarantee that automakers are investing in the cutting-edge technologies required to do so, strict fuel economy regulations are essential.
Neither automakers nor consumers are required to manufacture or buy electric vehicles. Trump also opposes the EPA’s carbon dioxide emissions restrictions from automobile tailpipes, which are in line with the fuel economy standards.
According to John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry advocacy group, it makes sense for the Transportation Department’s new leadership to evaluate the agency’s current fuel economy criteria. As we have stated, even under ideal conditions, it is very difficult to comply with the current CAFE regulations. Additionally, they expose automakers to civil penalties worth billions of dollars.
According to Duffy, the purpose of CAFE regulations is to set practical guidelines for fleets that use flammable liquid fuels, such as gasoline and diesel. In support of lowering the bar, he also pointed to the country’s enormous oil reserves, biofuel feedstocks, and refining capabilities.
In addition to declaring an energy emergency, Trump has signed a number of orders and stated that the United States will drill, baby, drill.
What s the idea behind American fuel economy standards?
The regulations known as CAFE, or Corporate Average Fuel Economy, were prompted by the oil crises that Americans experienced in 1974 and 1980. In 1978, the first ones became operative. By requiring automakers’ fleets to reach average mile-per-gallon objectives, which first rose with each model year until development stagnated in the 1980s, they are meant to encourage drivers to consume less fuel.
After that, Americans’ miles per gallon did not significantly improve for about 20 years. Due in major part to stricter regulations, automakers have been providing consumers with a greater selection of internal combustion engine (i.e., gasoline-powered) vehicles with significantly higher mileage in recent years.
What were the latest fuel economy rules going to do?
By 2031, automakers had to achieve an average of roughly 38 miles per gallon of gas, according to the most recent criteria established under the Biden administration. That’s driving in the real world. The average is currently about 28 miles per gallon.
Fuel efficiency for passenger vehicles is expected to grow by 2% annually in all model years from 2027 to 2031, while SUVs and other light trucks are expected to increase by 2% annually in 2029 to 2031. The conditions for a previous proposal were much more stringent.
The regulations were in line with the previous president’s broader support for providing incentives for the production and purchase of electric vehicles, as well as stricter EPA pollution limits for passenger and commercial vehicles from the Biden administration.
When the Biden administration announced the regulations, it claimed that they would save about 70 billion gallons of fuel by the year 2050.
According to Bozzella, the Trump administration’s proposed adjustments to the CAFE standards will need to be coordinated with the other emissions regulations that are governed by the Energy Department and the EPA because U.S. tailpipes are subject to several regulations and three federal agencies.
Climate solutions writer Alexa St. John works for the Associated Press. X:@alexa_stjohn is her X account. Her email address is [email protected].
For for information on AP’s coverage of climate change, visit http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment.
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