Pruitt - Rolling Back CAFE Standards Is Actually Good For The Environment, You Silly People, You

[hatrack]

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Known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, or CAFE, the rules would have required automakers to “nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025,” according to the Times, ensuring speedier development of hybrid and electric cars. Obama’s EPA projected that the rules “would have cut oil consumption by about 12 billion barrels and reduced carbon dioxide pollution by about six billion tons over the lifetime of all the cars affected by the regulations,” the Times reported. But America’s Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler—met with the Trump White House shortly after his inauguration in 2017 to argue that the standards would be too expensive and difficult to achieve. Thus, they’ll be rolled back.

Though EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt hasn’t formally announced the plan yet, he’s argued in the past that Obama’s pollution regulations actually made the air dirtier, because people don’t want to buy hybrid cars—they still want to buy pick-up trucks. “The whole purpose of CAFE standards is to make cars more efficient that people are actually buying,” Pruitt said in a March 13 interview with Bloomberg News. “And if you just come in and try to drive this to a point where the auto sector in Detroit just makes cars that people don’t want to purchase, then people are staying in older cars, and the emission levels are worse, which defeats the overall purpose of what we’re trying to achieve.”

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https://newrepublic.com/minutes/147710/trumps-epa-chief-says-undoing-car-pollution-regulations-will-help-environment

[MichMan]

1. I don't think people understand the predicament that the auto manufacturers are in

The EPA mandated fuel economy standards for 2025 have resulted in a flurry of electric, hybrid and other vehicle launches existing and planned. The manufacturers have spent billions developing technologies and designing these vehicles. Yet, for the most part, consumers don't seem to be all that interested in buying them.

Electric and Hybrid vehicles sales are approx 3% while sales of Crossovers, SUV and Trucks are at all time highs. With fuel prices in the mid $2 range, consumers are proving that fuel mileage is not the determining factor in their buying decision. Producing fuel efficient vehicles that meet the EPA standards is just one piece of the solution; how are you going to force people to buy them?

If the EPA standards are not met, the manufacturers will be fined millions of $$$ for failure to comply. The other scenario is that they will also be forced to buy offsetting credits for millions of $$$ from Tesla. I suppose if you are Elon Musk, that is a great plan, but it does nothing to reduce pollution. Those of us in Michigan dependant on the auto industry for our jobs are not too pleased that the manufacturers will be punished for selling the vehicles that their customers prefer.

California and other states have mandated 15% of sales be electric by 2025. If their residents don't buy enough of them, how is that the fault of the manufacturers who have made them available?

How are you going to force people to buy them? A couple solutions would be gas tax increases of $1 or more a gallon or hundreds of $$ increases in registration fees for bigger vehicles. If you find any politician willing to propose either of these, I would love to meet them. I know if anyone proposed this in Michigan, they would be defeated in a landslide.

Politicians love cheap gas, but expect their constituents to not use much of it.

Of course there are conspiracy nuts that are convinced that General Motors has the technology to make a 100 mpg SUV that could be sold for $20K. but are in cahoots with the oil companies.