GHG Emissions, Industrial  -  February 27, 2017

Autos ask EPA head to ease fuel economy targets

Two lobbying groups representing the country's largest automakers have sent letters to Scott Pruitt, the newly appointed head of the U.S. EPA, urging the agency to reverse Obama-era fuel ecnomy standards, The New York Times reported Feb. 22. 

The groups, The  Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents 12 companies including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., and the Association of Global Automakers, which represents 12 foreign automakers with notable sales and/or operations in the U.S., are asking the administration to reverse a plan released earlier this year by the Obama administration. The EPA's plan called on automakers to essentially double their fleet-wide fuel efficiency by 2025. 

The automakers have long been critical of tightening the fuel standards, arguing that those proposed would be difficult and costly to meet. The letter from the AIliance, dated Feb. 21, said the targets "threaten to depress an industry that can ill afford spiraling regulatory costs." Other companies in the Alliance are BMW, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Volkswagon and Volvo. 

According to the newspaper, environmentalists disagree with those claims. The Times reported: 

Environmentalists said the lobbying groups overstated the difficulty and cost of reaching the 2025 targets, which require an average fuel-economy rating of 54.5 miles per gallon across a company’s entire fleet sold in the United States. That number is based on a complicated formula, and automakers estimate it is the equivalent of about 40 miles per gallon in real-world driving.

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