US unveils stricter tailpipe emissions standards for new vehicles

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, said that the new fuel economy standards would save Americans money at the pump and help fight climate change.

When these standards take effect, Americans buying a new vehicle will spend less on gas than they would have if we hadn't taken this step, Buttigieg said at a Friday news conference in Washington, DC.

Under the revised Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, the average new vehicle in the US will get 49 miles of travel per gallon of gasoline. The new standards will increase fuel efficiency by 10 percent annually. The fleetwide average will be increased by nearly 10 miles per gallon for model year 2026.

If you fill up four times a month, that will become three times a month by model year 2026, according to Buttigieg.

The new standards, which were first unveiled last year, are part of a larger effort by President Joe Biden to reverse the rules put in place by Donald Trump and return to the Obama-era fuel economy standards.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed new standards that would increase fuel efficiency by 8 percent annually for vehicle model years 2024 to 2026 and increase the estimated fleetwide average by 12 miles per gallon for model year 2026. The new rules are expected to save car owners over a hundred billion dollars in fuel costs by midcentury.

The EPA said passenger vehicles would have to achieve an average of 55 miles of travel per gallon of gasoline by the end of the decade, slightly over Obama's goal of 54. The new standard will save car owners $420 billion in fuel costs and prevent the release of 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.

Buttigieg also called on Congress to pass Biden's stalledBuild Back Better package, which would legislate a slate of environmental initiatives, including tax cuts for new electric vehicle purchases.

Many of the cars on America's roads are old and the need for new EV tax credits speaks to that. Only 3 percent of the cars and trucks on the road in the US are electric.

It would take roughly 16 years of EV-only sales to completely replace all of the gas cars currently on the road. We need a total ban on the sale and use of gas cars, and so far the Biden administration doesn't seem willing to do that.

Biden signed an executive order last year directing the federal government to spend billions of dollars to purchase electric vehicles, upgrade federal buildings, and leverage the power of the government to shift to cleaner forms of electricity. This week, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to ramp up the mining and processing of key minerals used in batteries for renewable energy and electric vehicles.

The light-duty truck loophole, in which vehicles that are bigger and heavier, like SUVs and pickup trucks, are allowed to pollute more than smaller vehicles, would be kept in place by the rules. The American auto industry has stopped producing small vehicles and sedans in favor of large trucks and SUVs, which have higher margins and are more profitable. NHTSA did not respond to a question about the light-duty truck loophole.