Trump team wants to roll back Obama-era mileage standards
- by Ismael Spencer
- in Research
- — Aug 3, 2018
Under the Obama administration, automakers were required to reach a fleetwide average fuel economy for all cars and light trucks of 51.4 miles per gallon by 2025. That would price many buyers out of the new-vehicle market, forcing them to drive older, less-safe vehicles that pollute more, the administration says.
The Obama-era rules also drove auto prices higher, since prior estimates fell short of what incremental improvements to fuel efficiency actually cost. In 2012, the Obama administration directed automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new vehicles by 2025.
The existing federal fuel economy targets, which were championed by California, ensure automakers keep moving toward higher efficiency vehicles, as other nations also require.
Trump in March 2017 announced his administration would be reopening a review of the Obama automobile rules that he and some automakers said was unfairly cut short by Obama's EPA.
The Trump's administration's fatality estimate isn't novel to observers of the vehicle industry. At the moment, the state standard and the national one are the same-but if they diverged, automakers could end up making multiple versions of each vehicle to sell in different parts of the U.S. The Trump administration wants to take away California's right to set higher standards.
Easing requirements that cars be more fuel efficient should make them both cheaper and safer, getting vehicles with the latest safety developments in the hands of consumers, officials said. They called the plan illegal, saying it would force motorists to pay more for gas and create more air pollution.
Ohio State announces group that will direct Urban Meyer investigation
At issue is whether Meyer knew about domestic violence allegations against Zach Smith made by his ex-wife, Courtney Smith . It's unfortunate that the guy ( Zach Smith ) was allowed to be on the staff for that long a period of time.
He said it was the administration's goal to come up with a "50-state solution that does not necessitate pre-empting California".
It argued that this policy change was necessary because the Obama administration's standards "raised the cost and decreased the supply of newer, safer vehicles". And with President Donald Trump in the White House, the group would need a veto-proof majority to prevent the changes from going forward, should they actually receive and win a floor vote. The proportion of passengers killed in cars that are older than 18 years is nearly double that of cars that are newer than three years, according to a recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study.
But private transportation experts say there are so many factors involved that the 1,000-lives figure is questionable. He said gas prices are "at historically low levels and that changes driving habits, that changes the kind of cars and trucks that people want to buy".
Other states that joined in the lawsuit were: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
And so what the Trump this is also doing, along with freezing the CAFE standards, is limiting the extent to which states can impose regulations on other states and on manufacturers. The affordability argument also ignores thousands of dollars of saving in fuel costs for each driver over the life of a auto, opponents of the rollbacks said. He assured them he would, ordering his EPA chief and Transportation secretary to try to broker a deal with California.
In 2012, when the standards were first adopted, cars were about 50 per cent of new-vehicle sales.
