WASHINGTON — Three months after the EPA proposed its strictest-ever limits on tailpipe pollution, NHTSA has outlined fuel economy standards for new light-duty cars and trucks that would require an average fleet fuel economy of 58 mpg by the 2032 model year.
The nation’s top auto safety regulator on Friday said its new standards for the 2027-32 model years would require a 2 percent per year improvement in fuel efficiency for cars and a 4 percent per year improvement for light trucks.
NHTSA’s proposal also includes a 10 percent improvement per year for commercial pickups and work vans — those with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 8,500 pounds but less than 14,001 — beginning in the 2030 model year and ramping up through 2035.
In comparison, standards finalized by the agency last year call for fuel efficiency to increase by 8 percent per year for cars and light trucks in the 2024 and 2025 model years and by 10 percent for 2026. The rule requires an industrywide fleet average of approximately 49 mpg in the 2026 model year.
If finalized as proposed, NHTSA said the new standards could save consumers more than $50 billion on fuel over the vehicles’ lifetime, and U.S. gasoline consumption could be cut by more than 88 billion gallons through 2050. It also would prevent more than 900 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from passenger cars and light trucks — the equivalent of taking more than 233 million vehicles off the road from 2022 through 2050, NHTSA said.
“We’re excited about today’s announcement as another step in the direction of reinforcing our manufacturing capability here in the United States, lifting up the workers who … are on the cutting edge of defining the next chapter of automotive history,” Ali Zaidi, the White House’s national climate adviser, told reporters during a press call Friday.
To be sure, NHTSA sets standards for five model years at time. The 2032 model-year standard is not legally binding and instead is an agency projection to provide “certainty to automakers and parallel the EPA proposal,” said Ann Carlson, NHTSA’s acting administrator.
The EPA in April unveiled its proposal to significantly reduce vehicle emissions for cars and light trucks in the 2027-32 model years. If finalized, the rule could mean EVs would make up more than half of new-vehicle sales by the 2030 model year and two-thirds by 2032, according to the agency’s projections.
In comments submitted this month to the EPA, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation called the draft rule “a de facto battery-electric vehicle mandate” that is “neither reasonable nor achievable in the time frame provided.”
The trade association — which represents a broad swath of industry players planning to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in electrification — argued that the EPA’s rule, as proposed, puts the U.S. on a “too fast” path for shifting to EVs, consequently giving China an advantage and threatening a just-right transition.
Automakers and their EV battery partners have invested hundreds of billions of dollars toward electrification. However, early consumer adoption has been slower than the industry expected, with reports of EVs stacking up on dealership lots.
The alliance has called for one national standard that aligns NHTSA’s fuel economy standards with the EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions rules.
In a statement Friday, alliance CEO John Bozzella said his group was reviewing NHTSA’s proposal and that it was “encouraging” that the two agencies seem to have tried to “sync up” the rules.
“Conflicting and overlapping rules are complex and expensive,” he said. “If an automaker complies with EPA’s yet-to-be-finalized greenhouse gas emissions rules, they shouldn’t be at risk of violating CAFE rules and subject to civil penalties that levy costs on consumers and manufacturers but deliver no corresponding environmental benefits.”
NHTSA last year reinstated higher penalties for automakers whose vehicles do not comply with fuel economy standards for the 2019 model year and beyond. Automakers argued in 2016 that the increased penalties could raise industry compliance costs by at least $1 billion annually.
The agency said its proposed fuel economy standards “complement and align with” the EPA’s proposal and that the two agencies will work together to optimize their effectiveness while minimizing compliance costs.
“We have worked and coordinated closely with EPA to ensure that manufacturers can use a single fleet to comply with both rules, and we are working hard to ensure that if auto manufacturers comply with the EPA rules, they should be able to comply with the NHTSA standards relatively easily,” Carlson explained.
Still to come is the Energy Department’s proposal to update a decades-old calculation that determines the petroleum-equivalent fuel economy of electric vehicles for NHTSA’s fuel economy standards.
For example, applying the current calculation to a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup results in a rating equivalent of about 238 mpg. Under the proposed rule-making — which lowers the petroleum-equivalency factor for EVs — the rating would be reduced to about 67 mpg.
The current calculation leads to an “overvaluation of EVs” in determining fleetwide corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards, allowing automakers to maintain less-efficient internal combustion engine vehicles in their fleets by using “a few EV models” to comply with the standards, the department said.
The Energy Department is expected to finalize the rule by next spring.
In response to a question from Automotive News, Carlson said NHTSA used the Energy Department’s proposed change to the calculation in its CAFE proposal.
To be sure, NHTSA is prohibited from considering the fuel economy of EVs when determining its maximum feasible CAFE standards for a given model year. However, the agency must include EVs when calculating compliance with those standards.
Automakers can use all available technologies — such as internal combustion engine, hybrid and electric vehicles — for compliance.
If finalized, the Energy Department’s proposal would take effect with 2027 model-year vehicles.
At a July 17 meeting with the White House, General Motors warned officials the auto industry could face up to $100 billion in CAFE penalties — or $1,300 per vehicle — from 2027 to 2031 under the Energy Department’s existing petroleum-equivalent fuel economy rating for EVs, according to a GM slide posted to a government website.
If the proposal is finalized, those penalties could reach $300 billion — or $4,300 per vehicle — from 2027 to 2031, the slide shows.
The White House’s Zaidi on Friday pushed back against GM’s estimates, clarifying that the automaker did not have access to the NHTSA proposal.
“That analysis is not grounded — and, of course, would not be able to be grounded — because it predated the proposed rule,” he said.
NHTSA’s Carlson also said the agency does not “in any way agree with the GM analysis.”
