Hold onto your hats. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have finally pulled the curtain on their proposed rule for the Obama Administration’s new gas mileage standard. An average of 54.5 miles per gallon (MPG) by 2025 may seem like a huge leap in a short time, but the numbers are not what they appear.
The 54.5 MPG figure is the EPA number for passenger vehicles, not what you’ll see on the window sticker. It’s a fudge factory powered by greenhouse gas emissions. The automakers will be able to use a range of technology incentives in one place to offset their numbers in another, including flex fuel, hybrid, and electric power trains. In real world terms, we might expect a sticker average of 40 MPG for cars that run on liquid fuel. That’s not all that extraordinary, considering all the cars with gas mileage ratings around 40 MPG highway that we can buy today.
And they wonder why so many Americans are so skeptical of what goes on in Washington.
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