Fuel Taxes vs Fuel Economy: Are Stricter Fuel Economy Standards a Good Idea?

You most likely know by now that fuel efficiency is slated to double in new vehicles by 2025. What you may not know is how much that will cost you when you buy a new car in future years. Thousands of real dollars

ByRochelle Jenks:In August, 2012, the government published the 2025 standards for automakers. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards require the average fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks to be 54.5 miles per gallon.

In July 2011, the Obama administration announced the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that will begin taking effect in 2017. The standards for U.S. light-duty vehicle fleets (passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks) will be 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025, and they piggyback on the 2009 mandate for a CAFE average of 35.5 mpg by 2016, up from 27.3 mpg in 2011.

Cars averaging 23.8 mpg don't usually get much coverage on GreenCarReports — they simply aren't that green. In this instance though, that gas mileage figure doesn't refer to a particular car — it refers to every car sold in 2012.

The Obama administration's proposed rules would increase average gas mileage for each automaker's passenger vehicle fleet to 54.5 mpg from the 2011 model-year average of 27.8 mpg.The Obama administration has proposed landmark fuel economy standards that would almost double the average gas mileage for each automaker's passenger vehicle fleet to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

(Great Beyond)

There are two things you can do with a more efficient automobile engine. One is build a vehicle that gets more miles per gallon. The other is build a vehicle that moves more pounds of steel. And Christopher Knittle points out that we’ve largely been doing the latter:

Digital Trends - It seems that the Obama administration has brought months of negotiations with automakers on new fleet-wide MPG targets to an amicable close. The new CAFE, or corporate average fuel economy, standard to be announced today requires automakers’ entire fleet average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.