After months of hand-wringing by industry lobbies and environmental groups, President Obama announced the new round of Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE, on Friday in Washington. The standards call for a 5 percent annual increase in fuel economy for passenger cars from 2017 to 2025, culminating in a mandated 54.5 miles per gallon.
Creating the new CAFE round involved the participation of major car manufacturers in the United States, a process that, while fraught at times, ended with a near-unanimous, if somewhat meek, embrace of the tough new standards.
As Bill Vlasic noted in The Times on Thursday, when the 54.5 m.p.g. standard first was confirmed:
While the American carmakers, as well as their Asian rivals, once argued against even minimal increases in government fuel rules, they are acquiescing without protest to an increase to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, from the current 27 miles per gallon.
Toyota was one of the first brands out of the gates Friday morning with an official statement, in which James Lentz, the president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, called the standards “very ambitious,” but that the brand would work “with the administration and other stakeholders to ensure that we realize our shared environmental goals in the most economically-effective and consumer-friendly ways possible.”
Read the entire article at the: NY Times Wheels Blog
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