Det. News

White House to require [fleet-wide average of] 35.5 mpg by 2016

One Response to "Det. News"

steveegg says:

May 19, 2009 at 2:57 am

I guess the NYT version that has the car mpg at 42 and the light-truck mpg at 26.2 was juuuuuust a bit off. When Jim Geraghty ran with that report, I sifted through the CAFE numbers for the 2009 model year (which are, on average, 30% higher than the EPA sticker numbers), and found a fair amount of “light trucks” (61 models, including the full-sized GM hybrid pickups/SUVs) and only a few cars (14 models to be exact including a corporate triplet of 2WD SUVs that will get reclassified as a car in 2011) that met the NYT-reported numbers.

With the Detroit News numbers, the number of car models that meet that standard goes up to 34 (including a couple more domestic models), while the number of “light truck” models that meet that standard drops to 12 (7 small AWD SUVs including 3 corporate twins, a midsized hybrid AWD SUV, 2 small 2WD pickups which really are the same pickup, and 2 versions of a micro-minivan).

Of course, that is assuming that the CAFE mileage definition isn’t changed. If the NHTSA adopts the current EPA sticker numbers, we’re down to 2 cars (both hybrids) and no light trucks making it.

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