The new standard could range as high as 60 miles/gal by 2025, according to one consumer advocate, although there was no immediate comment from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Environmental Protection Agency, which will prepare a joint rulemaking.
The current standard is 35 mpg by 2016. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 set a standard of 35 mpg by 2020, based on increases of 3% a year, but the timeline was advanced to 2016 by the Obama administration to conform to California's fuel economy program in order to establish a nationwide program.
Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said Monday that the proposed rates of improvement could range from 3% on the low side to 6% on the high side, annually. A 60 mpg standard represents roughly a 5% annual increase over the 2016 standard, he said, and is supported by 59% of the public polled in a recent CFA survey.
"We believe you achieve 60 mpg not by driving people to specialized cars but by driving technology into the kinds of cars people want to drive," Cooper told a briefing at Platts' Washington office. "To get to 60 mpg, you can support the cars people drive -- you just make them more fuel efficient."
Charles Territo, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturer, told Platts separately, "There's no question that the technology exists or that the technology will exist to achieve those goals." But, he added the question is whether new technologies will be broadly supported. "What is most important is whether or not they will be feasible and if there will be infrastructure in place," Territo said.
John German, program director for the International Council for Clean Transportation, said there is a great deal of room for improvement in the internal combustion engine which he said operates at maximum efficiency of 35%, and only 20-25% they way the typical motorist drives.
In addition to work that can be done currently to make engines work closer to peak efficiency, "with the coming revolution in light weight material," vehicles can get to 70-75 mpg by 2035, said German, who was previously an engineer with Chrysler and Honda and for 13 years did research and wrote regulations for EPA's Office of Mobil Sources laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
However, government mileage standards "are absolutely needed to put all manufacturers on an equal footing," German said.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
