Automakers Spinning Their Wheels on Fuel Economy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today claimed victory for automakers in the ongoing struggle to improve automobile gas mileage and fuel economy—even though they made no progress.

With great fanfare, the EPA announced on Monday (July 17, 2006) that 2006 model cars and light trucks average 21 miles per gallon—the same as last year—even though they are the fastest and heaviest vehicles American automakers have produced since 1975.
_{Photo courtesy of Mary A. Pen}

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According to the report, Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 Through 2006, the average mileage for 2006 models is actually lower than the 22.1 miles per gallon achieved in 1987-1988. So after nearly two decades of research and the application of new technologies, American automakers have produced a fleet of cars and light trucks that are less efficient than those they offered consumers in 1987. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like progress.

American automakers aren’t the only ones at fault, according to the EPA report. Toyota went from producing cars that averaged approximately 26 miles per gallon in 1987 to cars that average around 24 miles per gallon today. Honda dropped from an average of around 28 miles per gallon in 1987 to 24 today.

The ironic and truly disheartening thing about this lack of progress on fuel economy, according to many environmentalists, is that all vehicles could average 40 miles per gallon within 10 years. The technology already exists, and automakers have it. They just seem unwilling to use it.

Environmentalists make the point that increasing average vehicle mileage to 40 miles per gallon would save the Untied States more oil than it currently imports from the Persian Gulf plus all that it could ever get from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“The report documents that rather than devoting the last 25 years to using their significant resources and technological know-how to improving fuel efficiency, the automakers have instead chosen to add 1,000 pounds of weight and double the horsepower of the average vehicle,” said Dan Becker, Director of the Sierra Club Global Warming Program in a public statement.

The Sierra Club and other environmentalists called on President Bush and Congress to raise federal mileage standards as soon as possible. (The changes in U.S. fuel economy standards for light trucks announced in March were seen as too weak to be effective.)

"This report makes it crystal clear that the automakers, if left to their own devices, will not use existing technologies to improve the fuel economy of the vehicles American families depend on each and every day,” Becker said.

More information:
Gas Prices Are Up but Not Fuel Economy -- The Washington Post
'06 Fuel Economy Unchanged From Decade Ago, EPA Says -- Los Angeles Times
EPA Says No Improvement in Fuel Economy -- San Francisco Chronicle