The Future of Fuel Economy is Now

Just as Congress and the auto industry are battling over new fuel economy rules to reduce U.S. oil consumption, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) released a study arguing that, "technologies exist today that can improve light-duty vehicle fuel economy by up to 50 percent over the next 10 years without reducing the size of the vehicle," or compromising safety.


Sounds too good to be true—and the auto industry is saying just that. Unfortunately, the auto industry has a history of crying wolf when any new government safety or environmental regulations are in the offing. Safety regulations that so worried automakers in the past—adding seatbelts, airbags, or tougher crash testing—in the long run boosted sales as safety became a sales point for consumers. With high gas prices and the threat of even higher prices, fuel economy is also a sales factor.


Fuel economy is a thorny issue with no easy answers. For the last two decades U.S. automakers, regulators and consumers have ignored fuel economy. Technologies might develop to turn a Hummer into a sipper, but they are not on the automaker's shelves right now.

Safe at Any Size?
In 1975, we got an average of 13.3 mpg in a vehicle that weighed 4,058 pounds, sported a 136-horspower engine and offered 110 cubic feet of interior space. Unless we lived on a farm, we drove cars. Farmers got 11.6 mpg out of a 4,072-pound pickup with a 142-horsepower engine. In 2006, the average vehicle weighed 4,142 pounds and got 21 mpg, even though light trucks make up about 50 percent of the mix. Cars upped their horsepower by 46 percent and light trucks added 68 percent more oomph. All of these fuel economy gains came after the first CAFE standards in 1974 and have changed not a bit since 1982, according to the ICCT Study.


But that initial fuel savings came at a price. A 1988 study by researchers at Harvard University and the Brookings Institution estimated that fatality rates in 1985 car models were 14 to 27 percent higher because of the 500 pounds of weight reduction attributed by these researchers to CAFE requirements. These researchers projected that federal fuel economy standards are "responsible for 2,200 to 3,900 excess occupant fatalities over the 10 years of a given model year's use." The automaker's lobby cites this study and cautions that safety consequences must be part of any new CAFE standard.