With fuel prices down by as much as 30% from their 2014 peak, millions of Americans have been migrating to pickups and SUVs and abandoning compact passenger cars and alternative fuel vehicles. That’s leading some industry executives to questions whether the federal government should re-think the 54.5 mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standard set to take effect in 2025.
Such a move would be a critical mistake, warns Margo Ogo, a former official with the EPA who helped put together the compromise fuel economy rules and who has been dubbed by some “the Queen of Cleaner Cars.” If anything, she says, the tough mandate targeted for a decade from now doesn’t go nearly far enough.
“2025 is the first down-payment to the planet for the need to get away from fossil fuels,” Oge told TheDetroitBureau.com during a lengthy interview marking the release of her new book, Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars. “We, as a society, need to move to zero-emission vehicles by 2050…if we are to meet goals of reducing carbon emissions.”
If Oge were to be calling the shots, she said, she’d be pushing for CAFÉ rules that would come in something closer to 180 miles per gallon.
Such numbers are well beyond the pale of anything the industry could imagine today. Volkswagen has come up with a limited-edition model, the XL1, that it claims can hit an amazing 261 mpg, but it requires the extensive use of carbon fiber and other super-light materials, offers two cramped seats, provides weak performance – and comes in at around $250,000.
Even getting to 54.5 mpg will be difficult and costly, critics contend, and would force American motorists to trade in those trucks and SUVs for compact or small battery-electric vehicles – an argument that Oge quickly dismisses.
For one thing, she insists that many CAFE critics knowingly misstate what the 2025 rules actually set down. She notes that the mandate is “footprint-based.” In other words, it doesn’t expect all vehicles to reach 54.5 mpg. A complex formula effectively lowers the target for larger vehicles – so much so that the two-wheel-drive version of Ford’s new aluminum-intensive F-150 already meets the phased-in fuel economy standard for 2021.
Add the fact that manufacturers will get various credits and adjustments and the 2025 target – in terms of real world mileage will be closer to 40 miles per gallon, not 54.4 mpg, the Greek-born Oge explained. For a full-size pickup like the F-150, the number would be significantly lower.
That’s good news considering the EPA did make at least one major error in laying out the 2025 fuel economy mandate. It assumed that 55% of the U.S. new vehicle market would be made up of sedans, coupes and other passenger cars, with trucks making up the remaining 45%. Currently, those numbers are almost exactly backwards – though industry analysts suggest things could shift dramatically if fuel costs were to surge back up to $4 a gallon any time soon.
(Auto sales surge, but trucks gain traction in market.Click Here for more.)
Critics of the 54.5 mpg standard have warned that the mandate will force Americans to trade in their gas-powered vehicles for battery-cars. In fact, countered Oge, the EPA assumptions “were not based on having a significant number of electrical vehicles or (even) strong hybrids” on the market, only about 1 to 3% of new vehicle sales by 2025.
“For the most part,” she said, government planners were assuming the industry would meet its goal “by using everyday technologies,” such as “downsized turbocharged engines, stop-start, enhanced transmissions,” and, added Oge, by expanding the use of lightweight materials like the aluminum F-150.
(Automakers put their cars on a diet. Click Here for more on the lightweighting trend.)
The EPA mileage rules continue to draw criticism. David Cole, director-emeritus of the Center for Automotive Safety, for one, insists the cost is too high and the savings to low. But Oge noted that consumers still rank improved fuel economy as critical. And, for the most part, automakers have embraced that goal.
The compromise that led to the 54.5 mpg mandate marked a significant transition in industry-government relations, stressed Oge, who spent 32 years with the EPA. She pointed to a comment by Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne that the industry had ended, “the bad habit of crying wolf.”
“Time after time,” Oge said, automakers have not only exceeded their targets when it’s come to federal mandates, but they have usually done it at a lower cost than expected. She is confident the same will happen by 2025.
Even if “electrification” does prove to be a necessary part of the formula, she pointed out the sharp decline in battery prices. Just since Chevrolet conceived of the Volt plug-in, the cost of lithium-ion technology has plunged from $1,000 a kilowatt-hour to around $330. And many analysts expect it will dip to $200 by decade’s end.
So, despite some calls to repeal or delay the 54.5 mpg standard, Oge is confident it will remain in effect. If anything, she is calling on industry and government to consider where they would go next.
“We need to continue the annual improvement beyond 2025, she said, with a goal of pushing up mileage “annually by 5%” for the foreseeable future.
While Oge left her federal job in 2012, she continues to play a role in the auto industry – more directly, in fact, as a board member of DeltaWing, a Georgia company that has developed a super-light and hyper-aerodynamic concept vehicle it hopes to put into production in the near future. The four-seat design would reportedly get better than 70 mpg while delivering performance comparable to today’s midsize sedans.
(Click Here for more on the DeltaWing project.)
There in lies the problem… thinking that we need for some unexplained reason to “get away from fossil fuels”. There never was any logic to this argument nor to the pulled-from-their-orifice 54.5 mpg CAFE mandate. There is no science nor rationale what so ever behind this push to force consumers to buy EVs/hybrids and pay thousands more for petrol and Diesel powered vehicles than they should or could be paying. Just like with the gasohol lie – this is another example of bad government forcing their whims on the populace so a few can profit handsomely from misguided government coercion.
This is just another U.S. national disgrace and duping of the populace. I’m all for a rationale energy policy but this sure ain’t one.
The CAFE standards should be repealed anyway. They are socialistic in nature and are completely opposite of the term “free market society”. Let the market price of fuel be the determining factor in what people demand the automakers make. The federal government has no business dictating what businesses produce…this is the U.S…not communist China.
I need a full size pickup. I am retired, don’t have much money to spend and have a bottom of the line two wheel drive Ram. Thank goodness the price of gas is almost sane but, if the CAFE is forced to go to even 45mpg I will be priced right out of the market. All of the regulations already mandated, airbags, 5mph bumpers, pending backup cameras, ad neausium, add thousands to the basic vehicle price. Stay the hell out of my pocket.
Unfortunately many people will be priced out of the new car market with sticker prices increasing by thousands of dollars per year. As usual the politicians in DC are doing all that they can to lower the standard of living for the masses in the U.S. while they live the platinum life on tax payer money.
Forcing consumers to buy impractical EVs is simply wrong but that it the intent of the ill conceived Obama/EPA 45 mpg CAFE mandate.
The law behind this is rather strange. It basically just says the total pollution is to remain constant. The EPA put out some regulations and made a CAFE ESTIMATE. But since then more big cars and trucks were sold and fewer miles driven so the original estimate is worthless. The EPA could put out a more current estimate of around 39mpg but that would create a political firestorm.
Hmmmm all the whining about not being able to afford a vehicle. Here I thought you had boatloads of Bush money.