Because of certain legal requirements, NHTSA’s proposal does not include model year 2023, which is why the percentage increase differs from the EPA rule. The overall savings, however, would be the same, analysts agreed.
“The agencies were considering the same range of standards and settled on the same proposed target within their respective lanes,” said Dave Cooke, a senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “They end up in the same place in 2026.”
The joint proposal marks a significant increase from the 1.5% fuel-economy gain imposed by the Trump administration, although it is still less than what many environmentalists would have liked.
“These are not up to what the climate demands,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Telling them to go back to the drawing board at this point isn’t going to happen. At a minimum they should toughen up the strongest proposal that they’ve analyzed.”
Both EPA and NHTSA’s proposals consider a range of regulatory alternatives, including a more stringent requirement that analysts say would restore Obama-era standards.
Under the Obama administration, automakers were required to raise fuel economy 5% a year through 2025. But President Trump reduced that rate to 1.5% annually through 2026. Trump also repealed California’s legal authority to set its own standards, which the Biden administration is working to restore.
The weaker alternative considered in the proposal is based on a framework California agreed to in 2019 with five automakers — Ford Motor Co., BMW AG, Honda Motor Co., Volkswagen AG and Volvo Group — which would increase miles per gallon by 3.7% a year.
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