The new standards require American automakers to increase fuel economy so that, across their product lines, their passenger vehicles would average 65 miles per gallon by 2031, up from 48.7 miles today. The average mileage for light trucks, including pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, would have to reach 45 miles per gallon, up from 35.1 miles per gallon. Selling electric vehicles and hybrids would help bring up the average mileage per gallon across their product lines.
This is mpg across a product line. Not per vehicle and apparently without regard to production level or pricing. And since it’s an average across a product line an automaker could add a hybrid deluxe version at 300% markup that no one buys and still achieve compliance. Theoretically an automaker could actually worsen fuel economy if they added EV or hybrid versions to the product line.
I can’t even sarcastically joke these standards were written by industry.
I think you’re wrong about the averaging rules… This appears to be an update to the CAFE targets which average based on unit quantity across all cars and all light trucks you manufacture. You can’t manufacture 10 one-off “hypermiler” sku’s to offset your millions of cars.
That said, CAFE is still a worthless law that has ruined the American automobile market in more ways than one, and this policy update will likely do almost nothing to improve emissions.
I did look into it and yes, it does look like the averaging is done harmonically and not arithmetically. That’s how it cuts the outlier strategy.
So I guess the theory of gaming the system that hard is not as possible or at least mitigated to an effective degree.
Still though, even that they’re using harmonic mean doesn’t deviate to far from the reality this regulation was written by industry.