Fuel economy standards for new passenger cars and light trucks are unlawfully being weakened by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, a coalition of state, city, and county officials argue in a lawsuit filed Friday.
The corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards have reduced consumer costs by improving fuel efficiency for vehicles, lowered gas prices by reducing fuel consumption, reduced the consumer impact from global oil shocks, and slashed pollution from tailpipes and refineries.
However, a final rule from NHTSA significantly weakens fuel economy standards and hurts consumers and the planet, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.
“The President started a war that has created volatility in oil markets, disrupted global energy supplies, and left families and businesses paying the price at the pump, Bonta said. “Yet, the Trump Administration is attempting to gut fuel economy standards and force Americans to spend billions more on gas while poisoning the air in our communities.”
He said the Trump Administration is taking this action to line the pockets of their Big Oil donors.
In the lawsuit filed in federal court, the coalition alleges the unlawful new rule goes against the NHTSA’s mandate from Congress to set fuel economy standards at their “maximum feasible” level. NHTSA’s backsliding standards for the next five years require less efficiency than what the U.S. fleet actually achieved in 2021.
To set fuel economy standards, NHTSA first models the current fleet’s performance and then considers what, if any, additional actions manufacturers could take to improve their fuel economy in future model years. In past rulemaking, including during the first Trump administration, NHTSA’s analysis included the millions of electric vehicles on the nation’s highways and roads and based fuel economy standards on how additional technological improvements to gas-fueled cars could make that fleet more efficient.
The final rule improperly forces the agency to ignore that methodology to create an artificially low “maximum feasible” fuel economy level for the auto industry, according to the lawsuit, according to the lawsuit. The result means auto makers would be allowed to slow down their efforts to make vehicles that use less fuel, hurting consumers who are already struggling with high gas prices from the unending global oil shock caused by President Trump’s war against Iran, Bonta said.
NHTSA has also used defective analyses of vehicle affordability and sales, fleet turnover, fuel savings, and vehicle safety to make a destructive rule look beneficial to society, the lawsuit alleges. For example, NHTSA tries to paper over nearly $220 billion in lost fuel savings – money that drivers would have saved at the pump under the previous fuel economy standards, which will instead benefit Big Oil. It also refuses to consider hundreds of billions of dollars in future damages from disasters stemming from climate change.
In filing this lawsuit, Bonta joins the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, as well as officials from Chicago, City and County of Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and City and County of San Francisco.
