A customer refuels a car at a Chevron gas station in San Francisco on Thursday, May 22nd, 2025. | Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Things are getting nutty in the world of vehicle fuel economy standards.
Last week, Transportation Secretary (and ex-reality TV contestant) Sean Duffy declared that he was resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that govern vehicle fuel efficiency in the US. Duffy confidently declared that the current CAFE standards, in which fuel economy would increase 2 percent per year for passenger car model years 2027-2031 and 2 percent per year for light-duty trucks model years 2029-2031, “illegally” considered electric vehicles, and therefore were null and void. So while it works on reversing those standards, Duffy said the Trump administration would simply stop enforcing the current ones.
The rules were being rewritten to make “vehicles more affordable and easier to manufacture in the United States,” Duffy said. Experts say rolling back the CAFE standards will have the opposite effect: cars will be less fuel efficient, forcing their owners to shell out more for gas over time.
While it works on reversing those standards, Duffy said the Trump administration would simply stop enforcing the current ones
“Making our vehicles less fuel efficient hurts families by forc …
