Under the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ Car Companies Won’t Be Fined for Failing To Hit Arbitrary Fuel Efficiency Goals

CAFE limits set out to accomplish a laudable goal—using less gasoline and creating fewer GHG emissions—but in an ineffective way.

“There’s a number of unintended consequences with fuel economy mandates in the fact that they increase sticker prices, they reduce choice, and there’s unforeseen costs,” says Nick Loris, executive vice president for policy at C3 Solutions, a free market energy and climate think tank. “Not to mention there’s the rebound effect that when you make cars more fuel-efficient, people are driving them more so you don’t get as much of an environmental benefit as initially purported.“
In fact, there already exist other methods of accomplishing the same goal.