"Overcompliance" and relying on flex-fuel vehicle credits led the Big 3 to a problem that resulted in the EPA's action to rescind the GHG rule. Pickups and SUVs have accounted for a whopping 80 percent of the new vehicles sold by Ford and GM this year. For Chrysler, the total is closer to 90 percent. All three of these companies generated massive compliance shortfalls in their 2016 truck fleets that needed to be filled with credits. Companies that sell fewer trucks, like Honda and Nissan, instead continued to generate excess credits. In order to make the rules binding, EPA stipulated that credits banked during the early years of the program from 2012 to 2016 could only be carried forward through 2021. This means that the supply of credits is likely to get substantially tighter beginning in 2022. One possible offsetting factor will be the generous compliance treatment of electric vehicles, which begins 2017. But this bonus program also expires in 2021, and credits generated during this period can only be carried forward five years. In other words, for an automaker with a large truck fleet looking at compliance post-2021, your two most likely strategies will either be to make expensive investments in improving the efficiency of your trucks, or plan to rely on an increasingly tight—but also opaque—credit market. Given these choices, the auto industry collectively chose option C: fight to weaken the 2022-2025 standards. And EPA appears primed to go along. Forbes Now: One Reform EPA Should Make To Fuel Economy Rules That No One Is Talking About. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw9onbjDg Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
I do not know, I tend to not like all the credits. Just make a real target and enforce. 54 MPG only ever meant maybe 35 MPG after credits and other corrections. So just say 35 MPG. What you see is what you get.
Do away with the credits in their entirety. Replace it with a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend plan. Republicans want a free market solution, this is it. Carbon Fee and Dividend Policy
The article didn't mention that the automakers can trade their own credits between their truck and car fleets now. This is why great deals can be found on Fusion hybrids. They are also and indirect subsidy for plug ins.
That is because of two different scales. The former is CAFE scale, which is fixed. The later is EPA scale, a yardstick that keeps changing (shrinking) to attempt to better reflect how people drive in today's real world. It is quite impractical to create design mandates around a rubberish yardstick.
And changing the test to better reflect real world driving and have the CAFE values the same as window sticker means also addressing changes to the emission regulations.
Write your Congress critter then, and find some way to pay for it. The test gasoline isn't even E0 from a station, but a specific blend of compounds, and also 93 octane. The store bought gas likely varies too much in formulation between petroleum supply, refinery, time of year, and location to be useful for accurate emission testing. I thought the adjustments for window sticker figures was taking E10 into account.
