By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Transportation Department said Friday it plans to propose rolling back fuel economy standards for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans, the latest effort to unwind stringent vehicle standards set by former President Joe Biden.
In 2024, Biden’s administration finalized rules to require heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans to increase fuel efficiency by 10% per year for model years 2030-2032 and 8% per year for model years 2033-2035.
On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told automakers in a letter seen by Reuters that those rules were unrealistic and needed to be reset. It said the prior administration lacked the legal authority to establish civil penalties for failing to meet standards for larger vehicles.
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison said unrealistic standards “harm American consumers and business owners who use these commercial vehicles.”
The Biden administration had said the heavy-duty truck rules would “result in a fleetwide average of approximately 35 miles per gallon by model year 2035, saving heavy-duty pickup and van owners more than $700 in fuel over the lifetime of their vehicles.”
The Environmental Protection Agency under Biden issued parallel rules. The American Trucking Associations in 2024 said the 2030 rules were “entirely unachievable given the current state of zero-emission technology, the lack of charging infrastructure and restrictions on the power grid.”
Last month, NHTSA proposed slashing fuel economy standards for light-duty passenger cars and trucks in a push to make it easier for automakers to sell gasoline-powered cars, revising down the 2022 fuel economy standards and then proposing to hike them between 0.25% and 0.5% annually through 2031. In 2022, under Biden, NHTSA increased fuel efficiency by 8% annually for model years 2024-2025 and 10% for 2026.
NHTSA estimates the proposed rule would reduce average up-front vehicle costs for automakers by $930, but would increase fuel consumption by around 100 billion gallons through 2050 – and cost Americans up to another $185 billion for fuel and increase carbon dioxide emissions by about 5%.
On Friday, NHTSA said it aimed to swiftly complete the new regulation. Last year, Trump signed legislation that ended fuel economy penalties for automakers for cars and trucks, and NHTSA said they faced no fines dating back to the 2022 model year.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)
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