Permanent fuel economy standards could pose a “very serious” risk to the auto industry, according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR).
It has released a new study estimating the parameters of the US motor vehicle market and industry in 2025 considering what it describes as the “dramatic changes” that are likely to be mandated by the federal government.
Entitled the US Automotive Market and Industry in 2025, it looks at technology and market forecast data from the National Research Council and JD Power and Associates. It looked at nine potential pathways, including: spark-ignited; compression-ignited; electrification; mass reduction in the vehicle; the use of stop/start technology; and further variants of vehicle electrification; and found that each produced a specific fuel economy standard and cost estimate.
CAR researchers estimated the least cost technology mix for each scenario and using these shared forecasts each technology’s per cent contribution to the fuel efficiency target and weighted cost of implementation was calculated. The results for each scenario are:
- Scenario I: 47mpg CAFE standard, three per cent decrease in CO2 per year. The estimated vehicle cost increase is $3,744.
- Scenario II: 51mpg CAFE standard, four per cent decrease in CO2 per year. Includes a significant shift towards stop/start, hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology and a per vehicle cost increase of $5,270.
- Scenario III: 56mpg CAFE standard, five per cent decrease in CO2 per year. Includes a major shift to hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology and a per vehicle cost increase of $6,714.
- Scenario IV: 62mpg CAFE standard, six per cent decrease in CO2 per year. This includes a major shift to plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles and meeting this standard would increase vehicle costs by an average of $9,790.
Based on the results CAR believes permanent fuel economy standards would be very serious. For example, with the 49.6mpg fuel economy standard the cost to the consumer purchasing a vehicle would rise nearly 40 per cent and as a result US sales of vehicles would be estimated to fall by 5.4million units. Requirements to downsize vehicles, it suggests, would only increase loss estimates as the consumer value of vehicles would be seriously reduced.
