The Department of Transportation formally started the process of rewriting the fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, issuing a rule that said the Biden administration’s standards are legally flawed.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ordered the department to revise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard when he took office in January, and the department hinted at its strategy in a May 19 announcement.
The “interpretive rule” released Friday says the two most recent rounds of CAFE standards, which cover model years 2022 through 2026 and 2027 through 2031, went beyond the letter of the law. The Transportation Department won’t enforce them until it writes new versions of the standard, a spokeswoman said.
The crux of the argument is that the Biden administration considered the performance of electric vehicles when it wrote the rules, which made them more stringent than they should’ve been, according to the text of Friday’s rule.
