President Donald Trump on Saturday said he approved new fuel economy standards, reversing former President Joe Biden’s stricter policies meant to fuel electric vehicle adoption.
Since the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards were established in 1975, they have been periodically updated, typically to make vehicles more efficient. Under former President Joe Biden’s standards, automakers would have had to increase the fuel efficiency of their passenger cars and light trucks to roughly 50 miles per gallon by 2031. The stricter standards were designed to incentivize electric vehicle production and sales in the U.S.
Trump presented the policy change as a boon for both automakers and consumers, though the final standards have not yet been publicly detailed.
“These new Standards will take the waste out of building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car — Far better than the Environmental Monsters that we were building heretofore,” he wrote in the Truth Social post. “Every Manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can!”
The regulatory change would fulfill a campaign promise from Trump to rescind policies that encouraged or incentivized electric vehicles.
It is unclear what the final fuel economy standards will be, although Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously said that they would be sharply lower than the Biden-era policies.
Weaker fuel economy standards mean that automakers can produce more pickup trucks and SUVs, which are much more profitable than smaller cars but have worse gas mileage. Electric vehicles also become much less attractive to automakers, although some companies, like General Motors, have said that they will still make them.
