60 MPG Fleet Fuel Economy Proposed
If you think 40 miles to the gallon on the highway is laudable, what if cars were to average 60 miles or more to the gallon fleetwide? The Obama Administration is currently considering raising fuel economy requirements for vehicles sold in the United States to a level no cars are achieving at the moment. However, with new technologies coming into place, much higher fuel economy numbers could be within reach.
Green Advocates
That news has environmentalists, policy makers and people wanting to reduce our country’s dependency on foreign oil talking about the possibilities. Clearly, the current arrangement of relying on the internal combustion engine alone to power most cars is not going to cut it.
Large pickup trucks, sport/utility vehicles and some large sedans utilize V8 power, returning no better than 25 mpg highway. Even very few of the six cylinder engines on the market get 30 mpg which means that public policy has to change to where people drive smaller vehicles, choose other powertrain options or both.
How can the 60 mpg figure be achieved? Right now, the Toyota Prius gets a combined 50 mpg, utilizing a small gas engine and electric battery system. This hybrid is the most fuel efficient car in America, but getting it up to 60 mpg may not be possible.
Electric Vehicles
That is where electric vehicles come in. Because they tap the electrical grid and consume energy that way, the equivalent miles per gallon numbers they achieve are much higher, perhaps in the three figure range. Not everyone will want or need to buy an electric vehicle, but even if a small, but significant portion of the car buying public makes that decision then improved fleet-wide fuel economy is possible.
The administration says that cars must average 35.5 miles to the gallon by 2016. Automakers will still be able to sell and customers buy larger vehicles, but those models must be offset by smaller, lighter cars. Likely, a mix of hybrids and electrics will help out.
But, the Obama Administration doesn’t want to stop there. They’re considering requiring fleet averages to increase 3 to 6 percent annually from 2017 to 2025. That means fleets would average 47 mpg on the lower end of the scale to 62 mpg on the top end.
Attainable Target?
New York based Natural Resources Defense Council has said that their own analysis of fuel and technology trends reveals how a 60 mpg standard could be met. And that would mean that the cars on the road in 2025 would consist of 55 percent hybrids, 15 percent plug-in electrics and 30 percent advanced-gasoline cars. A lot of older cars would have to be scrapped and millions of new vehicles purchased.
