WASHINGTON — Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, and several other major automakers said Tuesday that they have dropped their support for a Trump-era lawsuit that sought to block California from setting its own strict fuel-economy standards, signaling that the auto industry is ready to work with President Biden to reduce climate-warming emissions.
The decision by the companies was widely expected, coming after General Motors dropped its support for the effort just weeks after the presidential election. But the shift may help the Biden administration move quickly to reinstate national fuel-efficiency standards that would control planet-warming auto pollution, this time with support from industry giants that fought such regulations for years.
The auto giants’ announcements come on top of a 2020 commitment by five other companies — Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen, and Volvo — that they would abide by California’s tough standards.
In a statement, the auto companies, represented by the industry group Coalition for Sustainable Automotive Regulation, wrote, “We are aligned with the Biden Administration’s goals to achieve year-over-year improvements in fuel economy standards that provide meaningful climate and national energy security benefits.”
They added, “In a gesture of good faith and to find a constructive path forward, the CSAR has decided to withdraw from this lawsuit in order to unify the auto industry behind a single national program with ambitious, achievable standards.”
Then-President Donald Trump had made the rollback of Obama-era fuel economy standards the centerpiece of his deregulatory agenda.
The Obama-era standards, which were modeled on California’s state-level standards, would have required auto companies to make and sell vehicles that reached an average fuel economy of about 54.5 mpg by 2025. The standards, which would have eliminated about 6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution over the lifetime of the vehicles, stood as the single largest federal policy ever enacted to reduce climate change.
The Trump administration last year rolled back that standard to about 40 mpg by 2026 — a move that would have effectively allowed most of that carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere. California, however, reached a separate deal with the five automakers, in which they agreed to reach a standard of 51 mpg by 2026. The Trump administration, backed by GM and other automakers, blocked California’s legal authority to set those standards.
Now that GM, Toyota, and Fiat Chrysler have dropped out of that lawsuit, Biden administration officials are expected to try to make that California deal the basis of a new federal standard.
But if other automakers follow GM’s pledge to phase out internal combustion engines by 2035, the whole concept of miles per gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel could soon be moot.
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February 03, 2021 at 05:33AM
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More automakers drop opposition to California’s fuel standards - BetaBoston
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