VW PassatRemember when gas was cheap – well under $1 a gallon – and cars or pick-up trucks that seemed as long as trains got about 9 miles per gallon?
Thank goodness at least the last part of that memory is just that – a memory.
Now gasoline costs have more than tripled, but fuel economy finally is poised to get dramatically better, thanks to strict new federal fuel-economy and carbon-emission standards finalized in 2012 with the tough new corporate average fuel economy standard.
The rule set the equivalent of 54.5 mpg as the fleet average automakers must achieve by 2025 – up from 29.7 mpg now and 35.5 mpg in 2016.
Of course, those numbers have given automakers the largest technological challenge they’ve had since the government began regulating emissions in 1970 and mileage in 1975.