CAFE standards base fleet fuel economy targets on wheelbase. It’s cheaper for manufacturers to produce large trucks and SUVs, which don’t have to meet as stringent a standard due to their large wheelbase.
Those are also classified as light trucks, which means they don’t have to comply with the higher safety standards that “passenger cars” do, another reason they’re cheaper to produce.
How do we sell those? Marketing to make people think they need them.
The government naively assumed the auto makers wouldn’t notice the gaping loophole in the CAFE standards and then did nothing while trucks grew to outlandish sizes.
CAFE standards base fleet fuel economy targets on wheelbase. It’s cheaper for manufacturers to produce large trucks and SUVs, which don’t have to meet as stringent a standard due to their large wheelbase.
Those are also classified as light trucks, which means they don’t have to comply with the higher safety standards that “passenger cars” do, another reason they’re cheaper to produce.
How do we sell those? Marketing to make people think they need them.
The government naively assumed the auto makers wouldn’t notice the gaping loophole in the CAFE standards and then did nothing while trucks grew to outlandish sizes.