If there’s one automotive industry topic more hotly debated than future investments and manufacturing in the country of Mexico, it’s the current CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards the EPA has set in place for the year 2025. Right now, automakers must still plan to adhere to them.
The EPA has released a statement surrounding the upcoming fuel economy targets and has decided to keep them in place … for now. There’s still a lot that could change, and the EPA has until April of 2018 to finalize its plans for light-duty vehicle emissions standards.
There’s also the fact we have a Republican administration moving into the White House this coming January. President-Elect Donald Trump has stated before he would revisit the CAFE standards and possibly have his pick to head the EPA relax or even wipe them completely.
While that sort of deregulation may sound great for automakers, there’s still the small problem of CARB (the California Air Resources Board), which sets its own standards for the state of California. Should the federal regulations be scrapped, this quickly becomes a state’s rights issue.
Not to mention, in the global automotive business, other nations, namely Europe and China, will move forward on fuel economy standards. Ultimately, this could have ramifications for manufacturing scale in the United States.
However, none of this is up to us. We can only wait and see.
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