GM CEO Mary Barra Calls For Single National Fuel Economy Standard
7
Sponsored Links
General Motors CEO Mary Barra has called for a single national fuel economy standard as the Trump Administration mulls changes to current Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.
“General Motors supports establishing one national set of fuel efficiency requirements, with flexibilities that take into consideration recent industry developments such as vehicle sharing and self-driving electric vehicles,” Barra said.
Barra published her comments to LinkedIn and added a national average would “allow us to focus our resources on innovations that benefit our customers and society as we pursue our vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion, instead of diffusing resources to meet different rules within the United States.”
In her comments, she also said GM has an “absolute and unwavering” commitment to improving its vehicles’ fuel economy and reducing emissions. She also reiterated GM’s plan for an electric future and touched on the topic of climate change.
Her comments come ahead of a roundtable discussion with President Donald Trump and a host of other major automakers. Right now, Obama-era regulations have CAFE numbers climbing through 2025 to 50 mpg.
A single national average won’t be an easy thing to accomplish, though. California has long had the ability to set its own standards via the California Air Resources Board. Numerous other states follow California regulations as well. The state, along with 16 others, have already sued the Trump administration.
Sponsored Links
Why is she announcing this? Most likely because she believes the Administrations plan is to go to war with CAFE by axing their waiver…If that happens, the most likely scenario is that CA’s fuel standards are remain while the courts battle this out over possibly years…Furthermore if CAFE’s waiver is removed, there are other creative ways for CA to regulate their own standards including an outright ban on gasoline vehicles…
A ban of gasoline vehicles has been in the news for Great Britain and other nations. California can do it sooner, maybe as soon as 2025. I support it!
Existing law requires that there be one national fuel economy standard. The Clean Air Act allows California to set emissions standards to address its pervasive air quality problems, including global warming, and allows other states to follow. It’s important to recognize, as the courts have done, that these are two different things.
Companies should be able to build anything that they want and let the public decide if they want to pay their hard earned money on it!
If that were allowed, I’d bet a lot of GMAers would be gifting me Toxic Waste they purchased from Amazon Prime…
As California leads the other states in emission standards, why doesn’t those other states (and Barra BTW) follow California? Or does some oil interest remain in the way? I prefer to spend more on EVs and hybrids and spend less on gasoline and engine oil later.
As I mentioned in a previous comment when the leaders of the auto manufacturers sat smiling with Trump , that somehow they would try to get California to get on board . Now you have the face of BARRA who puts it on the table with ONE STANDARD . California had the gumption to strictly employ this tightening the standard as it was experiencing a huge pollution problem . It has been instrumental in cutting polllution and electrical cars are more popular here and will be more so in years to come . Yet here comes BARRA , what a sweetie , sincerely smiling and so concerned about pollution , yes make it a federal standard and California can say hello to smog big time . What person and or company will get big bucks from the oil companies , as a reward , if this goes through ! Hmmmmm