{"id":95340,"date":"2025-04-28T03:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T07:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=95340"},"modified":"2025-04-27T11:14:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T15:14:24","slug":"unintended-consequences-of-vehicle-mileage-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/04\/28\/unintended-consequences-of-vehicle-mileage-regulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Unintended consequences of vehicle mileage regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter<\/em>, Sheel Mohnot<\/a> explains the amazing unintended consequences of another “great idea with the best possible intentions”:<\/p>\n

Ever wonder why sedans disappeared and every car is huge now? <\/p>\n

“Thanks, Obama!”<\/p>\n

His administration changed fuel economy standards in a way that had the perverse impact of making cars even bigger. <\/p>\n

Here are all the vehicles for sale by the 3 largest US automakers. 62 vehicles, 4 sedans (6%). 20 years ago this chart would have been ~50% sedans!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What happened?<\/p>\n

Obama administration changed auto fuel efficiency rules to tie fuel economy targets to vehicle size.<\/p>\n

Under the new system:
\n-The bigger the car’s footprint, the easier the MPG target was.
\n-Light trucks (including SUVs and crossovers) had far lower requirements than passenger cars.
\n-Crossovers were quietly reclassified as “trucks,” giving them a huge regulatory advantage.<\/p>\n

Instead of building lighter, more efficient cars, automakers simply made everything bigger, and made more trucks and SUVs.<\/p>\n

Notice that cars that used to be sedans are now crossovers? They do this so it counts as a light truck – they raise ground clearance, square off the rear for cargo capacity, and meet off-road approach minimums so they get qualified as a light truck. Think Subaru Legacy > Subaru Outback.<\/p>\n

As you can see in the chart, it’s a LOT easier to meet MPG requirements if your vehicle is classified that way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So cars got LARGER to meet fuel efficiency goals. The new Honda Civic is 20 inches longer and 4 inches wider than it used to be, about the same size as an old Accord. By making the Civic larger, Honda slightly shifted it into a more favorable regulatory category.<\/p>\n

… and smaller cars disappeared. The Honda Fit was a great little car, but would have had to hit 67 MPG in 2026, which would be nearly impossible … so instead, Honda stopped selling them. <\/p>\n

So, the only way to make small vehicles now is to make them EV’s (Chevy Bolt). <\/p>\n

The Slate truck that is all the rage now is only possible because it’s an EV … otherwise its footprint would have demanded an overly onerous MPG target. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So in short – Obama era CAFE standards had the opposite of the desired impact: sedans died, vehicles ballooned in size, and America’s streets turned into an SUV parking lot.<\/p>\n

All thanks to a policy that accidentally incentivized bloat instead of efficiency.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me started on “cash for clunkers!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Sheel Mohnot explains the amazing unintended consequences of another “great idea with the best possible intentions”: Ever wonder why sedans disappeared and every car is huge now? “Thanks, Obama!” His administration changed fuel economy standards in a way that had the perverse impact of making cars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,84,13],"tags":[111,661,1033],"class_list":["post-95340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-government","category-usa","tag-cars","tag-regulation","tag-unintendedconsequences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-oNK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95344,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95340\/revisions\/95344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}