Back in the 1970's congress enacted a fuel economy standard which was meant to increase the efficiency of all new cars. The standard sets an average fuel economy for a manufacturer's entire model year fleet. So if the standard is set at 26 MPG, an automaker can offer a car at 16 MPG if they also offer one at 3 MPG. When the law was first enacted, it was to consistently increase over the following years until the average efficiency was doubled. This worked well, but the administrations in the 1980's did not renew the increases, and even rolled the standard back.

For this reason, the standard has not been raised in 20 years! Think where we could be today had this number continually increased! Obviously, the increases would have to be slower because the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. The closer something gets to optimum, the harder it is to get better. However, there have been significant technological changes in the past 20 years that could have been leveraged to help meet increasing standards. Yet we have not raised them.

It appears that a new bill in the Senate, would finally begin to increase this standard once again. The bill calls for a 40% increase to 35 MPG by the year 2020. I'm in favor of it, but I have my doubts if it will make it to law. Only time will tell.