Corporate average fuel economy

"CAFE" redirects here. For other uses, see Cafe (disambiguation).

Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States. More recently, efficiency standards were developed and implemented for heavy-duty pickup trucks and commercial medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles.

CAFE neither directly offers incentives for customers to choose fuel efficient vehicles nor directly affects fuel prices. Rather, it attempts to accomplish the goals indirectly, by making it more expensive for automakers to build inefficient vehicles by introducing penalties.[2]

The original CAFE standards sought to drive automotive innovation to curtail fuel consumption, and now the aim is also to create domestic jobs and cut global warming.[3][4] Stringent CAFE standards together with government incentives for fuel efficient vehicles in the United States should accelerate the demand for electric vehicles.[5]

CAFE standards are administered by the Secretary of Transportation via the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Observed CAFE by regulatory class[6][7]
  1. ^ "CAFE Overview: "What is the origin of CAFE?"". NHTSA. Retrieved May 27, 2007.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference NationalAcademiesReport was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Baruch Feigenbaum; Julian Morris. "CAFE Standards in Plain English" (PDF). Reason.
  4. ^ "A Brief History of US Fuel Efficiency Standards Where we are—and where are we going?". The Union of Concerned Scientists is a national nonprofit organization founded more than 50 years ago by scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. July 25, 2006.
  5. ^ Sen, Burak; Noori, Mehdi; Tatari, Omer (October 1, 2017). "Will Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standard help? Modeling CAFE's impact on market share of electric vehicles". Energy Policy. 109: 279–287. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2017.07.008. ISSN 0301-4215.
  6. ^ "PICReportSite".
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference nhtsa_afep2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).