NRDC Lawsuit Challenges Fuel-Economy Rollback

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) filed a lawsuit today challenging the rollback of vehicle fuel economy standards by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  

“With the Iran war driving up prices at the pump, the Trump administration is doing all it can to keep us dependent on gas guzzlers,” said Atid Kimelman, an attorney for NRDC. “In fact, most automakers would not need to make any fuel-economy improvements to meet these new standards. That’s not what the law demands, so we are suing.”

The case was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. 

Instead of following its statutory mandate to set vehicle fuel-economy standards at “maximum feasible levels” to reduce fuel consumption, NHTSA set these new standards at a level below what vehicle fleets on the road today already achieve. Indeed, the final rule, publicly released on Monday, lowers the required fleetwide average for 2031 to just 34.9 miles per gallon, while NHTSA itself acknowledges the fleet achieved an average of 35.4 miles per gallon in 2024. NRDC’s case will argue that is illegal. 

To make matters worse, NHTSA itself predicted that its changes would force the average driver of a new car to pay $1,624 more in fuel costs over the lifetime of that vehicle. Even by its own estimates, the new standards would lead to billions of gallons of additional gasoline consumption, resulting in a windfall for oil companies at the expense of the American public. 

Over the past five decades, fuel economy standards have been one of the most significant actions the United States has taken to reduce its reliance on oil and save drivers money at the pump. A bipartisan Congress first established CAFE standards in 1975 in the wake of the OPEC Oil Embargo a few years earlier. As a result of federal clean car and fuel economy standards, vehicles in the United States today use less gas and create less pollution than they used to. 

Since enacted, fuel economy improvements have saved more than two trillion gallons of gasoline, enough to run every car and light truck in the U.S. for more than 15 years. They have also saved drivers a combined $5 trillion in fuel costs and avoided 14 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, a Princeton University study concluded. 

NHTSA’s 2024 fuel economy standards were forecast to raise the average vehicle’s fuel efficiency to 50.4 miles per gallon, saving Americans $23 billion in fuel costs. Those standards are being repealed by the Trump Administration’s action that NRDC is challenging today.

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