Examining the potential for voluntary fuel economy standards in the United States and Canada.

Analysis of Alternative Forms of Automotive Fuel Economy Standards for the United States

“…The different requirements for domestic and imported vehicles were eliminated for light trucks in 1995 but retained for passenger cars. Data for MY 2000 vehicles in the United States were derived from the NHTSA's Manufacturer's Fuel Economy Reports (6). Not all manufacturers have product offerings in all categories of vehicle type and origin, and manufacturers' product offerings differ substantially within categories.…”

“…Price curves were fitted to industrywide and manufacturerspecific data on fuel economy technology. Data on the use of fuel economy technologies in each manufacturer's vehicles were provided by Duleep (6 ). Individual vehicle designs were aggregated into the four vehicle categories, and separate curves were estimated for each category.…”

“…Specifically, for a k × 100% improvement in fuel economy, the equation is where W is base-year vehicle weight and w is fractional change in vehicle weight. This equation applies to all the manufacturer's vehicles, does not distinguish between automobiles and trucks, and sets a manufacturer-specific target reflecting the mix of vehicles the manufacturer sells (6 ). It is only one of many possible weight-based formulas.…”

“…The method combines representations of manufacturers' abilities to supply fuel economy, with a representation of the value of fuel economy to consumers, within a mathematical programming model. Full details about the methods, data, and assumptions of this analysis can be found in Examining the Potential for Voluntary Fuel Economy Standards in the United States and Canada (6).…”

Examining Fuel Economy and Carbon Standards for Light Vehicles

“…Footprint is much less closely correlated with fuel economy than is vehicle weight -in statistical terms, a plot of fuel economy vs. weight for the 1999 passenger car fleet (Plotkin, Greene, and Duleep, 2002) had an R 2 of about 60%, versus about 37% for footprint (see Figure 3). However, footprint is attractive as the basis of a standard because it preserves the incentive to reduce weight; it resists distortion --any tendency to increase either track width or wheelbase will be limited by the need to essentially redesign the vehicle (not the case with weight); and because increasing either of these dimensions would tend to be beneficial to vehicle safety.…”