Motorists drive on Interstate 210 during the morning commute December 3, 2025 in Pasadena, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Saturday he has approved new fuel economy standards, reversing former President Joe Biden’s tougher policies aimed at boosting the adoption of electric vehicles.
Since the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards were established in 1975, they have been periodically updated, usually to make vehicles more efficient. Under former President Joe Biden’s standards, automakers would have had to increase the fuel economy of their passenger cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031. The tougher standards were designed to encourage production and sales of electric vehicles in the United States.
Trump has presented the policy change as a boon for both automakers and consumers, although the final standards have not yet been detailed publicly.
“These new standards will eliminate waste from building cars in America. That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands of dollars on a new, beautiful, safe car – much better than the environmental monsters we’ve been building so far,” he wrote in the Truth Social post. “Every manufacturer, from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis, has called me wanting to build here, and now they can! »
The regulatory change would fulfill a Trump campaign promise to roll back policies that encouraged or incentivized electric vehicles.
It’s unclear what the final fuel economy standards will be, although Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously said they would be significantly lower than Biden-era policies.
Lower fuel economy standards mean automakers can produce more pickup trucks and SUVs, which are much more profitable than smaller cars but get worse gas mileage. Electric vehicles are also becoming much less attractive to automakers, although some companies, like General enginessaid they would still make them.
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