By David Shepardson<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The Trump administration says its new fuel economy rollback proposal could allow automakers to resume \u200bbuilding station wagons, a staple of 1970s and ’80s family travel.<\/p>\n
“This rule \u200cwill actually allow you to bring back the 1970s station wagon — maybe a little wood paneling \u200con the side,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on CNBC. “We can bring back choice to consumers so yeah the minivan is awesome but maybe the station wagon is cool too.”<\/p>\n
The Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said \u2060in its proposal Wednesday that \u200cfuel economy regulations led manufacturers to reshape the market in unanticipated ways “such as by almost eliminating the production of \u200dstation wagons.”<\/p>\n
The Detroit Three automakers ended production of full-size station wagons in the mid-1990s but smaller wagons remained in production by U.S. automakers until 2008.<\/p>\n
Cars face more stringent \u200bstandards than trucks. Station wagons are considered passenger cars but minivans and \u200ccrossover utility vehicles are light trucks.<\/p>\n
NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison separately raised the issue of station wagons in a call with automakers earlier this week.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday NHTSA proposed significantly reducing the fuel economy requirements from model years 2022 to 2031, requiring 34.5 miles per gallon on average by 2031, down from \u206050.4 miles per gallon (21.4 km per liter).<\/p>\n
NHTSA \u200bestimates the proposed rule would reduce average \u200bup-front vehicle costs by $930, but would increase fuel consumption by around 100 billion gallons through 2050 – and cost Americans up to \u200danother $185 billion for fuel \u2060and increase carbon dioxide emissions by about 5%.<\/p>\n
Transportation accounts for the single largest percentage of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Trump \u2060signed legislation that ended fuel economy penalties for automakers, and NHTSA said they faced no \u200cfines dating back to the 2022 model year.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Shepardson; \u200cEditing by Chizu Nomiyama, Alexandra Hudson)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By David Shepardson WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The Trump administration says its new fuel economy rollback proposal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15616,45,49,48,46,144222,56110,144221,32428,144223],"class_list":["post-326350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-automakers","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-fuel-economy","tag-national-highway-traffic-safety-administration","tag-station-wagons","tag-the-trump-administration","tag-transportation-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}