The Environmental Protection Agency moved to ease Obama-era vehicle emissions standards, siding with car makers who say the rules don’t work in an era of cheap gasoline, and setting up a fight with environmentalists and the state of California.
The rules, finalized in the waning weeks of the Obama administration, would require auto makers to cut emissions enough so that new vehicles sold average more than 50 miles a gallon by 2025. Monday’s decision would start a process to relax future standards covering vehicle model years 2022-2025. The standards, arrived at through complex government calculations, equal roughly 36 mpg in real-world driving for 2025.
. . . In making the move, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt criticized Obama administration officials, saying they misread the market. He also claimed his predecessors rushed their review of vehicle efficiency for political reasons, noting they set the standards after a review they started and completed in just two months, immediately after Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016.
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