Trump administration abandons fuel efficiency standards for new cars

The American government must formalize on Monday the abandonment of the energy efficiency objectives set under the presidency of Joe Biden for new cars, which must not consume less gasoline than today by 2031.

President Donald Trump welcomed this on Saturday on Truth Social, seeing it as the end of the “ridiculous electric vehicle requirement”, imposed according to him by his Democratic predecessor. His Transport Minister, Sean Duffy, confirmed he was planning an announcement on Monday.

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The Republican assures that the measure will reduce the price of new cars by around $900 on average in 2031. His detractors predict, on the contrary, a heavier bill at the pump, especially since fuel prices have soared since the conflict that the United States and Israel launched at the end of February with Iran.

A marked decline compared to the objectives set under Biden

At issue is the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, created in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo, which require vehicles to achieve “the highest possible efficiency” in terms of miles per gallon. The Trump administration's plan forecasts an average of 34.5 miles per gallon (6.8 liters per 100 km) by 2031, a level already reached in 2024 according to the document.

The Biden administration targeted 50.4 mpg (4.7 L/100km) and thus intended to save 64 billion gallons of gasoline (242 billion liters) by 2050, for net benefits estimated at $35 billion, before the current surge. Most major manufacturers, including Ford and Stellantis, supported the project.

But the rules of the Biden era, supposed to accelerate the transition to hybrid and electric, were already largely ineffective, a budget law adopted in 2025 having reduced to zero the penalties for manufacturers who did not respect them. Dan Becker, of the NGO Center for Biological Diversity, announced legal action, ruling that the text ignores clean technologies and the millions of fuel-efficient cars in circulation.

This text “will lead American manufacturers to their doom, since they will no longer have to measure themselves against the best technologies in the world,” he declared. Transportation is the largest emitting sector of greenhouse gases in the United States, the second largest polluter in the world.