New gas mileage ratings are mere window dressing

Tacoma News Tribune (Knight Ridder), Staff
Published July 13, 2006

Jul. 14--With news that oil prices reached a record $76 a barrel Thursday, car shoppers have more reason to make fuel-efficiency a priority in their buying decisions. The snag is that many of those mileage stickers they find on new cars can't be trusted. Consumer groups have long complained that the gas- mileage ratings posted on cars can be off by up to 50 percent since the ratings don't account for things like faster acceleration rates, higher highway speeds or the use of air conditioning. The Environmental Protection Agency finally acknowledged that concern earlier this year, announcing it would overhaul the way it calculates fuel economy for new cars and trucks to reflect more accurately the real-life experience of American drivers. The agency plans to have the new calculations -- which could result in a 10 to 30 percent drop in fuel efficiency ratings -- ready for 2008 models, which will go on sale late next year. That's great information for car buyers to have and could lead to increased consumer demand for more fuel-efficient cars. Let's hope so, because the federal government isn't going to use the information itself to enforce existing fuel economy standards. The Environmental Working Group released a report Thursday that estimated that forcing carmakers to meet mileage standards based on real-world driving conditions could save 710 million barrels of oil -- or 20 percent of U.S. oil imports -- annually. Mileage standards have been on the books for 30 years, but automakers have been allowed to evade at least the spirit of the law by using a test that doesn't take into account the actual way people drive and therefore exaggerates gas mileage. A group of U.S. senators -- including Washington's Maria Cantwell -- have proposed legislation to require that the government use the same fuel-economy tests to measure automakers' compliance with mileage standards as it does to set window-sticker mileage ratings. Making the EPA's fuel-economy ratings count for something more than window dressing will not eliminate the nation's seemingly insatiable thirst for foreign oil, but it would a small and meaningful step.