Chevrolet To Stick With Current Fuel Economy Strategy Despite New EPA Rules

The Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed its plans to overturn fuel economy standards that were put into place by the previous administration.

While a number of automakers, including Chevrolet, previously reached out to President Trump to cut some slack on the fuel economy rules, it looks like the American brand will continue down the path of developing fuel-efficient cars, reports Motor Trend.

Chevrolet now claims that it plans to continue to follow the Obama administration’s fuel-economy regulations when developing new vehicles, regardless of what path the EPA decides to take. The automaker’s head of cars and crossovers, Steve Majoros, spoke to reporters about the matter directly. Majoros’ lengthy statement is below.

    “The commitments that we’ve made and the statements that we’ve made about our future portfolio remain. You know, we’re very proud of all the things we’ve done from a fuel efficiency standpoint. Whether it’s increased fuel efficiency, you know, stop/start technology, more transmissions, lightweighting, diesels, all the things we’re doing are just one part of a broader commitment that we’ve got. Nothing’s going to change based on that. We’ve got future plans. If you look at things like Equinox, the latest products we’ve brought out, our fuel economy’s going up anywhere from three to five miles per gallon whether it’s highway, city, combined. So we have a number of things in place to make sure that we continue on that journey, and nothing’s going to change fundamentally from that.”

While his statement makes it sound like Chevrolet’s flipping the switch on the way it feels about the previous administration’s regulations, it’s not that simple. As the outlet states, GM, and others, lobbied to roll back stringent fuel economy rules. Apparently, that wasn’t the only thing General Motors was lobbying for.

GM also wanted the EPA to include a credit system for including stop/start systems on vehicles and having emissions from generating electricity count against electric vehicles be nullified. As the outlet states, GM, apparently, was focused on the way the EPA calculated emissions. It wasn’t concerned about being forced to sell more fuel-efficient cars.

It will be interesting to see if other automakers follow in GM’s footsteps and continue to create fuel-efficient vehicles that can meet the previous administration’s fuel-economy regulations.