New Mexico is joining a coalition, led by California, taking legal action over the Trump administration's rollback of fuel economy standards for new vehicles. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez announced the move at a press conference Friday morning alongside California AG Rob Bonta.
The attorneys general said they’re trying to protect consumers and affordability. The Trump Administration announced Monday they’re reducing by half how much automakers have to improve fuel efficiency every year.
Bonta pointed out the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own analysis shows that will increase gas consumption by about 120 billion extra gallons pumped by drivers by 2050.
“That's real money out of Americans' pockets. It's simple economics,” he said. “If you want to lower gas prices, the last thing you do is drive up demand for gasoline.”
Trump administration officials argue more stringent requirements have diminishing returns because all the most effective fuel economy improvements have already been discovered and are in use. They said the technology adds more to the price of a car than consumers will ever save at the pump.
But Bonta said the NHTSA improperly changed the way it calculates what fuel economy improvements automakers can achieve by excluding electric vehicles from its analysis.
“That wildly distorts the starting point for NHTSA’s analysis and leads to dramatically weaker standards, and that's no accident.”
He also said that’s where the NHTSA broke the law, which requires standards be set at the “maximum feasible” level considering current technology, which he argues should include EVs.
Trump officials said the standards rollback should lower new car costs by an average of just under $1300 — at a time when the average car price is more than $50,000.
New Mexico AG Torrez said that’s misleading.
“They want you to focus exclusively on incremental increases at the time of purchase,” he said. “What they are excluding is the extraordinary increase in the cost to consumers over the lifetime of the vehicle,”
And he said New Mexico’s status as an oil and gas producing state doesn’t sway his opinion.
“We can have a responsible oil and gas industry here in New Mexico and here in the United States, without sacrificing the interests of everyday families,” Torrez said.
Bonta stressed the case is focused on protecting Americans' pocketbooks, despite any “co-benefits” such as environmental conservation, and pollution reduction.
“This case is about fuel economy. It's about consumer and financial impacts,” he said. “It is not about environmental impacts.”
The suit was filed in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals.
Support for this coverage comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
