2025-12-14

So President Orange-man suspended CAFE penalties for automanufacturers
selling American-bound cars. What does that mean? It means that
automakers really don't have to meet CAFE fleet average fuel economy
targets for their vehicles in the United States. Being fined and
penalized for not meeting CAFE fuel economy standards was the one
big lever the US government had to try to force automakers to make
their cars more fuel efficient.

El Presidente Trump kind of pulled an interesting trick. Since he
could not repeal the CAFE regulations, he instead made an executive
order changing what is effectively a coefficient number used to
calculate the fine for car makers to zero. So basically the formula
that the regulation uses to calculate the financial penalty for a
car maker is then basically multiplied by zero. This effectively
neuters the law using IMO a kind of math hack. Clever girl.

Probably an over-simplification on my part but whatever you can
google it or have an AI hallucinate something about it to you.

In any case, a lot of car guys and internal combustion aficionados
are super happy about this change because they believe that it will
postpone the ever-present spectre of the EV-for-everyone menace
and maybe even bring back big-bore engines from yester-year.

I can tell you that shit ain't happening...

I genuinely understand the appeal of such fantasies. The idea that
somehow we can have simple, reliable, and powerful naturally
aspirated V8 and V6 engines again is so appealing to a lot of people
including me. Modern turbo-charged engines are chock full of
complexity. They are technical marvels to be sure, squeezing massive
power out of such small displacements...but all of that efficiency
and power comes at a major cost...including declining reliability,
massive, complexity, and of course massive dollars.

The dream is that somehow without CAFE fuel economy regulations
restricting car makers, we can get back our beloved V6s and V8s.
I mean it would be amazing to be able to buy Toyotas with 1UR, 2UR,
and 3UR V8 engines again. How amazing would that be? Toyota could
put back 1GR and 2GR V6s into their cars and trucks again. How
amazing would that be???

We could have reliable, naturally-aspirated 4-cylinder engines in
our economy cars again as well and while we are at it, drop these
stupid CVT transmissions and give us back our torque-converters
and manual transmissions.

What a wonderful world that would be...but it ain't happening.
North America is a large car market to be sure...but it is a
declining market. Car makers are consolidating and making world-wide
cars on world-wide platforms. Every other part of the world that
is growing is demanding more and more fuel efficient and climate-change
friendly vehicles. Just because the USA doesn't care about fuel
economy anymore, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't.

So what does this elimination of CAFE fuel standards really buy
us? anything at all?

I think if we are really lucky, it will allow automakers to drop
some of the most annoying "fuel-efficient" features that were put
in just to meet the requirements.

Dropping the stupid auto-stop/start feature would be an amazing
win for the US auto-market. The auto stop/start feature has been
proven to be a useless compliance feature that actually ruins the
reliabilty of your car by destroying the starter.

another feature that could be dropped are the cylinder-deactivation
features. This feature allows your car to shut off cylinders of
your engine when not in use. Unfortunately, automakers like GM
especially have really not engineered these features well and in
general, this feature just adds complexity and unreliability into
engines for extremely modest fuel economy gains. I hope GM especially
is able to drop this feature on their small-block V8s because their
customers especially don't care for it and in fact have sued GM
constantly for the sheer unreliability of it. Honda could also drop
the feature from their J-series V6 engines as well.

but other than that, I doubt anything will change much. It may mean
that great engines like the GM small-blocks, Honda J-series, and
Ford Coyote V8s add a few more years to their market lifespan...but
progress is eternal.

The age of dependable, simple, reliable, naturally-aspirated
combustion engines has passed and no amount of executive orders
will change that as much as I wish that weren't the case.