In their ongoing effort to fight stricter emissions standards that are expected to lead to more electric vehicle sales, Senate Republicans have drafted a bill calling on regulators to Regulators change the way they calculate the efficiency of electric vehicles.
Dubbed the Recalculating Electric Vehicle Efficiency to Ensure Accuracy and Legality (REVEAL) Act, the bill calls into question the methods the Department of Energy currently uses to calculate value. Petroleum-equivalent performance for electric vehicles, explained Traffic theme.
The bill calls for new criteria for these calculations, expressed on car window stickers as MPGe or “miles per gallon equivalent” to give consumers a point of comparison for fuel economy. Fuel economy of gasoline and diesel vehicles. Republicans believe these calculations are tilted in favor of electric vehicles.
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“No administration can rig efficiency calculations for electric cars,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the bill’s sponsor, said in a statement. “The REVEAL Act would prevent the Secretary or Department of Energy from using these miscalculations to ban the sale of gas or diesel cars or trucks.”
It’s worth noting that the Biden administration’s new emissions regulations, which cover model years 2027-2032, do not ban the sale of gasoline or diesel cars or trucks. They set tougher targets that would likely require more electric vehicle sales for automakers to meet, but they did not specify which powertrain or combination of powertrain types to use. Which move?
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One way the bill aims to protect gasoline and diesel vehicles from slander is to require electric vehicles to be classified into classes comparable to internal combustion vehicles when calculating efficiency. Automakers might not like that very much, since each electric vehicle wouldn’t allow them to produce that many electric vehicles. Large trucks consume gas, as permitted by current regulations. Trucks have received a lighter increase from the Biden administration in fleet mpg standards compared to what was originally proposed.
While perhaps not what Republican Senators had in mind, this raises the question of whether the EPA would regulate More efficient electric vehicles should be encouraged—which they currently don’t quite do—or whether upstream emissions should be included in performance calculations to give a better idea of the total carbon footprint of electric vehicles.
