NHTSA and White House work on defining CAFE's yearly fuel economy increases

35 mpg by 2020. Sounds simple, right? Well, it sounds simple unless you're an auto industry engineer who needs to help build a bunch of cars that achieve that number. But to the rest of us, those are some pretty easy-to-remember numbers. Still, how do we get from where we are today (a corporate average fleet economy of 27.5 mpg for cars) and that magical 35-by-2020 number? This is a problem that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the White House need to resolve, for now anyway.
Last week, NHTSA sent a proposal for how annual fuel economy increases might work to the White House. According to the Detroit News, NHTSA has specified four years of increases, but the White House Office of Management and Budget now gets to review and possibly revise the proposal. NHTSA said it would like the internal discussions completed by April, at which time the public would get a chance to comment. A final decision will likely come by the end of 2008.

[Source: David Shepardson / Detroit News]