Drivers drive down Interstate 210 during the morning commute on Dec. 3, 2025 in Pasadena, California.
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President Donald Trump said Saturday that he has approved new fuel economy standards, reversing former President Joe Biden’s stricter policies aimed at boosting the adoption of electric vehicles.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were established in 1975 and have been updated regularly since then, typically to improve vehicle efficiency. Under former President Joe Biden’s standards, automakers would have to increase the fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks to about 50 miles per gallon by 2031. The stricter standards were designed to encourage the production and sale of electric vehicles in the United States.
President Trump has pitched the policy change as a boon for both automakers and consumers, but details of the final standard have not yet been made public.
“These new standards will take waste out of auto manufacturing in America, which means lower prices and thousands of families will be saved with new, beautiful, safe cars that are far better than the environmental monsters we’ve been building in the past,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Manufacturers from General Motors to Ford to Stellantis have all called me wanting to build here, and now we can do it!”
The regulatory change would fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise to reverse policies that encourage or encourage electric vehicles.
It’s unclear what the final fuel efficiency standards will be, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has previously said they will be significantly lower than Biden-era policies.
Relaxing fuel efficiency standards means automakers can produce more pickup trucks and SUVs, which are far more profitable than smaller cars but also less fuel efficient. Electric vehicles have also become significantly less attractive to automakers, although some companies general motorssays they’ll still make it.
