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America Is Building and Buying More Fuel Efficient Cars Than Ever Before

America's gas guzzlers are finally disappearing.

America’s gas guzzlers are guzzling less gas and emitting fewer fumes. As they must; the cars of the near-future will get 54.5 miles per gallon, the official fuel economy standard set for 2025. Carmakers are halfway there: as a whole, model year 2012 autos are the cleanest, most efficient ever produced and sold in the United States. So sayeth a new study from the University of Michigan.

We’re obviously playing catchup here; the average fuel consumption of a car in Europe was 43 mpg. In 2004. Even so, the study reveals the recent rapid accelration toward fuel efficiency, beginning in 2007:

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MY2012 cars are four miles per gallon more efficient than 2007 clunkers, you’ll notice. That is a fast and impressive fleet-wide improvement. The NRDC breaks it down further: “The sales-weighted average fuel economy of new passenger vehicles for model year 2012 was 23.6 MPG, up more than 1 MPG from the previous record high of 22.5 MPG set in 2011. This was the single biggest one-year increase in MPG in the past five years.”

In other words, automakers are ahead of schedule on efficiency, probably for one major reason: cars with good gas mileage sell. Especially when gas prices seem to linger in a purgatory of near-perpetual spikes. Yes, car-buyers are snapping up efficient autos, according to a new report from Baum & Associates.

From said report:

Hybrids and plug-in electric car sales are on track to top half a million units for the first time in a calendar year (2012) and a model year (2013). This strong performance directly debunks the linked (and equally mistaken) notions that (1) consumers don’t want higher MPG vehicles and (2) there is no demand for the high-end technology that powers the highest MPG-vehicles.

“The just-ended 2012 model year has resulted in a record high in fuel efficiency for new vehicles,” says principal Alan L. Baum in the attendant press release. “These results indicate that, contrary to some news accounts, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks and going beyond their intent to buy high MPG vehicles to making actual purchases.”

The fuel efficiency standards enacted by the Obama administration are often touted as his most significant environmental achievement, and they were a product of high cooperation with auto industry leaders themselves. We are seeing the fruit of that agreement now; cars are cleaner, consumers are pleased. A case where oversight and regulation has improved and cleaned up the market. Incrementally.

And that’s the word for this progress: incremental. These efficiency rules, even though they seek to double the current standards, are still tantamount to knob-twiddling. In an economy where the great majority of greenhouse gas output comes from car-centric transportation, even this projected rate of improvement won’t get us the scale of emissions drawdown scientists say we need to avert climate crisis. For that, we need fewer gas-guzzlers on the road period; we need a new transit paradigm skewed towards public people-moving. We need electric cars. We need an end to the internal combustion engine altogether. And at least these standards will thrust automakers upon this path; when their fleets must average 55 mpg, offering EVs and anticipating the end of easy oil will integrate seamlessly into your business plan.