Letter to The President

Letter

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write to commend you for bringing certainty to fuel economy and tailpipe emission standards for model years 2017-25 cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg).

The framework agreement brought together automotive manufacturers, labor, the environmental community, and government agencies. Industry groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers praised the agreement as a "positive step." As a result, automakers will enjoy regulatory certainty, which will help them design and build the advanced technology vehicles of the future and compete in an increasingly global marketplace. The agreement protects American jobs and consumers, and as such was a remarkable achievement.

In addition, we were pleased that the Administration intends to include a "mid-term" review for the 2022-2025 requirements. This provides an opportunity for the last set of increases to be re-visited to see if the assumptions on technology, costs, fuel prices, consumer acceptance and vehicle prices still support the standards that will be proposed, or whether their stringency should be revised upwards or downwards.

These regulations, taken together with the first phase of the standards for model years 2012-16 vehicles, will remove the need for as much as 3.8 million barrels of petroleum per day by 2030. Consumers will save thousands of dollars at the pump for gasoline they will no longer need to buy over the lifetime of their vehicles.

In conclusion, we believe that these standards to reduce petroleum use in cars and light trucks represent an opportunity to increase our national and economic security in an unprecedented way by dramatically decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of petroleum. They also bring a certainty to the regulatory framework for the industry and workers who design and build these vehicles.

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