Tough new rules on pollution from vehicles, proposed by the US Environmental Protection Agency this week, could reshape one of the world’s largest industries and transform how millions of people get around. The goal, government officials say, is to get many more electric vehicles in many more driveways.
But another way to look at the proposed rules is as some 1,400 pages of modeling, charts, and dense regulatory language—enough to make any environmental wonk’s heart chirp like an endangered songbird. And buried in there is a fascinating federal flip-flop: an attempt to close a loophole that may be partially responsible for the exploding size of passenger vehicles on US roads.
To understand the change, you need to start in the 1970s, when the “SUV loophole,” as policy nerds call it, was created. US lawmakers were writing the nation’s first auto pollution rules, at a time when the only people driving heavy vehicles like trucks were folks who had things to haul or real reasons to drive off-road. Farmers and construction workers and such. Who else would shell out to buy and fuel such a big set of wheels? It made sense to place trucks under more lenient fuel-efficiency rules than for cars.
Cut to 2010. In the midst of creating new tailpipe emission rules for cars, the Obama administration’s EPA used the same logic to carve out an additional and similar exception for large vehicles based on their “footprints”—the area between their wheels. An automaker selling cars with bigger footprints faced less stringent tailpipe emissions rules than those selling sedans or compacts.
Since then, truck and SUV sales have exploded far beyond ranchers and others who actually need such vehicles for their work. SUVs, which a decade ago made up one-third of new vehicle sales, now account for three-fifths, according to analytics firm J.D. Power. And car sales have plummeted, from about half of new vehicles sold to just one in five.
During that time, automakers got savvy about the emissions regulation system. A new category of vehicle, the crossover-utility, functions as a passenger car. They’re used by families, are driven for commutes, have no role to play on construction sites, and do little day-to-day hauling.
But because they have four-wheel drive, or a bit more cargo space, or a third row of seats, they’re big enough to qualify as trucks, at least for emissions regulations purposes. The result is a “blurring [of] the lines between cars and light trucks,” says Simon Mui, the head of state and federal clean vehicle policy advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. Automakers, meanwhile, can sell larger SUVs and trucks because these smaller “trucks” bring down the overall emissions of the vehicles they sell—helping them comply with federal tailpipe emissions rules.
But the rise of these heavier vehicles has not been kind to the planet. A February report by the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental energy policy organization, pointed out that SUVs consume about 20 percent more oil (as fuel) than the average medium-size non-SUV car. The world’s 330 million SUVs released 1 billion tons of carbon in 2022, the group found. If SUVs were a country, they’d rank sixth for emissions in the world, just behind Japan. Meanwhile, a decade-long increase in pedestrian road deaths has been linked to the increasing size of the American car. People hit at high speeds by big vehicles are less likely to walk away.
Norway, France, and even Washington, DC, tax vehicles based on weight, giving cost-sensitive car buyers reason to think twice before buying a gigantic vehicle. But most US policymakers, including federal ones, have shied away from anything that might limit vehicle size—until now.
The new EPA proposals would change the footprint rules, making emissions requirements for cars and trucks more similar than they’ve been before. (The proposed rules will be debated and tweaked for months during the public comment period until they’re final.)
In a statement received after publication, EPA spokesperson Shayla Powell said the proposed regulation changes “are designed to neither encourage or discourage changes in vehicle size or type.” But she also acknowledged they could influence automakers' design decisions, saying the new rules would “discourage shifts in the fleet as a compliance mechanism.” (The original “SUV loophole,” which appears in federal fuel-efficiency standards, remains, but the tweak in tailpipe pollution regulations could motivate a future shift in that too.)
If the change goes through, it could help push automakers to make smaller vehicles than those they currently offer, or at least deter them from making them any bigger, says Dave Cooke, senior vehicles analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He’s particularly hopeful the tweak will rein in the use of crossovers to skirt the spirit of emissions rules, potentially helping the US effort to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change.
But don’t expect compact cars to suddenly rule the roads once the regulation kicks in at the end of the decade. Automakers have reasons to sell bigger vehicles outside of emissions regulations. SUVs and trucks typically cost only a bit more to make than smaller vehicles, but consumers have demonstrated that they’re willing to pay as much as 50 percent more for them, making profit margins much higher.
What’s more, consumers—especially in the US—seem to simply love driving bigger cars. Drivers like how much trucks and SUVs can carry and the feeling of safety that comes from being inside a bigger machine. Most don’t have to worry about squeezing big vehicles into parking spots, because they have their own driveways or garages.
Critically, the proposed rules don’t address the size of electric vehicles, which, thanks to their battery packs, tend to be much heavier than vehicles of the same footprint with an internal combustion engine. Road safety experts have begun to sound the alarm about the deadly potential of increasingly weighty EVs, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.
If the emissions rules go through, they will cut both ways, points out Cooke of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Automakers will be pushed to electrify their largest and most gas-hungry vehicles, and to sell more electric vehicles overall. As the world continues to think deeply about getting out of its self-made climate mess, there are trade-offs on the road ahead.
Updated 4-14-2023, 12.35 pm EDT: This article was updated with comment from the EPA.
Updated 4-14-2023, 8 pm EDT: A decade ago SUVs made up one-third of new vehicle sales, not one-fifth.
