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EPA's Gasoline Efficiency Tests Provide No Valid Information At All (hotair.com)
schwit1 writes from a report via Behind The Black: The tests the EPA uses to establish the fuel efficiency of cars are unreliable, and likely provide no valid information at all about the fuel efficiency of the cars tested. Robert Zimmerman reports from Behind The Black: "The law requiring cars to meet these fuel efficiency tests was written in the 1970s, and specifically sets standards based on the technology then. Worse, the EPA doesn't know exactly how its CAFE testing correlates with actual results, because it has never done a comprehensive study of real-world fuel economy. Nor does anyone else. The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT (WARNING: Source may be paywalled) -- hardly a scientific sampling. Other than that, everything is fine. Companies are forced to spend billions on this regulation, the costs of which they immediately pass on to consumers, all based on fantasy and a badly-written law. Gee, I'm sure glad we never tried this with healthcare!"
Too subject to variation cause by the drivers. Even the weather and temperature on the day would have a huge impact. All car manufacturers would be insisting their cars were tested on the coldest, highest humidity, but no rain and no wind day.
The article makes a glaring error when it says "When the EPA tests for CAFE compliance...". EPA does no such thing...EPA tests for the numbers that go on window stickers. CAFE testing is the responsibility of NHTSA, not EPA. Some may think this is nit picking, but I find it hard to take this article seriously if the author is not even aware of who does which testing.
The gas mileage numbers that the EPA requires on new car window stickers are not determined the same way as the gas mileage used for CAFE fleet efficiency regulations. The former isn't perfect, but is a lot closer to real world performance than CAFE is.
I'm disappointed that this was posted with such a ridiculous assertion in the headline. Are you kidding me? Certainly the tests aren't entirely accurate, and I've complained about them, but saying that there's "No Valid Information At All" is bogus. Obviously you can go to the fueleconomy.gov site and see that there's a correlation between big, heavy, overpowered cars using lots of fuel and smaller, lighter, lower-powered cars that sip gas. The EPA has updated their tests a couple of times, most recently around 2007 following controversies that the Toyota Prius didn't achieve real-world fuel economy as good as what was on the window sticker. They also didn't try to factor in air conditioning or other features that are now common on cars.
The original 1970s-style tests produce numbers about 30% better than the end result today (an adjustment around 1985 reduced MPG numbers by about 15%, and the second one around 2007 brought it down by another 15%). Notably, government fuel economy tests in Europe and Japan still have ridiculously optimistic figures, so U.S. figures are much, much more accurate and reasonable compared to other places around the world.
Are EPA figures perfect? No. I personally think they went a bit too far in the most recent adjustment, since my (pre-dieselgate era) 2006 VW Jetta TDI gets MPG figures almost exactly matching what it originally had on the window sticker when I bought it.
And if this is all about people expecting to get super MPG when driving at 90 mph all the time, just stop complaining. That's not an appropriate expectation for what you should get out of these tests.
I dunno.. This line was awfully convincing: "“The test is fucked up big time,” says Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign."
Slashdot editors: how did this garbage get posted here? Why not go straight to the quoted Wired article with the hyperbolic title?
Interestingly, that article contradicts itself: "a 2013 Consumer Reports study tested more than 300 cars, and found 90 percent landed within two miles per gallon of their EPA-approved ratings."
Yeah, testing standards aren't perfect. That doesn't mean that the government is incompetent and is trying to fuck you.
Was this summary written by the oil companies who want to get rid of the EPA or what? It is grossly misleading if you actually read the wired article.
The Hot Air (never heard of it) article is cherry picking the information they want to make the EPA look as bad as possible. Taking "CAFE dates back to 1975" and turning it into "The law requiring cars to meet these fuel efficiency tests was written in the 1970s" is grossly misleading when the statement is followed by " And by 2008, the standards were better; a 2013 Consumer Reports study tested more than 300 cars, and found 90 percent landed within two miles per gallon of their EPA-approved ratings."
90% of cars being within 2 mpg seems reasonable to me.
I understand there are some issues with the fleet-wide tests, but those aren't really what matter to consumers and they are still leading to improvement in the environment which is the goal. I am not worrying about acid rain today like I had to as a child. Fracking aside (which the EPA isn't allowed to regulate), water is mostly safe to drink compared to prior to the Safe Drinking Water Act. The EPA is a very very good thing. I like having air that I can breath and water I can drink.
Slashdot editor FAIL.
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The test was never supposed to be accurate. It was supposed to be precise. For comparisons between cars, it's great. For estimating your annual fuel usage, it's not very accurate. It's so bad that it's not the test used for fuel economy by any consumer group (other than those that simply list the government findings, often because they haven't tested everything), and not even used by other parts of the US government.
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