Group that found VW cheating says costs of fuel efficiency have been overstated

It won't cost automakers nearly as much as they said it would to fit new cars with carbon-saving technology over the next decade, a nonprofit transportation research group says.

An economic analysis performed by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) found that, given recent improvements in auto technology, the EPA's rigorous study to determine 2025 fuel efficiency standards may have been too conservative, in some cases overstating the per-car cost of implementing carbon-reducing technologies by 40 percent.

The analysis comes at a time when the Trump administration has moved to undo the fuel efficiency standards imposed by the EPA in January under the Obama administration. Trump's EPA has claimed that asking the auto industry to meet fuel efficiency standards of more than 50 mpg by 2025 would cost American jobs. (The ICCT notes that this mpg number can be reduced by about 23 percent during "real-world" driving "due to factors like greater real-world acceleration and operating in hot and cold temperatures" and accounts for that in its study.)

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