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Obama's 60-mpg cars could cost up to $9,000 more

By James R. Healey, USA TODAY

The Obama administration's plan for fuel-economy standards on cars as high as 62 miles per gallon in 2025 has organizations scurrying to applaud or scowl at the idea.

The cost to you could be significant. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an advocacy group that favors the 62 mpg standard, says such a regulation would boost the price of a car an average $2,800 to $3,500 in today's dollars, and you'd make that back in three or four years on fuel savings.

But a June report from a respected scientific group -- while not directly addressing 62 mpg -- suggests car buyers could pay more than that:

The report, by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), forecast prices of various fuel-saving technologies that automakers might use the next few years to cut fuel use. The baseline was a conventional gasoline car with a low-tech engine -- no direct-injection, no turbocharging, no cylinder-cutoff, etc.

Whatever you'd pay for that kind of car, add $6,000 to the price to get a sophisticated gas-electric hybrid car that'd use half as much fuel, the NAS report said.

And to hybridize a big SUV so that it would cut fuel use roughly half, figure a premium of $9,000 over what you'd otherwise pay.

Those numbers are more than today's "hybrid premium" of $4,000 or less. In fact, Ford Motor's Lincoln brand has eliminated the premium, pricing its 2011 Lincoln MKZ hybrid sedan at the same $35,180 as the gasoline version of that car.

An unsettling aspect of the NAS figure -- viewed through the prism of the Friday fuel-economy proposal -- is that the kind of hybrid that'd cost you the additional $6,000 or $9,000 probably wouldn't meet a 62-mpg target. It'd only help an automaker get partway there. To average 60 mpg or so would require many vehicles that get better mileage than that.

The NRDC figures that only about 30% of 2025 vehicles could be conventional gasoline vehiclesfor the industry to meet a 62-mpg standard. The rest would have to be advanced hybrids and battery cars.

You presumably still could buy a conventional, non-hybrid vehicle and pay less than you would for a hybrid, so not everybody would have to pay thousands of dollars more, says David Friedman at the Union of concerned Scientists. He was on the NAS fuel-economy-report panel.

Current mileage regulations run though 2016 and require the auto industry as a whole to hit 35.5 mpg (though a credit of 1 mpg or so can come from other clean-air initiatives that don't boost a car's fuel economy).

The government plan for 2017 to 2025 that's expected today is likely to say that the eventual 2025 number should be set between 47 and 62 miles per gallon, leaving some leeway for a less-costly target.

Because the rule-making process takes a long time, a final 2025 standard isn't likely to be set in concrete until 2012.

--James R. Healey/Drive On

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