DOT opens public comment on plan to hike fuel costs during affordability crisis

This week, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to make cars less efficient when Americans are already paying record-high energy bills during an affordability crisis fueled by tariff-driven inflation. That plan is now up for public comment.

Since the beginning of this year, the occupants of the White House have been on a mission to raise costs for Americans.

This mission has encompassed many different moves, most notably through unwise tariffs.

But another effort has focused on changing policy in a way that will raise fuel costs for Americans, adding to already-high energy prices.

This specific rollback focuses on a rule passed under President Biden which would save Americans $23 billion in fuel costs by requiring higher fuel economy from auto manufacturers. By making cars use less fuel on average, Americans would not only save money on fuel, but reduce fuel demand which means that prices would go down overall.

The effort to roll back this rule was initially announced on the first day that Sean Duffy started squatting in the head office of the Department of Transportation. Duffy notably earned his transportation expertise by being a contestant on Road Rules: All Stars, a reality TV travel game show.

Then in June, Duffy formally reinterpreted the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, claiming falsely that his department does not have authority to regulate fuel economy.

Republicans in Congress even got into effort to raise your fuel costs, as part of their ~$4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites included a measure to make CAFE rules irrelevant by setting penalties for violating them to $0. In addition, it eliminated a number of other energy efficiency and domestic advanced manufacturing incentives.

Duffy’s department then told automakers that they would not face any fines retroactively to 2022, which saved the automakers (mostly Stellantis) a few hundred million dollars and cost American consumers billions in fuel costs. This and other changes will also cost Tesla over a billion dollars, a negative outcome which Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave $288 million in bribes to attain.

Then, finally, earlier this week, Duffy formally announced the proposed changes to the CAFE rules, lowering the required fuel economy for 2022-2031 model year vehicles, even despite all of the other changes in trying to make the rules unenforceable.

The theory behind this would be to make it harder to later enforce the rules, and to allow automakers to get off with more pollution, and to increase fuel demand and fuel prices for longer until a real government returns to power and starts doing its job to regulate pollution.

Specifically, the announcement changes the planned 2031 50.5 mpg target to 34.5 mpg, cutting vehicle efficiency by nearly a third, which will lead to a commensurate increase in your fuel costs (note: CAFE numbers are calculated differently, and tend to look higher than actual mpg numbers).

The regulation even explicitly describes ballooning vehicle sizes in a positive light, which is ironic given that at the same event, Mr. Donald Trump, the convicted felon who directed this change to begin with, also quipped that he wants to bring tiny Japanese kei cars to the US, displaying his lack of knowledge of why he was even in the room to begin with.

If President Biden’s regulations were retained through 2031, average fuel economy would have tripled since the 1970s, when CAFE targets were first put in place. In the last two decades, CAFE targets helped drive a 30% improvement in average fuel economy, saving an average of $7,000 over the lifetime of an average vehicle – and they did this without increasing vehicle prices.

Plan to increase your fuel costs is now up for public comment

Despite that the dictatorial regime proposing such braindead rule changes would rather just push its oil company funders’ demands through without having to consult the people it will harm, these rulemaking procedures are still governed by the Administrative Procedures Act. This law requires the government to accept public comments and to take into account and respond to substantive comments posted to the docket related to the rulemaking procedure.

And so, you can now leave your own comments on whether or not you think this plan to make cars larger, more dangerous and less efficient, thus raising your fuel costs, is a good one or not.

Comments can be submitted through this link. Information for the docket can be found at docket number NHTSA-2025-0491. The comment period ends on Jan 20 at 2026 at 11:59 PM EST (yes, that superfluous “at” is from the NHTSA’s docket, wonderful attention to detail from the fake lawyers running the place).

If you aren’t ready to write your own comment, you can add your name to the NRDC’s public comment campaign. A substantive comment written by yourself will do more than simply signing onto a petition, but these comment campaigns are another option.

Another of the administration’s recent plans to raise your fuel costs, the EPA’s plan to increase gas prices by $.76/gallon by deleting climate science, was recently posted and received 568,326 comments, the vast majority of which opposed the plan. Public comment on that plan is closed now and the EPA is sifting through the mountain of comments made, trying to figure out a way to kill people and raise energy costs in service of their oil masters despite massive public opposition in a country that is supposed to be a democracy.

That plan also received a virtual public hearing where commenters could call in with their thoughts, held over a few days, during which a vast majority opposed the plan. We’re not aware of a similar hearing for this plan yet, but we’ll let you know if we hear about one.

And despite many readers’ probable initial reaction that the unqualified dictator pushing these plans won’t be interested in hearing your comments, it should be noted that improper rulemaking has and will continue to result in certain rules being thrown out in court. There is a legally required method to how the government makes rules, and courts can throw out regulations that do not follow the proper method. Part of that method includes seeking public feedback, and this is your chance to enter your thoughts into the official government record on this regulation specifically.

Public comments on this ridiculous plan are open through Jan 20, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST, 8:59PM PDT. Comments can be submitted here. In case you get lost, the docket code is NHTSA-2025-0491. DOT/NHTSA has to respond to legitimate concerns made during public comment periods or else the rule could be voided (as was the case for 90% of the cases the NRDC challenged last go around), so the more substantive your comment, the better.

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