After years of inaction, the US government managed to cut a deal with automobile manufacturers that would see the first significant increases in average fuel efficiency in many years. It's part of a plan that would see the average fuel economy clear 50 miles-per-gallon by 2025. Although that may seem like a large leap, it will still leave the US' efficiency standards well below those of other industrialized nations.
A new report by the National Academies of Science looks well beyond these goalposts. It looks at what it would take to get a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use by 2030 and a full eighty percent drop by 2050. To make matters a touch more challenging, it also looks at what it would take to get an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from our light-duty vehicle fleet. The answer is that no single technology is going to be capable of all of this, which means success would require a mix of technologies on the road at the same time. According to the report, none of it will come close to happening without a concerted policy push.
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