EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

An analysis of U.S. federal mileage ratings for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

Peter D. Friedman and Phil Grossweiler

Energy Policy, 2014, vol. 74, issue C, 697-702

Abstract: With the introduction of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the US Environmental Protection Agency developed a rule to calculate “miles per gallon equivalent” (MPGe) for electric vehicle window stickers and the US Department of Energy created a separate procedure for calculation of fuel economy for use in the federally mandated corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. The EPA rule fails to account for inefficiencies in or emissions resulting from the production of electricity and as a result greatly overestimates the life cycle efficiency of covered vehicles, which would be evident using “exergy analysis.” The DOE rule accounts for conversion efficiencies, but includes a long-standing, policy based factor (originally developed to reduce oil consumption by promoting alternatively fueled vehicles). This factor disproportionately raises the calculated performance of electrically powered vehicles. As a result, both the EPA and DOE rules incentivize policies that are not substantiated by the immediate technical merits.

Keywords: US CAFE standards; PHEV mileage ratings; Automobile well-to-wheel efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421514004455
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:74:y:2014:i:c:p:697-702

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2014.07.017

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:74:y:2014:i:c:p:697-702