In 1975, largely in response to OPEC’s oil embargo against the United States, Congress enacted a new energy law that included provisions to increase “Corporate Average Fuel Economy.” These CAFE standards, as they’re known, led to a remarkable jump in the fuel efficiency for the U.S. auto fleet, with a near doubling of fuel economy and a 50 percent jump for light trucks in just a decade. But federal policymakers coddled the auto industry in the 1970s, and by the 1980s the fuel-efficiency curve had plateaued.
Read more about the impressive advances in fuel efficiency in this insightful article from CityLab’s series on The Future of Transportation.
