4 ms·

This is constantly brought up as the primary cause, but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the moder

• CWuestefeld 3y ago
  No. CAFE regulations started in the mid 70s. As it's evolved hand-in-hand with the auto industry, it's led to the death of the station wagon and the rise of the minivan, and only later did the proliferation of SUVs start. Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
• dragonwriter 3y ago
  > but I think people forget that SUVs and trucks started their expansion in the mid/late 90s, before the modern CAFE regulations. CAFE was adopted in 1975 and effective from 1978. Are you confusing "modern CAFE regulations" with the late 2000s narrowing of the "car" and "light truck" CAFE regulations (which, yes, did push automakers to try to push more vehicles that fell out of the "light truck" category, just as the earlier standards pushed from cars to light trucks), which has effectively shifted back the old gap after the actual (and more complex) modern (2011+) regulations came into play.