Hybrid Car Review

Although, to be fair, requirements is a stronger word than what I should use. Although there are fines to automakers who fail to meet these rules, the fines themselves are quite small. It's the bad publicity for failing to meet the guidelines that Toyota, Honda, et al are more worried about.

Green Car Congress has the story from the Nikkei on the new requirements on average fuel economy for the carmakers in Japan. By 2015, passenger cars need to have an average fuel economy of 39.5 mpg (see the table below).

Proposed Average Fuel Economy
Vehicle class	2004 value	2015 est. value	% change
Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
Passenger cars	13.6 km/liter 7.4 l/100km 32.0 mpg US	16.8 km/liter 6.0 l/100km 39.5 mpg US	23.5%
Small buses	8.3 km/liter 12.0 l/100km 19.5 mpg US	8.9 km/liter 11.2 l/100km 21.0 mpg US	7.2%
Light cargo trucks	13.5 km/liter 7.4 l/100km 31.8 mpg US	15.2 km/liter 6.6 l/100km 35.8 mpg US	12.6%

Compare that to the US Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. In 2006, the fleet requirement for passenger cars was 27.5 mpg and 20.7 mpg for light trucks. (If you're interested in seeing who's paid fines for not meeting these requirements, as well as how much, the NHTSA has a table of fines.

CAFE standards have been changed to look at a vehicles "footprint" — the product of its wheelbase and track. Some critics point out that this may have the unintended consequence of pushing manufacturers to make ever-larger vehicles to avoid strict economy standards.