Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields, “citing studies he didn’t identify,” claimed to U.S. President Donald Trump that “about one million U.S. jobs are at risk if fuel-economy rules don’t align with market reality,” Bloomberg reports.
Fields and his Big Three U.S. automaker counterparts—General Motors CEO Mary Barra, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s Sergio Marchionne—met the U.S. president last week.
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Citing remarks the Ford executive delivered later to an audience of U.S. automobile dealers, Bloomberg said the three did not demand a repeal of America’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard. But they did, in Fields’ words, ask to be “given some level of flexibility on that—aligning it to market reality.”
The market “reality” Marks appeared to be referring to is U.S. vehicle-buyers’ preference, in a period of cheap gasoline, for light trucks and SUVs that consume more fuel per kilometre.
In one of its last acts, the outgoing Obama administration raised the required average fleet-wide fuel economy standard for vehicles sold in the United States to 54.5 miles per gallon, to be achieved by 2025. The U.S. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers responded that it would seek to have the standard amended under the new administration.
