Industry News: EPA To Ford: "Our Testing Not At Fault"

[William Maley]

William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

August 26, 2013

When Ford announced that it was lowering the fuel economy numbers of the C-Max Hybrid a couple of weeks ago, they said the EPA's fuel economy testing was unrealistic for hybrid vehicles. The EPA has come back this week and gave a clear message: "The problem here is really not how the testing is done."

Christopher Grundler, the EPA's top auto industry regulator told Automotive News that the EPA's own engineers weren't sure if their tests were accurate due to the whole C-Max Hybrid fiasco and decided to retest a few hybrid vehicles in the summer. The results? The Toyota Prius and Hyundai Sonata Hybrid had no problems in the tests that caused the C-Max Hybrid to stumble.

"It was all quite reassuring," said Grundler.

Grundler says the EPA will likely change the rule that allows an automaker to test one vehicle for fuel economy and then share the ratings across a number of vehicles if they meet certain criteria.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[G. David Felt]

Or the EPA like all Gov agencies just does not like admitting that they are not perfect and that they do have errors in their process.

[Soku47]

Kinda reminds me of the song that goes "it's not your fault, it's not your fault, Yea!", ha. But they do seem to be a bit reluntanct reluctant in admiting something whenever they are caught screwing up.

[OhioTom76]

If they don't fully understand how the engines function then they can't really develop meaningful tests to compare them to other engines. If the auto manufacturers are using entirely different methods to conserve energy then the tests aren't apples to apples across brands.