Taxing Small Cars To Improve MPG

Cars and trucks are getting bigger, and I had a vague sense that fuel economy regulations were partly to blame. Looking into it, it's hard to say how much is regulations vs people wanting to buy vehicles that look rugged, but the regulations really aren't helping. This chart is the core of it: This is what manufacturers were looking at when they decided to build today's cars. To figure out the target fuel economy for a vehicle you first calculate its "footprint", which is the area between the wh...