At the end of 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual Automotive Trends Report. Covering 2021 model-year vehicles, it features the most recent data available regarding various new-vehicle statistics, including fuel efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions. In short, cars have never been more efficient, cleaner, and more powerful than they are right now.
That's the short version of the report, and we do mean short. The full report is 158 pages long, but on average, it reveals overall fuel economy for new vehicles is up 32 percent while CO2 emissions are down 25 percent. Meanwhile, horsepower is up 20 percent. The start-point for these percentages is 2004, the year which saw fuel economy begin a steady rise after more than a decade of decline.
