Mark Blinch / Reuters

The new fuel economy standard gives automakers credits for using electric power and cleaner air conditioning systems.

Gasoline prices hit record highs in 2011 and for the first time last year, the cost of gas equaled or exceeded even the cost of owning a vehicle: on average, the roughly $2,800 dollars that a household spent at the pump was more than a year’s worth of car payments.

Crunching the numbers on a hypothetical new car purchase 13 years from now, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) says what we’ll save in gas will more than cover the extra spent on new fuel-saving technologies — an $800 savings even at the end of a five-year loan.

What’s  different about this new fleet standard standard — 54.5 MPG by 2025, proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) — is what it means for the auto makers as well. Cooper says that by setting the standard far enough in the future, it gives car makers a reliable goal and enough time to work things out.

And it’s an “attribute-based” approach: it doesn’t tell carmakers to build smaller vehicles or different types of vehicles (like electric or alt-fuels), it just mandates the mileage standard itself and allows the manufacturers to come up with an individualized mix of vehicles and features to accomplish it. This is part of the reason you’re seeing more large hybrid SUV’s on the road, and why one of the most touted vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show this week was a V6 “eco-boost” Ford F-150 truck. The first five pages of this report from the Congressional Research Service has a good explanation and the back story.

The automakers get credits or allowances for attributes like electric power and cleaner air conditioning systems, so that 54.5 number works out to just under 40 MPG across a given manufacturer’s fleet. But CFA’s Cooper acknowledges that and still sees the new standard as “a landmark in U.S. Energy policy. They will be making fewer trips to the gas station when they get these vehicles,” he told reporters in a conference call today.

Now I’m just waiting to hear about the woman suing Honda in Small Claims Court down here in Torrance, California. She claims the automaker told her that the hybrid Civic she bought would get 50 miles per gallon. Not so, says the woman. An L.A. County Superior Court judge wants more info. Stay tuned.

Coming to a showroom near you: a new fuel economy sticker for an electric vehicle. (Photo: Lauren Sommer)

Buy a gas guzzler and you might discover a new form of “sticker shock.”

Cars and trucks sitting on dealership lots will soon have a new fuel economy sticker in the window. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency released newly-designed labels that emphasize environmental performance for conventional and electric cars.

The label might seem familiar to California drivers. In 2008, the state released its own environmental impact sticker for new cars. It rates a car’s smog and greenhouse gas emissions on a scale of one to ten.

The new national label follows California’s lead and incorporates the same rating system. But for the first time, it will also display the annual fuel cost for a vehicle, comparing it to an average vehicle over five years.

EPA regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld announced the new labels in the Silicon Valley showroom of electric car maker Tesla. He says as plug-in hybrid and electric cars started appearing on the market, it became clear that the old sticker wouldn’t cut it. “This label really allows a consumer to compare a gasoline vehicle to an electric vehicle for the first time.”

Blumenfeld says he expects the labels to make a difference in areas populated by early adopters of EVs. “Los Angeles and San Francisco are in the top three of hybrid purchases in the nation. People are already starting to buy these alternative vehicles in large numbers.”

Since electric cars don’t use gas, their energy use is displayed in “miles per gallon equivalent”, which the government calculates by assuming a gallon of gasoline is equal to 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

For Tesla’s Roadster sports car, that pencils out to 119 miles per “gallon” and a $9,900 fuel savings over five years, compared to an average car.

A new label for a gas guzzler. (Photo: Lauren Sommer)

Of course, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, electric cars are only as clean as the electricity they use. Electric cars in coal states are responsible for more emissions than in states that generate a lot of renewable power.

To estimate greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA took an average of the energy source mix across the country. But in a press conference, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson emphasized a new tool that consumers could use to “drill down” to their part of the country.

Crunch some numbers and the differences are pretty stark. A Nissan Leaf that’s charged in San Francisco produces 120 grams of CO2 per mile, according to the calculator. That same Nissan Leaf in Indianapolis, Indiana generates 270 grams of CO2 per mile.

One more number to note: in the US, consumers are accustomed to seeing miles per gallon. For the first time, the new labels also include gallons per 100 miles. Research has shown that “gallons per mile” is a much easier to understand when it comes to fuel economy.

One example: You might assume the difference between a 40-mpg and 30-mpg car is about the same as the difference between 30-and-20-mpg. Flip those numbers around to gallons used per 10,000 miles and the picture becomes a little clearer. A 40-mpg ride saves 83 gallons over one that gets 30 mpg. But the difference between 30-and 20-mpg is 167 gallons.

The new stickers will appear on model-year 2013 cars and trucks.

(Photo: Craig Miller)

This week, California and federal regulators gave themselves a fall deadline in their collaboration to create national fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for model year 2017-2025 cars and light trucks.  The agencies say they will propose the new standards by September 1, 2011.

The September deadline is something of a setback for California, which had planned to release state standards in March.

Last October, the federal EPA and Department of Transportation announced plans to work with California Air Resources Board (CARB) to create the standards, under direction from the Obama Administration.   This builds on the agencies’ work setting the  new federal fuel standard, based on California’s, for model years 2012 through 2016.

According to a statement from CARB, a unified state/national standard will “provide manufacturers with with the regulatory certainty needed to invest today in the kind of new technologies that will provide consumers a full range of efficient clean vehicle choices.”

Tiffancy Hsu of the Los Angeles Times has more.