Word: fueled
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this week by the election of a president who has publicly vowed to make energy a top priority. "Barack Obama, says Hoagland, "is not beholden to a group of friends who see the world within a 'Drill, baby, drill' mindset." EnergyHeadhunter's Clark echoes excitement over alternative-energy jobs: "Fuel cell technology is a strong area for recruitment right now," he says. (See pictures of the Top 10 scared traders...
...little less than two years ago the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided to revise the tests it uses to determine the official fuel-economy rating for new automobiles. It was no secret that before the revision, the actual gas mileage delivered by a new car tended to be significantly lower than what was promised by the official "window sticker" ratings. That's because they were based on the EPA's old tests, which involved little more than steady driving - without the use of air conditioning or anything else that might increase gasoline consumption...
...tests account for faster driving, acceleration and deceleration and air-conditioning use - in other words, the way most real people drive. As a result fuel-economy ratings have dropped about 12% for city driving and about 8% for highway driving. When the new tests kicked in, a 2006 Toyota Prius, for instance, went from having a 55 m.p.g. combined efficiency rating to 46 m.p.g. - overnight...
...change was a good idea - not least because it gave drivers a more accurate measure of how much they'd end up spending at the pump. So, you would expect that the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) ratings - the industry-wide minimum standards that the government uses to push automakers to improve gas mileage - would also use the updated tests. But guess what? They don't. (See TIME's special report on Global Warming...
...CAFE standard is the average annual fuel efficiency for a manufacturer's entire fleet; automakers have to meet that standard or pay a fine. But the current measured CAFE standards, nationally, of about 27.5 m.p.g. for cars and 22.2 m.p.g. for light trucks has little to do with real-world performance. John DeCicco, the automotive expert for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), estimates that in actual driving, the current measured CAFE standard, for cars, is closer to 22 m.p.g, and, for trucks, closer to 18 m.p.g. "It's longstanding common knowledge that the government has been keeping two sets...