I share your parent's skepticism. It seems obvious that cars sold in the US are not averaging 37 MPG when the average car is roughly a RAV4 that gets 22/29.(EDIT: It occurs to me that the RAV4 may be classified as a light truck -- even so, I can go pick a passenger car...)

As far as I can tell taking a quick look at your links, the difference can be in two things. First, these are fuel economy standards companies are expected to hit, and not reporting on whether they hit them or missed and paid penalties. Second there's the phrase "Assumes manufacturers fully use low-GWP A/C refrigerants credits". Apparently fuel economy numbers are boosted by these credits--actual fuel economy isn't the same thing, it appears?

(EDIT: Overall fuel economy for cars and trucks combined was 24.8 mpg in MY2015 [1])

[1] https://phys.org/news/2016-11-average-fuel-economy-high-mpg....

Additional notes:

The top 4 best-selling passenger cars are the Honda Accord and Civic, and the Toyota Camry and Corolla [1].

Their "combined city/highway" fuel efficiences are respectively 30, 34, 27, and 32 mpg for the base engine [2][3][4][5].

How can this possibly work out to 37 mpg overall? There aren't enough hybrid sales to bring that number up.

[1] http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2018/08/july-2018-ytd-u-s-passe... [2] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/2017/features-specs/ [3] https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic/2017/features-specs/ [4] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/camry/2017/features-specs/ [5] https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2017/features-specs/

Thanks for finding some stats. Based on the cars I see driving in the UK, I'm sure plenty of people buy cars that claim to do 55mpg, and many of those cars will actually do 55mpg. But as an average? - I'm just a bit unconvinced.

(Perhaps the mpgs were added up and divided by N? That doesn't always provide the answer you're looking for.)

If you compare US cars to EU cars on average then: - EU cars are much smaller - hp of engines is much lower

> "skepticism" "It seems obvious"

Pick one please.

I wasn't saying anything about EU cars -- why are you bringing that up?

I am skeptical of the 37mpg claim because it seems clear to me that the average car sold in the US isn't that efficient. What's the contradiction?

Sorry, I missed that part.

I think 37mpg depends on what you actually count as a car and what goes for a light truck.

See my comment in a parallel branch for data: even the US best-selling passenger cars don’t average 37 mpg.