The government has been keeping secrets from the public for the past 30 years. Ever wonder why your cars mileage isn’t even close to what the EPA rating on the sticker says? Reporter Michelle Meredith recently teamed up with Consumer Reports (the defacto authority on vehicles) to discover why there is a discrepancy. Here’s what she found:
First, Meredith took a look at how car-makers come up with these numbers because you could be in for a big surprise. The guidelines for the tests were set by the federal government decades ago, in the late 1970s. Gerald Ford was president and disco was king.
And under these guidelines by the Environmental Protection Agency, car-makers are allowed to test miles per gallon by running the vehicle not on the road, but on what’s essentially a treadmill for cars.
During an EPA spot check, the car ran with no air conditioning, no inclines or hills, no wind resistance and at speeds no greater than 60 mph.
On a good note, Michelle contacted the EPA’s director of transportation Margo Oge to find out why this is okay,
Why is this allowed? Meredith asked the EPA’s director of transportation.
“We cannot have a perfect test,” said Margo Oge.
Oge said for so long, nobody really complained. Meanwhile, everything has changed.
“All the cars today have air conditioning, which was not the case in the mid-80s, and we drive at higher speeds because we are allowed to drive a higher speeds. And technology has changed,” Oge said.
via Yahoo! News