Though this really isn't new news, its important to get it up on this site.

In November of 2007, President Bush signed into law the new CAFE Regulations. I'll be writing a more detailed article about this in the future, but in essence the regulations call for passenger cars to hit a meagre 35MPG average MPG by 2020 and for trucks to hit 23.5MPG by 2010 with a more dynamic 'by footprint' model taking effect after that.

The prior regs call for the average MPG on cars to be 27.5MPG and for trucks 20.7MPG

I believe that its interesting to note that while auto manufacturers will respond to market conditions, they respond more to regulation when it comes to improving fuel economy. The graph below is from the National Academy of Sciences

CAFE and MPG Increases - Adjusted for Inflation and in 2006 dollars

This graph backs up an arguement I've made for some time that the OEMs are not doing the best they can with MPG improvements, or all the advances we've seen in technology would create a more noteable increase.

Arguements are often made that the safety and amenities are weighing our cars down and that is what is hampering MPG. Based on the graph above we can see an increse in fuel economy in recent years, although I'll trying to get data to show that graph with adjusted '08 (more real world) numbers to see what the graph looks like then.

Honestly, if we do need to drop a few amenities (not safety) to have higher MPG cars, then we simply need to do it.