Post by Kasey Kagawa and Zerin Dube
It’s official. We’re idiots. Thanks to the efforts of intrepid reader uberR32, who was under no obligation to tell us that we were wrong, we now know that what we asserted in our “stunning expose” on the disconnect between the new EPA standards and the gas guzzler tax, that the downward shift in MPG ratings caused by the new testing procedures would force more cars to be taxed as gas guzzlers, was wrong. Gas guzzler tax ratings are actually calculated using the original CAFE standards from 1975, and as the commenters at Autoblog pointed out, the EPA actually has nothing to do with the assessment of the gas guzzler tax, as the CAFE numbers are calculated by the Department of Transportation. Not only is this what the law on the books say, it was actually on the EPA fuel economy website.
I could make all different kinds of excuses about what happened, that the EPA website is extremely vague, that the idea that a government agency would use a standard that’s more than thirty years old is insane, that we were caught up with the heady feeling of discovery, but it doesn’t matter. We fucked up. I wish I could say that this is some sort of clever proof of my belief in journalistic integrity, but in reality, we’re just morons. Everyone screws up on occasion. It’s not an excuse for what we did, and it’s up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not to listen to a single thing we say ever again. All that we can do is apologize for what’s been done, and promise that we will never get our facts wrong again, until the next time that we do.
