Policy Conflict--Energy, Environmental, and Materials: Automotive Fuel-Economy Standards' Implications for Materials

A review focused on the fuel-economy standards for new cars and light trucks and how these regulations indirectly affect future price and availability of aluminum, iron and steel, plastics, and rhodium used by American industry. While previous evaluations of standards, enacted to reduce oil imports, were concerned with increasing fuel efficiency, the complex and competitive relationship between energy and material availability was never explicitly evaluated.