About Us

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Program Office develops and executes analyses to assess the costs and benefits of national fuel economy standards—part of NHTSA’s mandate from Congress since 1975. NHTSA's CAFE standards regulate how far vehicles must travel on a gallon of fuel. These standards consider future-year impacts, including vehicle demand, which have implications for highway infrastructure needs.

Our team serves as a primary technical resource for NHTSA’s CAFE program, partnering with the agency to manage and implement all aspects of NHTSA’s fuel economy program. We also provide key technical support to NHTSA throughout the complex federal rulemaking process.

U.S. DOT Volpe Center experts in automotive engineering, environmental science, physics, economics, computer science, and operations research have played a significant role in the CAFE program for nearly four decades, conducting detailed analyses and modeling to help determine the feasibility of these standards. 

To support the CAFE program, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center's team collects and analyzes volumes of data in order to:

• Evaluate potential technologies to reduce fuel consumption 
• Define a range of regulatory alternatives for consideration
• Estimate potential technology deployment rates
• Estimate how manufacturers could change the design of vehicle models in response to future CAFE standards
• Evaluate the costs, energy and environmental effects, and consumer and social benefits of each technology and regulatory alternative

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center team has developed a modeling system to assist NHTSA in the evaluation of potential new CAFE standards. Given externally developed inputs, the modeling system (the CAFE Model) estimates how manufacturers could apply additional fuel-saving technologies in response to new CAFE and/or CO₂ standards and how doing so would affect: 

• Vehicle costs and fuel economy levels  
• Vehicle sales volumes and fleet turnover 
• National-scale automotive manufacturing employment, highway travel, fatalities, and fuel consumption

Based on these impacts, the system calculates costs and benefits from private and social perspectives. 

To learn more about the CAFE Model, and to download the model software, visit NHTSA's CAFE Compliance and Effects Modeling System webpage. 

Our Capabilities

Economic and Policy Analysis

• Conduct engineering, economic, energy, and industry analyses 
• Collect, analyze, model, measure, simulate, synthesize, and communicate data 
• Leverage longstanding institutional expertise and understanding of current economic conditions to conduct cost-benefit analyses

Environmental Analysis, Science, and Engineering

• Conduct estimations and fuel consumption reduction for new technologies
• Support rulemaking and program analysis and alternatives to drive reductions in transportation energy  
• Manage fuel economy program

Applied Data Science

• Collect data to estimate deployment rates
• Analyze data to provide recommendations for future vehicle model redesign 
• Evaluate impacts of new technologies and alternative rulemakings 

Meet Our Team

Bentley Clinton, PhD

Chief

Bentley Clinton, PhD is the chief and lead economist with the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s CAFE Program Office. In this capacity, he oversees the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s CAFE Model and works closely with NHTSA in support of various fuel economy rulemaking efforts. Prior to joining the U.S. DOT, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT’s Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Research studying the intersection of transportation markets and the electricity system. Clinton also served as a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a private-sector economic consultant on issues of energy, technology, and antitrust economics, and taught courses on electricity and transportation sector economics at Harvard University. He holds a PhD and an MA in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder and a BA in economics and mathematics from Bates College.