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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 169 / Friday, September 3, 2021 / Proposed Rules
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manufacturers submit their FMY data, EPA verifies the information, accounting for NHTSA and EPA testing, and subsequently forwards the final verified data to NHTSA.
b New CAFE Reporting Templates Adopted in the 2020 Final Rule NHTSA adopted changes to its CAFE
reporting requirements in the 2020 final rule with the intent of streamlining data collection and reporting for manufacturers while helping the agency obtain the best available data to inform CAFE program decision-makers. The agency adopted two new standardized reporting templates for manufacturers.
NHTSAs goal was to adopt standardized templates to assist manufacturers in providing the agency with all the necessary data to ensure they comply with CAFE regulations.
The first template was designed for manufacturers to simplify reporting CAFE credit transactions starting in model year 2021. The templates purpose was to reduce the burden on credit account holders, encourage compliance, and facilitate quicker NHTSA credit transaction approval.
Before the template, manufacturers would inconsistently submit information required by 49 CFR 536.8, creating difficulties in processing credit transactions. Using the template simplifies CAFE compliance aspects of the credit trading process and helps to ensure that trading parties follow the requirements for a credit transaction in 49 CFR 536.8a.515
The second template was designed to standardize reporting for CAFE PMY
and MMY information, as specified in 49 CFR 537.7b and c, as well as supplementary information required by 49 CFR 537.8. The template organizes the required data in a manner consistent with NHTSA and EPA regulations and simplifies the reporting process by incorporating standardized responses consistent with those provided to EPA.
The template collects the relevant data, calculates intermediate and final values in accordance with EPA and NHTSA
methodologies, and aggregates all the final values required by NHTSA
regulations in a single summary worksheet. Thus, NHTSA believes that the standardized templates will benefit both the agency and manufacturers by helping to avoid reporting errors, such as data omissions and miscalculations, and will ultimately simplify and streamline reporting. Manufacturers are required to use the standardized 515 Submitting a properly completed template and accompanying transaction letter will satisfy the trading requirements in 49 CFR part 536.

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template for all PMY, MMY, and supplementary CAFE reports starting in MY 2023. The template also allowed manufacturers to enter information to generate the required confidential versions of CAFE reports specified in 49
CFR part 537 and to produce automatically the required nonconfidential versions by clicking a button within the template.
The standardized CAFE reporting templates were made available on the NHTSA website and through the DOT
docket. Since then, manufacturers have downloaded the templates and met with NHTSA to share recommendations for changes, such as allowing the PMY and MMY reporting templates to accommodate different types of alternative fueled vehicles and to clarify and correct the methods for calculating CAFE values. The proposed changes are discussed in the following sections.
NHTSA plans to host a series of workshops to implement the templates and to provide an open dialogue for manufacturers to identify any further problems and seek clarifications.
NHTSA plans to announce the workshops through the Federal Register later this year.
1 Changes to the CAFE Reporting Template The changes to the CAFE Reporting Template include several general improvements made to simply the use and the effectiveness for manufacturers.
These include, but are not limited to;
wording changes, corrections to calculations and codes, and autopopulating fields previously requiring manual entry.
More specifically, NHTSA is proposing to modify the CAFE
Reporting Template by adding filters and sorting functions to help manufacturers connect the data definitions to the location of each of the required data fields in the template.
Additional information from other parts of the CAFE Reporting Template would be pulled forward to display on the summary tab. For the information that must be included pursuant to 49 CFR
537.7b2, manufacturers can also compare the values the template calculates to their own internally calculated CAFE values. Additionally, we are proposing to expand the CAFE
Reporting Template to include more of the required information regarding vehicle classification, and guidance provided to ease manufacturers reporting burden by having them report only the data used for each vehicles qualification pathway ignoring other possible light truck classification information.

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NHTSA is also proposing that the CAFE Reporting Template be modified to combine the footprint attribute information and model type subconfiguration data for the purposes of matching. NHTSA uses this information to match test data directly to fuel economy footprint values for the purposes of modeling fuel economy standards. Features were added to autopopulate redundant information from one worksheet to another. The data gathered and the formulas coded within the proposed worksheets have also been updated for the calculation of fuel economy based on 40 CFR 600.51012.
The changes to the data and formulas will allow data to more accurately represent the fuel economy of electric and other vehicles using alternative fuels. NHTSA considers this information critically important to forming a more complete picture of the performances of dual fuel and alternative fuel vehicles.
We are also proposing several corrections so that manufacturers will submit CAFE data at each of the different sub-configuration levels they test and will combine CO2 and fuel economy data. As mentioned, manufacturers test approximately 90percent of their vehicles within each model type. Each sub-configuration variant within a model type has a unique CO2 and CAFE value.
Manufacturers combine other vehicles at the configuration, base level and then finally at the model type level for determining CAFE performance. The CAFE performance data for the subconfigurations have been added to the proposed template. NHTSA determined that this level of data was needed to verify manufacturers reported CAFE
values.
Finally, we are proposing corrections to the CAFE Reporting Template to collect information on off-cycle technologies. The proposed changes match the format of the data with the EPA off-cycle database system. For example, manufacturers report to EPA
high efficiency lighting as combination packages, so NHTSA is proposing to change its form to reflect this same level of information.
Version 2.21 of the template is available on NHTSAs Public Information Center PIC site.
2 Credit Transactions Reporting Template NHTSA established mandatory use of the CAFE credit template starting on January 1, 2021. However, manufacturers identified several calculation errors in the version of the credit reporting template available on
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