Kickstart: A boost to CAFE standards should support EV moves

The fuel economy requirements for U.S. cars are revving up.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced new corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards April 1 that call for an industrywide fleet average of about 49 miles per gallon by the 2026 model year.

That's a big jump for the auto industry to make — 8 percent higher in the 2024 and 2025 model years and 10 percent by 2026 — but don't expect to hear automakers complain. After all, a federal push toward more efficient vehicles should even the playing field for automakers making billions of dollars of investments to build electric and hybrid cars and trucks. So those companies that are spending money on battery systems and electric motor components should see a return on their investment.

For the plastics industry, meanwhile, the demand for higher fuel economy should help to sell more material substitutions of lighter composites and plastics in place of metal. And suppliers have also been investing for future vehicles. Just look at the recent acquisitions and investments by firms like Plastic Omnium for one example.

Case Western Reserve University wants to help Ohio manufacturers get smarter.

The Cleveland-based school has just opened its Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center, developed in partnership with the nonprofit Smart Manufacturing Institute and supported by partners including the U.S. Department of Energy.

"The goal of the center is to help smaller companies adopt smart manufacturing technologies that use the internet to monitor production, automate operations and analyze data," writes Rachel Abbey McCafferty at our sister paper Crain's Cleveland Business.

"This is another step in a process in making smart manufacturing available to thousands of [small companies]," Nick Barendt, the new center's director and executive director of the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems at CWRU, said in an online post.

Norway-based recycling collection and sorting company Tomra is marking its 50th anniversary with a new goal: to enable 40 percent of plastic packaging produced globally to be collected for recycling by 2030. That's a big boost from the current rate of 14 percent, with just 2 percent of that recycled in a "closed loop" system.

Tomra President and CEO Tove Andersen said the past 50 years have "prepared us to rise to the most pressing challenge of our time: reinventing the way the world manages waste."

Tomra currently has 100,000 sorting systems in place worldwide.

"We strive to lead the resource revolution, and our team of resource revolutionaries around the world are up to the challenge," Andersen said.