The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that the nation’s cars and light trucks have set a new record for fuel-efficiency for the first half of 2008 model years. The nation’s new fleet of cars and light trucks so far average 26.8mpg through March – that’s up from the 26.6mpg from the entire 2007 model year.

Passenger cars averaged 31.2mpg for the first six months of 2008 while light trucks averaged 23.4. Hopefully this will let the NHTSA relax their fuel-economy requirements of 35.7mpg for passenger cars by 2015.

The NHTSA figures this stuff out by calculating the average of passenger cars built in the U.S. and Canada. GM averaged 29.4mpg for passenger cars and 22.5mpg for light trucks. FoMoCo came in at 29.5mpg for cars and 22.5mpg for light pickups. Chrysler averaged 29.3mpg for cars and 23.6 for light trucks.

Japanese automaker Toyota came in with 34.7mpg for passenger cars and 24mpg for light trucks. Honda averaged 35.2mpg for cars and 25.4 for light trucks.

Source: Detroit News