The caption quote at the top basically says it all:
Exactly right.Chris Grundler: "For us to intervene and set fuel standards, we need to show that there is an air quality benefit or that, absent regulations, that it is somehow inhibiting the after-treatment or other parts of the vehicle. And that the benefits outweigh the costs."
Of course you can bet that another lobby is salivating at the chance to sell even more expensive gas (premium is already disproportionately expensive in most markets).Higher octane gasoline likely won’t be available until the next set of fuel economy and emissions standards take effect after 2025. The deliberations about how high to raise octane are still probably a few years off. But the lobbying is starting to gain traction.
I'm a little surprised to see this. Europe uses a different octane scale than we do so I didn't think their octane was really any higher than ours.Dan Nicholson, General Motors’ vice president of global propulsion systems, told me recently he could boost fuel economy in most engines by about 5 percent if America had the same higher octane gasoline as Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating
Of course some pockets of the US have E85 which is 94-96 AKI.
So we use AKI or R+M/2. Last column. Europe seems to be mostly 93 just like ours...