Could the U.S. scale back mandatory safety technology or slow the rollout of autonomous emergency braking to reduce new car prices?
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will hold a hearing on new car affordability on January 14, 2026, claiming the average price has more than doubled in the last 25 years.
The CEOs of the three major American automakers (Ford, GM and Stellantis) as well as Tesla’s head of vehicle engineering were invited to attend.
The committee’s chairman, Senator Ted Cruz, claims that new car prices have been “driven up by burdensome government-mandated technologies and radical environmental regulations.”
He says the latter problem was solved by the current administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which effectively gutted the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard by setting penalties for violating its limits at zero dollars. The law also stopped the $7,500 federal tax rebate for electric vehicle purchases at the end of September 2025.
According to the committee, the average new car price in the US has risen from US$20,356 (A$31,000) in 2000 to more than US$50,000 (A$76,000) this year. Taking inflation into account, the average new car price in 2000 was $38,395, meaning the effective increase is about 30 percent instead of 245 percent.
The committee did not cite any sources for its pricing figures, but the latter figure appears to come from that source Kelley Blue Book’s New car average transaction price (ATP) that the publication calculates each month.
In September, it surpassed $50,000 for the first time ever, reaching $50,080. Accordingly Kelley Blue Book“Buyers rushed to close deals” on electric vehicles ahead of the end of the federal tax credit. This not only increased sales of electric vehicles, but also the average transaction price, as electric cars are more expensive than gasoline models of similar size and features.
Erin Keating, Executive Analyst at Cox Automotive, owner of Kelley Blue Booknoted, “The $20,000 (new car) price point is now largely extinct, and many price-conscious buyers are left out or drifting in the used car market.”
“Today’s automotive market is driven by wealthier households who have access to capital and good borrowing rates, supporting the higher end of the market. Tariffs have put new cost pressures on the business, but September’s pricing performance was driven primarily by the healthy mix of electric and higher-end vehicles, pushing the new vehicle ATP into uncharted territory.”
“We expected to break the $50,000 barrier. It was only a matter of time, especially considering that the best-selling vehicle in America is a Ford pickup truck, which typically costs more than $65,000.”
The Senate committee hearing will come before Congress must reauthorize a $300 billion ($457 billion) bill that will not only fund road and rail projects across the US, but also the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The NHTSA is tasked with setting traffic safety regulations and is currently planning to make autonomous emergency braking (AEB) mandatory on new cars by 2029, a move that many automakers have tried to prevent.
This is despite a comprehensive study of over 98 million vehicles, funded by both NHTSA and automakers, showing that AEB reduces front-to-rear crashes by 49 percent and crashes involving pedestrians, cyclists and other road users by nine percent.
Last year, nearly 40,000 people died on U.S. roads, which equates to about 12 deaths per 100,000 people. In comparison, 1,300 people died on Australian roads in 2024, or 4.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
“Regulation is the best way to ensure everyone has access to this highly effective technology,” said a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety The Wall Street Journal.
