America’s New Cars Make More Power Than Ever (MotorTrend)
The average modern combustion engine has never been this power-dense before.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an annual report averaging data on the American consumer fleet, and says today's gas-powered cars are more power efficient than ever before. The average horsepower for light vehicles manufactured in the 2021 model year hit a record high of 252.2 hp last year, while average engine displacement held steady.
Which Cars Count?
That's the highest-ever average horsepower figure recorded since the EPA began collecting light-vehicle data in 1975, so the record factors in the last 50 years of U.S. vehicles, but nothing before then. The average displacement has been under 3.0 liters since 2014, but peaked at 4.8 liters all the way back in 1975, when the EPA first began collecting data. Average power that year was 137 hp, abysmal by modern standards. The lowest-ever power average recorded was 102.1 hp in 1981.
The numbers show that modern gas engines are more efficient for their size than ever before, with average displacement on 2021 light vehicles measured at 2.9 liters. That shakes out to about an 84 percent increase in horsepower and a 40 percent increase in displacement versus the cars on our streets nearly 50 years ago, according to the data the EPA and Department of Energy have collected. This dataset does not factor in electric vehicles.
So, the average American car in 2021 was something with around 250 horsepower from a sub-3.0-liter engine. Of course, that doesn't mean everyone in America drives something with that power and displacement — that's not how averages work. Instead, we figure a mix of many small, lower-powered models dying off along with a variety of high-powered models being introduced (or increasing in sales) contributed to the average.
