Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards No. 301, Fuel System Integrity

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>National Highway Traffic Safety Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>49 CFR Part 571</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. NHTSA-2025-0042]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2127-AM93</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards No. 301, Fuel System Integrity</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to remove obsolete requirements from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) No. 301, Fuel system integrity. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received within 60 days of May 30, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted through the Federal rulemaking portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and should reference the docket number and the date and page number of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . NHTSA strongly prefers comments be submitted electronically. However, written comments may be submitted ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> postmarked) via mail to 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590. All comments submitted in response to this document will be included in the record and will be made available to the public. Please be advised that the any information submitted with your comment will be made public, without change, on the internet at the address provided above. A plain language summary of this notice of proposed rule is available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> in the docket for this rulemaking. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For technical issues, you may contact Ian MacIntire (email: <E T="03">ian.macintire@dot.gov</E> ). For legal issues, you may contact John Piazza at <E T="03">John.Piazza@dot.gov</E> . You can reach these officials by phone at 202-366-1810. Address: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Washington, DC 20590. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> NHTSA is proposing to remove obsolete directives from its phase-in reporting requirements that only pertain to vehicles manufactured in prior years, amending 49 CFR 571.301. The rule proposed eliminates those directives while maintaining other directives in 49 CFR 571.301 that pertain to vehicles that are being manufactured or will be manufactured. We seek comment on all aspects of that proposal. This action does not affect the applicability of 49 U.S.C. 30122, which prohibits certain entities from making inoperative any part of a device or element of design installed in vehicle pursuant to an FMVSS applicable on the date of manufacturer. <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 49 U.S.C. 322, 30111, 30115, 30117, 30166; delegation of authority at 49 CFR 1.95. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Analyses</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Rule Summary</HD> As required by 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this rulemaking can be found at <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> , Docket NHTSA-2025-0042, in the <E T="02">SUMMARY</E> section of this proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</HD> This rulemaking does not meet the criteria of a “significant regulatory action” under Executive Order 12866, as amended by Executive Orders 14215 and 13563. Therefore, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not reviewed this rulemaking under those orders. This regulation is not an E.O. 14192 regulatory action. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation</HD> The policy statement in section 1 of Executive Order 13609 provides that the regulatory approaches taken by foreign governments may differ from those taken by the United States to address similar issues, and that in some cases the differences between them might not be necessary and might impair the ability of American businesses to export and compete internationally. It further recognizes that in meeting shared challenges involving health, safety, and other issues, international regulatory cooperation can identify approaches that are at least as protective as those that are or would be adopted in the absence of such cooperation and can reduce, eliminate, or prevent unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements. In addition, section 24211 of the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act, Global Harmonization, provides that DOT “shall cooperate, to the maximum extent practicable, with foreign governments, nongovernmental stakeholder groups, the motor vehicle industry, and consumer groups with respect to global harmonization of vehicle regulations as a means for improving motor vehicle safety.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  H.R. 3684 (117th Congress) (2021). </FTNT> Because the proposed changes are deleting obsolete regulatory text, they do not implicate any issues regarding international regulatory cooperation. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Initial Regulatory Flexibility Act</HD> Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) (5 U.S.C. 601-612) (as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA) of 1996; 5 U.S.C. 601 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), agencies must prepare and make available for public comment a regulatory flexibility analysis that describes the effect of the rule on small entities ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> small businesses, small organizations, and small government jurisdictions). No regulatory flexibility analysis is required, however, if the head of an agency or an appropriate designee certifies that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. NHTSA has concluded and hereby certifies that this rulemaking will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities; therefore, an analysis is not included. This proposed rule will only remove directives that are no longer needed. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Unfunded Mandates Reform Act</HD> This proposed rule does not contain Federal mandates (under the regulatory provisions of Title II of the UMRA) for State, local and Tribal governments, or the private sector of $100 million or more in any one year. Thus, the rulemaking is not subject to the requirements of sections 202 and 205 of the UMRA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 13175</HD> Executive Order 13175 requires Federal agencies to consult and coordinate with Tribes on a government-to-government basis on policies that have Tribal implications, including regulations, legislative comments or proposed legislation, and other policy statements or actions that have substantial direct effects on one or more Indian Tribes, on the relationship between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities between the Federal Government and Indian Tribes. NHTSA has assessed the impact of this proposed rule on Indian tribes and determined that this rulemaking would not have tribal implications that require consultation under Executive Order 13175. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), an agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information, unless the collection displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. This proposed rule is deregulatory and so would not impose any additional information collection requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">E-Government Act Compliance</HD> NHTSA is committed to complying with the E-Government Act, 2002 to promote the use of the internet and other information technologies to provide increased opportunities for citizen access to Government information and services, and for other purposes. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Executive Order 13132; Federalism Summary Impact Statement</HD> NHTSA has examined this proposed rule pursuant to Executive Order 13132 (64 FR 43255; Aug. 10, 1999) and concluded that no additional consultation with States, local governments, or their representatives is mandated beyond the rulemaking process. The agency has concluded that the proposed rule does not have sufficient federalism implications to warrant consultation with State and local officials or the preparation of a federalism summary impact statement. The proposed rule does not have “substantial direct effects on the States, on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government.” NHTSA rules can have preemptive effect in two ways. First, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act contains an express preemption provision: When a motor vehicle safety standard is in effect under this chapter, a State or a political subdivision of a State may prescribe or continue in effect a standard applicable to the same aspect of performance of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle equipment only if the standard is identical to the standard prescribed under this chapter. 49 U.S.C. 30103(b)(1). It is this statutory command by Congress that preempts any non-identical State legislative and administrative law address the same aspect of performance. The express preemption provision described above is subject to a savings clause under which “[c]compliance with a motor vehicle safety standard prescribed under this chapter does not exempt a person from liability at common law.” 49 U.S.C. 30103(e). Pursuant to this provision, State common law tort causes of action against motor vehicle manufacturers that might otherwise be preempted by the express preemption provision are generally preserved. However, the Supreme Court has recognized the possibility, in some instances, of implied preemption of State common law tort cau ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━