The Bush Administration calculated that the standards would cost the automobile industry 100 billion to comply with (a loss that's going to get distributed over a lot of companies and a lot of years). If you wrap that cost into all the cars sold over a number of years, they amount to what per car? Not a whole lot by my reckoning. Anyways, the standards apply to a companies entire fleet, in that they can make big trucks that don't get 35mpg or whatever, but have to average it across the fleet. Companies are still going to make cars in all different price ranges, because it's profitable for them to do that.