Buckle up. The new CAFE standards are here.

The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) came together today to release the Federal CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) gas emission standards for car models in the 2012 – 2016 range. The key numbers announced are 34.1 mpg by 2016 although due to air conditioning augmentations that number goes up to 35 mpg. Break this down further into greenhouse gas terms, that’s about 250 grams of CO2 per mile.

The NHTSA is expecting that 2012 numbers will be 33.3 mpg for cars and 25.4 for light trucks and going up to 37.8 and 28.8 respectively within another four years.

Credits will continue to be given for vehicles that run on ethanol, although somehow, owners will bear the burden of proof to show that those vehicles are indeed using ethanol by 2015 to continue to get those credits.

Smaller automakers (those that sold fewer than 400K cars last year) will get less strict requirements while specialty automakers (like BMW and Porsche) will get longer lead-in times.

There will also be some kind of incentive for the first 200,000 electric and plug-in hybrid cars made.

The total costs to car companies to comply is expected to be about $51.5 billion across five years. This will trickle down to the car buyer in an average price increase of just under $1,000. Although the upside is that savings at the pump (and the environment) should be approximately $3,000.