Your first statement is pure opinion (and a prejudiced one at that), so I will skip that.

Your second statement is a question worth investigating: why should the government be involved here? The simple answer is that the market has not moved for the problem of tire efficiency. There is a quote in the article that goes to the heart of this: “It’s very difficult or impossible for consumers to know how energy efficient their tires are going to be, as a result, many people unknowingly buy tires that cost them more money than necessary”. Large imbalances (like this) in information are one of the things markets do not work well in.

So the solution here is to (gradually) put a floor under how inefficient tires can be. This is one way to solve the market inefficiency (since it treated this as an externality).

I would rather have had them use an approach more like the EnergyStar system, where it requires a simple rating for the efficiency, including average savings and where this sits in comparison with competitors (in that range). I would even add to that a green/yellow/red system that would be allowed to slide the ranges over time to reflect what the market can currently produce.