You mean on the Gen 4 trucks with AFM, yeah?
You can't beat GM up too badly over it. The EPA has steadily been tightening down on them to improve the fuel mileage of their SUVs. I think they eked by the standards set forth and released the first iteration of AFM prematurely. They revamped it with considerable reliability improvements around 2010. All considered, the risk of having a first or second generation of AFM still far outweighs any benefits it'd ever return. They just needed the engines to achieve X efficiency in whatever operational testing environments the EPA demanded. Us end users seem to rarely ever experience those operating environments.
as I understand it that's not exactly how it worked or at least a very generalized version.
the epa standards are an average across your fleet. trucks also having an offset factored in based on weight. this is why they kept high mileage small cars around. they needed the mileage to offset the trucks they sold. any mileage these trucks get above 15mpg in the city is just a inter class marketing battle. chevy marketing against Ford type thing. gm has always seemed to go mpg while Ford went throttle mapping. you test drive a Ford and that sells you. you do your research and you buy a chevy.
every notice just about every truck gets the same mileage. give or take a few here and there. a 4.3 v6 blazer was rated at the same mileage as a suburban and full size truck. size and weight be dammed.
then jump to say vans and there's a different standard.
on a side note, check a Toyota mini van.. thing weighs as much as my suv. has the same tow rating as my yukon but gets 30mpg. because it has to to complete in its class.
I'm sure there's more to it but it sure feels like all the manufactures loosey agree what mileage they need to build each segment to and then do it as cheaply as possible.
the epa gets a lot of blame cause it's an easy boogy man. but the devil is always in the details.
go check the date when the last administration lifted the mileage requirements, the trucks didn't start getting less mpg they just cut the little car market that was being propped up to meet epa standards.