Copyright 2000 The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San
Diego Union-Tribune
September 16, 2000, Saturday
SECTION: AUTO;Pg. WHEELS-6
LENGTH: 521 words
HEADLINE:
Automakers' offer to raise fuel efficiency stirs
standards debate
BYLINE: Harry
Stoffer; AUTOMOTIVE NEWS
BODY:
WASHINGTON -- Year
after year, industry critics said automakers could build more fuel-efficient
trucks. Automakers said they could not without making their trucks less
appealing, less safe and less useful.
And lawmakers listened. Since
1995, they have frozen the federal corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE,
standards.
But recently, Ford and General Motors have volunteered to cut
fuel consumption in some sport utilities and pickups.
Proponents of
higher fuel-economy standards say the automakers' statements give them fresh
ammunition to press for higher CAFE.
"This means a fundamental change in
the terms of the CAFE debate," says Jason Mark, transportation analyst for the
Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that lobbies for higher standards.
He says the announcements show that manufacturers know how to build more
economical vehicles and that consumers care about fuel efficiency, disproving
two key arguments used by opponents of CAFE in Congress.
Those points
have not been missed on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., a top
Senate proponent of higher CAFE standards, says: "I've long said the industry
has the existing technology to allow cars to go further on a gallon of gas and
save consumers money at the gas pump."
Even before the Ford and GM
announcements, Gorton and other opponents of the freeze appeared to be gaining
ground.
In 1999 they got 40 votes in the Senate to end the freeze, which
keeps the standards at 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 for trucks.
They were
preparing for another Senate vote this year when they and the industry's allies
agreed instead to seek a National Academy of Sciences study of CAFE.
Congress is considering the measure to keep the freeze for an additional
year while the study is conducted. Lobbyists on both sides of the issue do not
expect the bill to be derailed by the GM and Ford announcements, but they are
less certain than before.
Jo Cooper, president of the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, says member companies are concerned about timing. They
would have preferred to have the CAFE freeze enacted for another year before
facing fresh questions about the voluntary steps planned by some.
Nevertheless, she says the alliance -- Ford, GM and 11 of their
competitors -- is ready to make the case that innovation and competition, not
regulation, are the ways to produce more efficient vehicles.
Even a
competitor came to Ford's defense in the wake of its promise to raise the fuel
economy of its sport-utility fleet by 25 percent in the next five years.
Robert Liberatore, DaimlerChrysler senior vice president for external
affairs and public policy, says: "I can't see how people wouldn't see that as a
constructive gesture and why it would invite more regulations. It shouldn't."
But, he adds: "Washington works in strange ways. Anything's possible."
Ford officials were sensitive to the fact that their promise to cut
average sport utility fuel consumption would stir the CAFE debate.
They
briefed lawmakers who have been industry supporters about the plan before it was
unveiled by Ford CEO Jac Nasser on July 27.
LOAD-DATE: September 18, 2000
