WASHINGTON – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., today hailed Senate passage of bipartisan legislation governing automotive fuel economy standards which aims to improve fuel economy and protect the environment without harming the domestic manufacturing industry. Levin teamed with Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and a bipartisan group of colleagues to lead passage of the amendment, which will be included in the Senate energy bill. The amendment was approved by a vote of 62-38.

"We all share the important goals of improving fuel economy in cars and protecting our environment, and our bill will achieve these results without costing countless U.S. jobs," Levin said. "Other proposals that have been offered in the Senate could force U.S. auto manufacturers to cut back on their SUV and light truck business but would enable foreign manufacturers to increase their output of these vehicles, which would simply replace American-made products with foreign-made vehicles."

"What we see in example after example is that American-made vehicles have comparable or superior fuel efficiency to the foreign-made models they complete with," Levin continued. "I just can't see how it helps our environment one bit to have a less fuel-efficient foreign-made SUV on our roads rather than a comparable or more fuel-efficient domestically-produced SUV."

"I think we can help nurture important advances in automotive technology that may not simply reduce our use of fossil fuels for our transportation needs, but eventually eliminate it altogether through the development of advanced hybrids and fuel cells. The Levin-Bond approach uses tax credits to provide powerful incentives for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles such as hybrids, uses the purchasing power of the government to speed up the commercial production of such new technologies and provides stepped-up government investment in the research and development we need to move to a fuel cell-powered car and a hydrogen economy," Levin concluded.