A recent effort to remove a congressional prohibition on making fuel standards stricter ran into heavy opposition, not only from the auto industry and anti-regulatory Republicans, but from labor unions and many Democrats. Any efforts at toughening the standards for miles per gallon, set in 1995, are likely to remain unchanged for at least another year. Congress’ blocking of stricter fuel-economy rules is a testament to the popularity of SUVs. Environmentalists blame them for an excess of carbon dioxide emissions, which is linked to global warming.
The auto industry contends that stricter rules would lead to a much lighter, smaller and less powerful vehicle that consumers would not buy. Some SUVs get as little as 13 mpg, while a 25-year -old law puts the SUVs in the same category of light trucks and pickups, and those vehicles are supposed to meet a “corporate average fuel economy” standard of 20.7 miles per gallon compared with 27.5 mpg for passenger cars. Carmakers last year paid $16.3 million in penalties for missing those targets.
The Sierra Club favors increasing standards over a 10-year period, but some of their goals seem rather unreachable. The Union of Concerned Scientist feel the technology is available to get greatly improved fuel mileages, and they have already designed a computer model of an Explorer that gets 28 mpg, 50 percent more than the model now on the market. Estimates are the vehicles costs could increase as little as $575 with the new fuel saving technology, but consumers would recover that in gas savings in less than two years.
Ironically, the House recently voted to eliminate $126 million in federal funding for a joint government-industry program that the Big Three carmakers promoted. A number of environmental groups supported the cut, claiming that the program is being used by carmakers to avoid improving fuel economy on existing vehicles. The program was pet project of Vice President Al Gore. Further studies are scheduled, more debates will be held and more arguments entered into, and in the end, nothing seems to happen.