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Thirsty - USA - The Gas-Guzzler Relief Act
NEW YORK. NT,USA -Forbes, by Jonathan Fahey -08.24.05: -- The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's elaborate proposal to update the 30-year-old regulations that govern the fuel economy of U.S. ... may or may not end up make the United States less thirsty for oil... But it was clearly designed to help out the automakers most thirsty for profits, the struggling General Motors and Ford Motor. Current rules, known collectively as Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, force automakers to average 21 miles per gallon for all of the so-called light trucks, far easier for carmakers that make mainly smaller vehicles, such as Honda Motor, Toyota Motor, and Hyundai, to meet the regulation than carmakers such as General Motors and the Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler... A 2002 National Academy of Sciences report on CAFE effectiveness sharply pointed out this problem, and provided a major impetus behind yesterday's proposal. "The distinction between a car for personal use and a truck for work use/cargo transport has broken down," the report reads. "The car/truck distinction has been stretched well beyond the original purposes"... A main issue for environmentalists: The proposal doesn't guarantee the nation's fleet will get any less thirsty. Because the system would be based on the size of the vehicles, and not force automakers to reach an overall target, overall fuel economy could conceivably worsen if automakers built, and drivers bought, more and more bigger vehicles...
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