Washington – President Bush is showing new interest in auto gas mileage, spurred by public outrage over fuel prices.
But don’t expect the administration to embrace significant increases in requiring how far cars go on a gallon of fuel.
The president wants Congress to let him rewrite mileage rules for new car fleets. Some critics suggest that request could instead spur automakers to produce more gas guzzlers.
The rules are known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE.
Enacted in 1975, they were a response to the Arab oil embargo. Automakers today must meet a fleet average of 27.5 miles per gallon for their cars, a standard unchanged in two decades.
The administration has opposed increases in CAFE standards whenever the issue has come up in Congress. Last summer, the White House objected to a proposal requiring the president to find ways to cut U.S. oil consumption by 1 million barrels a day, about 5 percent, saying the plan was a “back door” to higher mileage requirements.
So, has the president changed his mind? Not quite.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told congressional leaders that he wants the power to “reform” the mileage rules and that the administration would keep opposing tougher mileage requirements under the current system.
Bush’s chief economic adviser, Al Hubbard, acknowledged that the White House has no idea how much the changes, if allowed, would raise car mileage.
Said the Sierra Club’s Daniel Becker: “Given the administration’s track record, this is more evasion than an epiphany.”
The Transportation Department this year revamped the rules for pickups, sport utility vehicles and minivans, setting a sliding mileage scale that is based on a vehicle’s size. The overall standard was increased slightly; smaller vehicles now must meet higher mileage requirements than larger ones. The biggest SUVs were exempted until 2011.
“It was accommodating to the industry,” said Gerald Meyers, a former auto executive who is a professor of management at the University of Michigan. He called it “probably the friendliest (proposal) that can be brought forward.”
When it comes to cars, automakers still must meet an overall average; there is no breakdown by size. The administration has indicated it would like to do to cars what it has done with small trucks.
The White House says the changes for small trucks and SUVs sets the “most ambitious fuel-economy goals” in the program’s history. The administration claims the changes will save 10.7 billion gallons of fuel over the lifetime of new vehicles by boosting the requirement from 21.6 mpg to 24.1 mpg by 2011.
Yet David Friedman, director of the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the new rules will have little effect on gas consumption.
“It will save less than two weeks of gasoline a year, and loopholes could actually undermine those savings,” Friedman said.
