New Gas-Mileage Standards May Vary by Vehicle Weight
The Bush administration is preparing new fuel-economy regulations for light trucks and sport-utility vehicles based on size, with smaller vehicles required to achieve higher gasoline mileage than larger ones, industry officials and safety and environmental advocates said yesterday.
The rules, if adopted, would represent the most significant change in how the government gets auto makers to make their vehicles more fuel efficient in three decades, since the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, system was adopted.
The current system rates manufacturers on how their entire light-truck fleets perform, calculating the average fuel economy achieved. During a transition period, auto makers would have the choice of following the old rules -- albeit with higher thresholds -- or the new rules. After a few years, all companies would have to comply with the new system.
Industry officials and advocates said they didn't know what the actual fuel-efficiency targets would be and cautioned that government officials could change the structure, while administration officials declined to comment. Two industry officials said the administration is considering a system where trucks are put into five or six classifications, based on size.
It isn't yet clear where each classification will begin and end, said Dan Becker of the Sierra Club, one of several people who have been briefed on the new plan. That will be important in determining "who wins and who loses" among manufacturers, he said.
Automotive News, a trade publication, reported on the proposal yesterday.
The proposal, developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is now before Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who will send it on to the White House Office of Management and Budget. A special OMB task force will review the proposal before it is formally proposed in the Federal Register, probably next month.
The rules would apply only to fuel economy in light trucks, a classification that includes popular SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks. NHTSA doesn't have clear authority to change the standard for passenger cars, which has its own fleetwide average requirements.
A final rule for light trucks must be adopted by April 1, 2006, if it is to apply to the 2008 model year. That means a proposal must be published within the next month or so in order to leave time for public comment and for the agency to consider those comments before finalizing the matter, administration officials say.
The current system tends to favor companies including Honda Motor Co. that principally manufacture small SUVs and trucks that have little trouble meeting the current standard. By contrast, companies like Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., which make large pickup trucks and SUVs that get poor mileage, have to work hard to be sure they sell enough small, more fuel-efficient vehicles to make up for the big guzzlers.
Under the current standard, a manufacturer's light-truck fleet must achieve an average of 21 miles per gallon for the 2005 model year, a standard that is already slated to rise to 22.2 mpg for 2007.
The Bush administration seriously considered basing the new standard on weight, rather than size, so that lighter vehicles would have to achieve more miles per gallon than heavier ones. But safety advocates argued that this could encourage manufacturers to build heavier vehicles to avoid more stringent fuel standards. Heavier vehicles, they say, are less safe in a crash, able to inflict more damage to people both in the vehicle itself as well as to those in another car.
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