Are Automakers Finally Seeing the Light? Will Government and Greens See it Too?
By John O'Dell May 18, 2009Auto Industry Lines Up To Praise National Program Idea, Now the Hard Work Begins
By
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
The auto industry, tired of being seen as the bad guy whenever fuel economy and emissions regulation is on the table, is wasting no time lining up in support of tomorrow's White House announcement on development of a national carbon emissions and fuel efficiency program.
A cynic might think this doesn't bode well for the ultimate result of the rulemaking process that President Obama will outline at a press conference in Washington Tuesday morning: That the auto industry figures it has enough clout left to wring the life out of any effort to significantly improve fuel economy.
But we think it simply shows that an industry on life support and dependent on government largess here and overseas has finally read the writing on the wall and realizes that this is as good as it is ever going to get and that if it doesn't play ball it will have no say in the rules it eventually will have to live by.
Automakers also have been caught in a trap of their own making. They've been fighting California, the national leader in establishing greenhouse gas controls on motor vehicles, insisting that individual states shouldn't be able to set carbon emissions rules and that a national standard is needed.
Now the Obama administration has stepped to the table and said, as the president is wont to: "Okay, let's develop a national rule."
To oppose that would be political suicide.
In that vein, the two lobbying groups representing almost every car maker that does business in the U.S. have jumped on board and are voicing support for the so-called National Program for Autos.
In a statement released this evening, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents the domestic industry as well as Toyota, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Porsche, and Jaguar-Land Rover, said a national program is a "priority to automakers" and that Obama's proposal launches "an era of cooperation...bringing three regulatory agencies, 15 states, a dozen automakers and many environmental groups to the table."
All, said AAM president David McCurdy, "are agreeing to work together" to develop national standards.
Separately, a spokesman for the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, the group representing Honda, Nissan, Subaru and most other import brands (including several, like Toyota, that also belong to the Alliance) told Green Car Advisor this evening that:
"You can put us down as pleased...happy that the President plans to announce such a plan and looking forward to cooperating with other stakeholders to make this work."
So the auto industry, for a change, seems united behind - rather than in opposition to - the idea that we need to limit the greenhouse gas emissions the result from burning fossil fuels in our vehicles.
We just hope they can ultimately agree that to achieve reasonable limits will require a massive shift away from carbon-based fuels, a national fuel economy standard (for fossil fuel vehicles) that is higher than anything the federal government has ever before proposed, or a combination of the two.
We also hope that the government regulators and environmental groups that will be sitting down with the auto industry realize that any policies that require improved fuel economy are going to have to be accompanied by incentives that get Americans to buy the cars and trucks that result - whether through financial payments or regulatory "persuasion" in the form of higher fuel taxes and registration fees based on weight and fuel economy.
A lesson regulators and many in the green community still haven't learned is that autos are still a major investment made as much with emotion as with common sense.
It won't matter that the vehicles that result from this national program effort average 50 or 60 miles per gallon if no one wants to buy them.
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