Down at the CAFE

Vice President Dick Cheney wants to wait until a report is released on improving gas mileage on cars and light trucks due out this summer before deciding whether to ask auto manufacturers if it would be OK to raise standards. But given that gas mileage is now lower than it was in 1999 and is at its lowest level since 1980, the White House should support a more forceful strategy, one that lets manufacturers plan for the long-term but begins quickly.

Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins have both called for toughening the corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards and bringing sport utility vehicles under the same standard as passenger cars. CAFE standards have not been improved for 12 years, and during that time the popularity of SUVs and light trucks used for nothing more demanding than to lug groceries have at first flattened than slightly driven down fuel economy. The government requires manufacturers to produce cars that overall get 27.5 miles per gallon and SUV/light trucks at 20.7 miles per gallon.

The numbers, however, aren’t even that good, because the method used by the government allows manufacturers to overestimate what actual fuel economy will be, for instance, by fitting a vehicle to use ethanol even though its use is unlikely. This counting method produces gas-mileage reports about 18 percent higher than what the manufacturers themselves post on car window stickers, which in turn may be an overly optimistic projection of actual mileage.

Despite the lack of progress without government prodding, Vice President Cheney wants to see whether a report from the National Academy of Sciences, planned for July, projects that higher standards can be enforced “without negatively impacting the U.S. automotive industry.” That is, will holding U.S. manufacturers to the same performance as manufacturers in Europe and Asia cut into profits? This portion of the White House energy plan may have been found in an old filing cabinet labeled “Bad ideas from 1973.”

Auto manufacturers, of course, immediately claim lighter, fuel-economizing cars are a safety problem. Given that it is a problem they have intentionally created over the last decade by producing millions of behemoth trucks and SUVs, one can conclude that they are working out of the same filing cabinet.

The Senate needs to tell the vice president that, as cheerful as it is about increasing supply, CAFE standards are one obvious area for improving conservation. Sens. Snowe and Collins have taken a clear, positive position on the issue. Now they should persuade their colleagues to do the same.