White House Proposes Stricter Fuel Economy Norms

The Bush administration announced new fuel economy rules Tuesday that require improved mileage for the sports/utility vehicles and other light trucks that have captured a majority of U.S. auto sales.

The new rule will raise automakers' fuel efficiency targets, which will now be determined by a vehicle's "footprint" size instead of its weight. The very biggest SUVs, like Hummers and Ford Excursions, will be exempt from the new standards.

Under current rules, all light trucks produced by an automaker have to average at least 21 miles per gallon for 2005 models, according to a spokesman for NHTSA, and 22.2 mpg for 2007 models. What makes the proposal most significant is that it creates a new system for automakers to use in calculating the fuel efficiency of their products. Rather than figuring a corporate average fuel economy -- CAFE -- level for an entire fleet, the new rule would create six different categories, each with its own target.

Advocates for the environment said the administration's prediction on fuel savings was suspect, because auto manufacturers would change the type of vehicles they produced, making them larger to get into easier mileage categories. They also claimed that the standards were far lower than they could have been given current technology.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will take comments on the proposed rule for 90 days, and intends to issue a final rule by next April, it said.

The newspapers reported that the new rules seem likely to help General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. The fleet-wide average for light trucks is a disadvantage for auto manufacturers that have a large portion of their light truck sales among the biggest pickup trucks and SUVs, a category that Ford and GM dominate.

Repercussions of a rule like this would definitely cause ripples in the automotive sector with a rise in manufacture of the ever growing population of large SUV's.