Green Light for Guzzlers

WHEN TRANSPORTATION Secretary Norman Y. Mineta announced new fuel efficiency standards for sport-utility vehicles, minivans and light trucks last week, he said the rules would "save gas and result in less pain at the pump for motorists." Maybe -- but only barely. Under the proposed rules, average mileage for such vehicles would have to rise by just 1.8 miles per gallon over the 2008 to 2011 model years, reaching an average of about 24 mpg by the end of that time. The administration estimates that this change will save 10 billion gallons of gasoline over about 15 years. This amounts to a total of about 25 days of consumption under current trends -- a disappointing drop in the barrel.

When automotive fuel efficiency standards were introduced in 1975, the looser rules for so-called non-passenger vehicles -- a category that, believe it or not, has been interpreted to include minivans, SUVs and even some cars -- weren't all that important: These vehicles accounted for less than 20 percent of the market. Now SUVs and other gas-guzzling behemoths make up more than half of automotive sales.

These vehicles pollute the environment and increase dependence on foreign oil, and they're subject to far lower fuel efficiency standards (21.6 miles per gallon for 2006 models) than passenger cars (27.5 mpg). The biggest of the breed -- vehicles such as the Hummer H2 and the Ford Excursion, which weigh between 8,500 and 10,000 pounds -- don't have to meet any mileage standards at all. That, we can't resist saying, is a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. The proposed rules leave this 8,500-pound loophole in place -- though it's hard to see why manufacturers of these monsters shouldn't have to do their part to reduce consumption.

More fundamentally, the rules don't seek enough in the way of efficiency increases for the vehicles they do cover. Granted, this would be the second move by the Bush administration to hike mileage requirements for this category, which is two more than the Clinton administration managed.

The administration says it asked automakers for what was feasible given the available technology and taking into consideration the industry's economic woes. Yet the National Academy of Sciences, on which the administration says it relied heavily in making that assessment, concluded that much more in the way of improvement was achievable -- and that was four years ago. "I would have opted for more ambitious changes than they did," the panel's chair, University of Arizona business school dean Paul Portney, told this page. He suggested an average of 27 mpg by 2015.

Moreover, the rules are structured in a way that critics argue could actually encourage manufacturers to produce more big gas guzzlers. Under the current regime, manufacturers have to achieve a certain average performance across their entire class of vehicles. Detroit argues that arrangement is skewed against it because it churns out more heavy trucks and SUVs than its Asian competitors. Thus, the new rules divide the vehicles into six categories based on size, setting different targets for each. The final requirements would range from 28.4 mpg for the smallest to 21.3 mpg for the biggest.

This has some advantages, but it also poses the risk that manufacturers will manipulate the size of vehicles to bump them into a higher category with more lenient mileage requirements. Further, by eliminating the disincentives for making bigger vehicles that use more gas, the rules could also have the perverse effect of increasing such production.

It's ironic that the new standards were released as gas prices reached stratospheric levels. Market forces -- consumers demanding better gas mileage in vehicles of all sizes -- may well succeed where the government has fallen short.