The Big 3 seem to be coming around to the idea that they can and should do something about vehicle emissions/fuel economy. Ford CEO Alan Mulally said that he believes that humans contribute to global warming and that the auto industry contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Detroit News.
GM vice chairman Bob Lutz said he supports the idea of a "Manhattan Project-like approach to creating a national energy policy." Change the analogy to the space project, and Lutz could be talking on behalf of the Apollo Alliance.
These are huge turnarounds in positioning for automakers whose fallback position to any legislated changes to fuel economy or emissions are the phrases "too costly" and "job losses." If these sentiments are true, then DaimlerChrysler should join with these companies and negotiate new CAFE standards with attainable goals and stronger penalties for companies that continue fail to improve their fuel economy.
The fallacy of saying that cars can't be comfortable, safe and fuel efficient needs to be put to rest once and for all. Technologies that make cars safer and stingier with gas should be employed across all models to keep the playing field level.
On the safety side of things, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration should collect and publicly make data available about each model of vehicle and let the buyers decide. Let's post the data about the injuries and fatalities for each model along with every vehicle that is serviced because of defects. We're disclosing less instead of more information, and that is unfair to consumers.
Source: Detroit News
