Word: auto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other side are champions of the land barge. These assorted auto lobbyists, free-market enthusiasts and moms on car-pool duty say there's nothing wrong with roominess, four-wheel drive and a seat high enough to give you a look at the world. Owing to their Establishment orientation, SUV partisans aren't burning anything (except gas); their defense is mostly carried out in sedate op-eds. After enduring months of attacks, pro-SUV forces cheered last month when it was disclosed that the Bush Administration wants to increase a tax break allowing small businesses to deduct much...
George W. Bush--whose party received more than $10 million from the auto industry during the 2002 election cycle--appointed Runge, so you know he's not padding around NHTSA's headquarters in hemp sandals. And yet during a Q&A last month at an auto conference in Dearborn, Mich., he said, "I wouldn't buy my kid a two-star rollover vehicle if it was the last one on earth." According to NHTSA's website, 22 SUVs in the current model year have a rollover-resistance rating of two stars out of five, including the Jeep Grand Cherokee...
...comments on rollovers infuriated auto executives: "We have thousands of employees who work on safety issues every day," says Jay Cooney, a GM spokesman. "They wouldn't put their own family or anybody's family in a vehicle they thought was unsafe." Auto lobbyists point out that NHTSA generates its rollover ratings simply by calculating the height of a vehicle's center of gravity in proportion to its width--how top-heavy it is, essentially--not by measuring its performance in the real world. (Which is true, though later this year NHTSA will begin using a more subtle ratings system...
Consumer groups and auto executives may spar over the mixed safety profile of SUVs, but there's less argument about the vehicles' environmental impact. It's simple math: SUVs are heavier than cars, so they take more gas to go the same distance. And burning more gas releases more garbage into the air. According to the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists, 2001-model SUVs, pickups and minivans emitted 2.4 times as much smog-forming nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons as cars and 1.4 times as much tailpipe carbon dioxide (a global-warming gas) as cars. The Natural Resources Defense Council says...
...right way to frame the SUV debate is not whether SUVs should be dumped but whether society pays too much, and their drivers too little, for the benefits SUVs provide. One point that environmentalists and auto executives agree upon is that gas prices, despite their recent rise amid the talk of war, remain low by historical standards. Eron Shosteck of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says his members offer more than 30 passenger vehicles that get at least 30 m.p.g. (compared with, say, the Range Rover, which gets 14). "But very few people buy them," Shosteck says of the fuel...