Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill to require SUVs to get the same average gas mileage as cars by 2011

SUV owners and car drivers don't dispute that SUVs should get better mileage, polls show. But when it comes to SUV safety, American motorists divide sharply between those who drive SUVs and those who don't. Misconceptions abound on both sides.

For example, many car drivers swear the best thing for safety would be to ban SUVs. Statistics show they are wrong.

Banning the biggest SUVs and pickups would save about 160 lives a year, but outlawing the littlest cars would prevent about 700 deaths, according to Insurance Institute estimates. That's because small cars have less steel and structure to protect occupants.

"There is no question that if the fleet mix could be changed to improve safety, far bigger gains would occur if the smallest cars and SUVs were increased in size than if the largest SUVs were downsized," said O'Neill, president of the institute, an auto safety think tank.

To put the issue in perspective, of the people who die in passenger car wrecks, only 4% are killed in crashes with SUVs, according to a 1999 Insurance Institute study.

The main reason is that single-car crashes claim the largest share of victims, about 40%.

An additional 11% of the people killed in cars die in crashes with pickups, which have many of the same safety problems as SUVs but get far less public attention. Crashes with other cars claimed 21% of the victims. (The remainder are crashes involving commercial trucks and accidents involving more than two vehicles.)

Likewise, the perception among SUV owners that their safety is significantly enhanced by riding high doesn't square with accident data. Actually, the risk of death is about the same in an SUV as in a mid-size sedan.

"SUVs have a somewhat higher fatality rate, and the excess is due to rollovers," O'Neill said.

An analysis by the institute found that the fatality rate for occupants of mid-size cars was 121 deaths per 1 million registered vehicles in the year 2000. The death rate was a little higher, 126 per million vehicles, for mid-size four-wheel-drive SUVs.

The glaring weakness of SUVs is that they are more likely to be involved in rollovers, an extremely violent type of crash. The rollover death rate for people in mid-size four-wheel-drive SUVs was more than two times higher than that for those in mid-size sedans, according to the institute.

Many SUV drivers don't seem to be aware of the inherent rollover risk in the high-profile geometry of their vehicles. Nearly 6 in 10 disagree with the statement that SUVs are dangerous to occupants because of their tendency to roll over, according to the Harris polls. Those motorists are "denying facts," O'Neill said.

The auto industry stoutly defends SUVs as solid and safe. The main reason people die in rollover crashes, car makers suggest, is that they don't buckle up.

"Of the 9,882 killed in rollovers in the year 2000, 75%, or 7,412 people, perished not because of the vehicle but because they were unbelted and ejected from the vehicle," General Motors said in a recent statement, citing government statistics.

No one quarrels with the belt-use numbers. But since rollovers are rare (less than 3% of crashes) yet extraordinarily dangerous (about 30% of vehicle occupant deaths), safety advocates say the burden remains on car companies to build more forgiving SUVs.

"The question should be whether rollovers can be averted in the first place or their consequences mitigated," said David Pittle, vice president of technical policy for Consumers Union.

The most promising technology to protect SUV and car occupants appears to be side air bags, which may help prevent an unbelted driver in an SUV from being thrown out in a rollover. They could also reduce head and chest injuries to occupants of cars rammed in the side by an SUV, a particularly lethal type of crash.

Though the auto industry has developed advanced side air bags, they are usually not offered as standard equipment. The NHTSA is considering whether the government should require them.

Putting anti-lock brakes and computerized stability-control systems on all SUVs could also reduce the number of accidents. The stability systems sense a possible loss of control and automatically apply brakes or power as needed. They are available on many SUVs but not all.

Federal standards can provide a minimum threshold of safety, but by no means do they make vehicles fail-safe. Some experts say the debate over SUV safety has focused too much on what can be done about standards and equipment and too little on the role drivers can play.

"Rather than just focus on the vehicles, why not help raise the skill level of drivers?" asked David Cole, director of the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research.

Cole envisions using video game-like simulators to teach teenage drivers how to avoid rolling Dad's Chevy Blazer.

"We have done a very inadequate job as a country using the tools we have to teach people how to react more properly in emergency situations," Cole said. Even with side air bags, anti-lock brakes and electronic stability control, SUVs will still be more prone to instability than cars. "It's an issue that won't go away," Cole said. "SUVs have a higher center of gravity -- it's embedded in the physics."

Meanwhile, drivers of cars and SUVs will keep competing and cursing each other on congested roads and in shopping malls with tight parking spaces.

"Some SUV drivers are like the Cadillac drivers when I was a kid," said consumer advocate Pittle, an elder statesman of automotive safety. "They drive fast, they flick their headlights, they cut in front of you."

Some SUV owners say they have had enough of the critics and warn of a backlash.

"I don't see any constitutional basis for government to intervene," said Scott Feldman, a Washington, D.C.-area pizzeria owner who is on his third SUV. "Whenever there's a snowstorm around here, they make a pitch for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles to pick up hospital workers. And now in the next breath they want to eliminate them?"

A Green Car Industry Can Love

Future Fuel initiative seen as investing in petrochemical industry and not renewables for producing hydrogen.

Source: New York Times [Feb 02, 2003]

WASHINGTON — In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush seemed to embrace the holy grail of the environmental movement: a push to the so-called hydrogen economy.

"A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes," Mr. Bush said. "With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free."

Replacing fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine with clean-burning hydrogen has been a longtime dream of the people Mr. Bush reportedly calls "green, green lima beans."

But Mr. Bush's new initiative for fuel-cell research is not as Birkenstock-friendly as it might seem. In fact, the proposal, which will cost $1.2 billion over five years, could do much to benefit the fossil-fuel and nuclear power industries.

That's because while hydrogen fuel cells produce nothing more than water vapor, the production of hydrogen itself can be environmentally harmful. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it doesn't exist naturally on earth in its pure form. "Just as the oil is locked up in the Middle East, hydrogen is all locked up in compounds," said Robert Rose, executive director of the Breakthrough Technologies Institute in Washington and a leading advocate of hydrogen fuel cells.

Energy is required to produce hydrogen — and that energy, depending on its source, can create greenhouse gases. According to the Energy Department, 96 percent of hydrogen produced in the world today comes from natural gas, oil and coal — the same fossil fuels that environmentalists would like to abandon.

These industries are not only poised to become the main producers of hydrogen, but they are also likely to control the networks that distribute it.

"Because it postpones the need to make costly investments in an entirely new infrastructure, it's likely that the conversion to a hydrogen economy will rely heavily on working with the existing system of pipelines, storage facilities and fuel stations used to produce and deliver oil and gas," said Janice Mazurek, an environmental policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic group.

Many environmentalists, however, want to create hydrogen using wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, a utopian scenario in which both the fuel for cars and the process by which that fuel is produced are environmentally harmless.

"The big debate is, Do we piggyback on the existing petrochemical industry or do we invest in renewables?" Ms. Mazurek said.

For now, the Bush administration seems more intent on investing in the petrochemical industry. "Initially, we anticipate that the source of the hydrogen fuel in this country would be natural gas," a senior administration official said last week in a briefing to reporters.

The official noted that technology will eventually make it possible to move toward renewable fuel sources, like agricultural waste. But, he said, the president's plan will also expand research in hydrogen production to coal and nuclear power.

Exactly how much money will be spent on coal and nuclear power will be known on Monday, when the administration is to release its budget. Last year, Mr. Bush requested $97.5 million for hydrogen and fuel-cell programs. Of that, $12 million was for research into hydrogen production, and that was spent entirely on natural-gas, petroleum and renewable energy.

In Mr. Bush's new proposal, the total budget for hydrogen and fuel-cell programs will jump to $240 million a year, and the administration will request millions of dollars to finance research into hydrogen production from coal and nuclear power plants, said an Energy Department official.

Some are worried that the administration's budget will be too tilted toward fossil fuels and nuclear power. "I fear the Bush budget may have a reduction in renewables," Mr. Rose said.

In any case, hydrogen-powered cars won't roll off the assembly line for another 10 or 20 years, leaving unsolved the immediate problem of declining fuel efficiency in America's current gas guzzlers, environmentalists say. "Perhaps in the Jenna Bush administration we'll see fuel-cell cars on the road, but we're not there yet," said Jon S. Coifman, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is a way to appear to be doing something without doing anything about the cars on the road today."

Big 3 'Hybrids' Still Gas Hungry

With Iraq war looming, switching to hybrids may make sense, says Chicago Tribune.

Source: Chicago Tribune [Jan 31, 2003]

By Sam Roe

Tribune staff reporter

Published January 30, 2003

DETROIT -- Five years ago, just days after the landmark Kyoto global warming summit, General Motors Corp. received worldwide attention by announcing it would be ready to mass produce by 2001 its first hybrid car: a highly fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicle powered by electricity and a conventional gasoline engine.

GM never produced that vehicle. Similar plans by Ford and DaimlerChrysler also have been quietly scrapped in recent years as the automakers reaped positive publicity without having to invest in new production lines.

Now, as the nation gears up for a war with oil-rich Iraq and President Bush touts hydrogen fuel-cell technology, GM promises to build by 2007 hybrid versions of more than a dozen of its best-selling cars, SUVs and pickup trucks.

Why believe the promises out of Detroit this time? For one thing, building hybrids might now make economic sense. Having fallen behind Japanese automakers in producing these models, Detroit has a strong incentive to become competitive and not forgo a small but growing market.

At the same time, a closer look at the proposed vehicles raises questions about how much gasoline they really would save.

Of the numerous hybrid models GM is promising, only one--the Saturn VUE sport-utility--is scheduled to have an advanced electrical system that will result in substantial savings. All other models, including the popular Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, will rely far less on electricity and therefore save less fuel.

Those two trucks now are rated at 16 miles per gallon in city traffic and 21 m.p.g. on the highway. The hybrid option will improve the fuel economy by only 2 m.p.g. in the city and none on the highway. GM reports that the electric motors will not propel the trucks but only run accessories, such as the air conditioning, when the vehicles are idling and help restart the trucks when they are at a standstill.

While environmentalists have generally hailed GM's plans, they said the company should not be describing many of these vehicles as hybrids.

"I think it is confusing at best and misleading at worst," said Jason Mark of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group in Cambridge, Mass.

GM's latest pledge to build hybrids comes as Detroit is facing increasing criticism over its gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups. Critics argue that America's dependence on foreign oil, its war on terrorism and its troubles with Iraq make SUVs a luxury that consumers should reassess.

Television commercials sponsored by syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington link SUVs to terrorism, while an ad campaign by the Evangelical Environmental Network asks, "What Would Jesus Drive?"

And extremists in several states have damaged SUVs, spray-painting "no blood for oil" on vehicles in Massachusetts and setting ablaze two pickups and an SUV at a Pennsylvania dealership.

Bush's support of hydrogen fuel cells as a future technology, which he emphasized in his State of the Union speech, also is an acknowledgement that the country's dependence on foreign oil is a national concern. Many in government and industry see hybrids as a bridge technology to take the nation from gasoline-powered cars to hydrogen-propelled vehicles.

Japan leads the way

In the nation's showrooms, the pressure for hybrids is coming from the Japanese. Honda and Toyota have been selling hybrids in the U.S. for a few years while other automakers continue to talk about these models.

In hybrid systems, an electric motor and a conventional engine work in tandem. In the Toyota Prius, which gets 52 m.p.g in the city and 45 m.p.g. on the highway, electricity powers the car at low speeds and a gasoline engine kicks in at higher speeds while simultaneously recharging the batteries.

Analysts see GM's announcement as a sign that the company thinks hybrids are not simply a fad.

"They don't want to miss a market," said Walter McManus of the marketing firm J.D. Power and Associates. "So if it does take off, they want to be positioned so they can be part of it."

His firm predicts hybrid sales will grow slowly over the next several years and that by 2007 a quarter-million will be sold in the U.S. annually--a small number compared with the 17 million passenger vehicles sold each year.

Many of today's hybrid owners are people with above-average incomes who are concerned about the environment and rising oil imports. To appeal to a cross-section of car buyers, hybrids need to be quicker and more powerful, said Mike Wall, an analyst with the automotive forecasting firm IRN Inc.

"Horsepower is still king," he said.

Analysts predict the automakers will earn little, if any, profit on hybrids. But Detroit might produce them anyway to help meet fuel-economy rules, which require a manufacturer's fleet to average 27.5 m.p.g. for cars and 20.7 m.p.g. for light trucks. So the more hybrids a company sells, the more gas-guzzlers can be sold.

Regulatory pressures are expected to grow as the Bush administration has proposed raising the truck mileage standard to 22.2 miles per gallon by 2007. John DeCicco, a senior fellow with Environmental Defense, a New York advocacy group, said Detroit's hybrid plans give the automakers cover in the fight against further toughening of fuel economy rules.

"It's providing them with an answer in Washington to the response that they are not doing enough on the oil and climate issue," DeCicco said.

While environmentalists criticized GM for trumpeting the limited hybrid systems, they lauded the promise of an advanced hybrid Saturn VUE. GM said this model will be available in late 2005 and that the vehicle's fuel economy will improve up to 50 percent, or to about 35 m.p.g.

Dan Becker of the Sierra Club said that given GM's resistance to fuel-economy improvements in the past, a hybrid Saturn VUE is "like Nixon going to China."

Becker said he did not think GM's plans were simply public relations.

"It would be really stupid if this was just PR, and they were prepared--yet again--to sacrifice the market for the next generation of cars to the Japanese manufacturers as they did in the 1970s."

McManus, the J.D. Power analyst, said it appears GM intends to follow through with the first phase of its hybrid plans, as auto suppliers have been preparing for those vehicles.

GM's limited hybrid line

The first will be the Silverado and Sierra, which will be in showrooms early next year and have a limited hybrid system. GM spokesman Scott Fosgard said that by offering at least some hybrid technology in a variety of vehicles, the company will be appealing to a wide range of consumers and saving fuel across the board.

He called GM's plans "the biggest, best and most important news on the hybrid front to date."

But GM has failed to deliver before. At the Detroit auto show in 1998, GM vowed to have a hybrid car ready for the market by 2001. That never happened, though Fosgard said that the company had devised by 2001 hybrid systems that could be incorporated in future models.

The Big Three also promised throughout the 1990s to build an 80 m.p.g. sedan by 2004 as part of the U.S. government's much-heralded Supercar research project. But the automakers successfully fought to kill the project, even after taxpayers spent $1.5 billion on the effort.

GM unveiled an 80 m.p.g. hybrid concept car in 2000 as part of the Supercar effort but said it was too expensive to produce.

The company now says that recent technological advances, particularly in computers, have brought costs down somewhat. GM also says it has discovered ways to incorporate hybrid technology in enough popular models to justify the expense.

Other automakers have promised hybrids, then pulled back.

Last year, Chrysler dropped plans to build a hybrid Dodge Durango sport-utility after discovering that the hybrid system robbed the vehicle of towing power. Chrysler still plans to introduce early next year a hybrid Dodge Ram pickup, but it will be a limited hybrid with fuel savings of about 2 m.p.g.

Company spokesman Max Gates said there is no chance that the hybrid Ram will be canceled like the Durango was.

"The program has been approved by top management and funded," he said.

At Ford, company officials canceled plans for a hybrid Explorer SUV after discovering the technology would cost consumers $2,000 but save less than a mile per gallon.

In one of the most ambitious hybrid efforts, Ford plans to introduce next year a hybrid Escape, the company's smallest SUV. The fuel economy figure is expected to be impressive: about 35 m.p.g. compared with about 25 m.p.g. for a non-hybrid Escape.

Looking to fuel cells

Many industry officials predict that cars of the future will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. GM sees hybrids as the bridge between today's cars and hydrogen vehicles; Chrysler, which is less excited about hybrids, sees diesel engines as that bridge.

Analysts said the future of hybrids depends on sales. SUV and pickups sales continue to climb while hybrid sales remain low.

GM sold 33 times as many Silverado pickups as Toyota sold hybrid Priuses last year -- 653,000 to 20,000.

Even GM's 11 m.p.g. Hummer H2, modeled after the military vehicle U.S. forces used in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, almost outsold the Prius last year.

So in terms of fuel savings, higher SUV sales have canceled out hybrid sales. One result is that the average fuel economy of new passenger vehicles on U.S. roads is the worst since 1980.

Environmentalists say Congress should pass tougher rules to force automakers to improve mileage.

"The public needs to take it out on the politicians," DeCicco said. "It's the politicians' job to balance the needs and interests of the country and come up with solutions and policies."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-01-28-diesel_x.htm

US Consumers Show Growing Interest in Diesels

27% say they would be interested in clean diesel compared to 22% interested in hybrid-electric cars.

Source: USA Today [Jan 29, 2003]

By David Kiley, USA TODAY

DETROIT — U.S. consumers are unexpectedly warming to the idea of smoother-running and cleaner-smelling diesel engines in cars and light trucks, says a new survey by J.D. Power and Associates.

But automakers say diesel choices might be limited because of new clean-air regulations.

Power says of 4,500 consumers surveyed, 27% said they would opt for a diesel if it ran as cleanly and performed as well as a gas engine, while 22% would prefer a gas-electric hybrid meeting the same qualifications. The rest would stick with a gas engine.

The preference for diesels, which get 30% to 60% better fuel economy than gas engines, jumped to 56% if gas prices went to $2.50 a gallon, while 38% would then favor a hybrid.

The results were surprising, given the positive reaction to hybrids the past two years. Honda sells two hybrids, and Toyota has one. Ford Motor will sell a hybrid Escape sport-utility vehicle next year, and General Motors says it will sell about a million hybrid cars and trucks between 2005 and 2007.

"There's a lot of work being done to achieve that, but no one is there yet," GM's Chris Preuss says.

Ford has shelved plans to sell V-6 diesel engines in pickups and possibly SUVs until the technology is sorted out.

In Europe, where gas costs three times what it does in the USA, diesels are in 40% of new vehicles sold.

In the USA, diesels are in full-size pickups and some large vans because they deliver power for hauling heavy loads. But only Volkswagen currently offers diesel cars in the USA — Golf, Jetta and New Beetle now and Passat diesel in the fall. It also plans a diesel version of its Phaeton SUV next year.

Mercedes-Benz is adding a diesel E Class next year, and Chrysler is planning to sell 5,000 diesel-powered Jeep Libertys as a test.

"Offering diesel, which we have ready access to, is a way of attracting new customers and keeping many of our existing ones," says VW of American chief Gerd Klauss.

Diesel has had a bad name since the late 1970s, when stinky, poor-performing diesels were churned out of Detroit to meet demand brought about by high fuel prices.

But the survey shows that automakers now have some work to do on the image of hybrids.

"Even with less publicity, people understand diesel means power, while hybrids have a wimpy image for a lot of people," McManus says

Plan to Push Hybrids in Arizona Could Spell Fight with Feds

Proposal would allow HEV owners access to Phoenix's HOV lanes.

Source: Arizona Daily Sun [Jan 29, 2003]

By HOWARD FISCHER

Capitol Media Services

PHOENIX -- A Maricopa County lawmaker's plan to promote the sale of so-called "hybrid" power vehicles could provoke a very expensive fight with the federal government.

Sen. Slade Mead, R-Ahwatukee, wants to permit these vehicles, which have electric motors, to use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes during rush hours. He said letting the drivers whiz around the traffic jams would go a long way in convincing them to scrap their current vehicles.

But the move will get a raised eyebrow -- and potentially more -- from the Federal Highway Administration. That's because the vehicles use a small gasoline engine to keep the batteries charged.

And that means they emit pollutants.

In fact, federal officials rejected a specific request more than a year ago by the Arizona Department of Transportation to permit hybrid vehicles in the HOV lanes.

Mead said he's aware of that but undeterred.

"If the federal government wants to make it an issue, we can talk about it," he said.

The federal government may do more than talk: It may demand repayment of the millions of dollars of federal aid used to build the system of HOV lanes throughout Maricopa County freeways. And having to cough up that kind of cash could not come at a worse time financially for the state.

The fallout if Mead's legislation is adopted could be more than financial.

Maricopa County's official plan for reducing pollution includes diverting more people from single-occupancy vehicles into carpools through the incentives of being able to use the HOV lanes. If that plan is altered it could put the county out of compliance with its implementation plan which could allow federal officials to ban new construction and sources of pollution.

Federal highway officials have promoted -- and helped finance -- HOV lanes under the premise that it provides an incentive for people to carpool or take the bus. By accepting the federal aid for the HOV lanes, Arizona agreed to operate them within federal guidelines.

In areas of high pollution, changes can be made only with federal approval.

Two years ago the Legislature directed the state Department of Transportation to seek such approval. That produced a one-page rejection from Robert Hollis, division administrator for the Federal Highway Administration.

Mead said he has seen that letter. But he openly questioned whether federal officials would actually try to take funds from the state.

He pointed out that dual-fuel vehicles which can run either on gasoline or some cleaner-burning alternative already are permitted to use those HOV lanes. Mead said he doubts the state ever got formal approval for that.

But those vehicles technically qualify under Environmental Protection Agency standards as low emission vehicles; the hybrids, even with their good gas mileage, do not.

Mead said he doesn't own a hybrid. But he looked at one -- and would have bought it if it qualified to use the HOV lanes.

"Coming from Ahwatukee it takes an hour and a half'' to get into Phoenix, he said, a time that would be pared to a fraction of that in the less-used HOV lanes.

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/01272003/business/9749.htm

Entrepreneur Launches Hybrid-electric Boat Company

Company to use hybrid-electric drive to reduce pollution.

Source: Portsmouth Herald [Jan 28, 2003]

cgillette@seacoastonline.com