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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Bartlett guesses that Bush's U.S.-only hybrid press event "was to encourage our stateside automakers to get theirs from the drawing board to the showroom." But he regrets that Honda and Toyota were excluded. "Had I been advising them on the event, I would have advised him to say that they were already here," that the Insight and Prius are ready and on the road and have been for years.
When asked, White House spokeswoman Anne Womack could not think of anyone in the administration who owned a hybrid vehicle, perfectly reflecting American indifference to the cars in deed if not in word. Some blame the auto industry for not pushing their product enough. "I just don't think there's any marketing done," says Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md., who bought her green Prius in February 2001. "Where that reluctance comes from, I don't know."
There have been, however, plenty of incentives already in place for consumers looking for incentives to choose hybrids. In Maryland, Morella brags, she didn't have to pay any sales tax on the Prius, plus she's allowed to use the high-occupancy vehicle lane. (She doesn't use the lane, however, because she fears commuters will see her congressional plates and mistakenly consider her presence in the lane to be an example of congressional arrogance.)
Overall, though, environmentalists consider government action on hybrid technology a mixed bag. Mark accuses GM and Chrysler of sabotaging efforts to provide tax credits for hybrid purchases. With two power systems -- both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor powered by regenerative braking, as well as a battery pack -- hybrids cost more to manufacture. Therefore the auto industry has asked the government for a tax credit for hybrid purchasers. One offered in the House version of the energy bill, in the $2,000 to $3,000 range, was to help defray the slightly higher costs of hybrids versus their non-hybrid alternatives. It was earmarked for hybrids that met certain tailpipe pollution standards, but House members stripped the environmental requirement at the behest of lobbyists for GM and Chrysler who accused Ford of gaming the system on behalf of its smaller hybrid SUV.
The auto industry's response? "We're working with Congress to pass consumer tax credits for hybrid electric vehicles to get more of these vehicles on the road," says Eron Shosteck of the umbrella group the Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers. When pressed about how the environmental requirements were stripped from the hybrid tax credits, Shosteck said he didn't understand the question.
In any case, the energy bill that passed the House last summer included the watered-down version, providing a tax credit for even mild hybrids whose cleanliness and fuel efficiency are not what they could be. The original amendment -- with tailpipe pollution standards -- is in the energy bill being debated by the Senate, offered by Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. But Mark reports that Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Kit Bond, R-Mo., are planning an amendment to undermine that as well.
But environmental lobbyists say that tax credits for hybrid purchases are not enough."We need higher fuel economy standards to really push hybrid fuel technology into the market," says Mark. Daschle's bill also would do that, raising fuel efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2013. But Bush argues that tougher fuel efficiency standards should be voluntary, and the auto industry is also beginning to cite studies that hit consumers where they live, literally, saying that lighter cars would cost 2,000 a lives year according to some studies.
Last week, in an indication of how high-profile this issue, with its national-security angle, is becoming, two of the highest-profile members of the Senate, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., announced they had reached agreement on a bipartisan bill "to increase fuel efficiency and help reduce reliance on foreign oil." The Kerry-McCain bill requires the secretary of transportation to set rules with the goal of achieving an average fuel economy standard of 36 miles per gallon by 2015.
