Automakers Drop Suits Over Clean-Air Regulation - (NYT)

[goforit]

Automakers Drop Suits Over Clean-Air Regulation-(NYT)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/business/12AUTO.html>

Associated Press
Electric cars like these at a G.M. installation in the San Fernando Valley have helped meet California air rules.

By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, Aug. 11 — General Motors and DaimlerChrysler are dropping lawsuits against California over a landmark clean-air regulation that requires the production of millions of low-emission cars and trucks over the next decade and a half.

The move creates a temporary but momentous environmental truce between the auto industry, which has blocked the zero-emission vehicle mandate that was set in motion in 1990, and California, which wields enormous influence over the global industry.

The threat of the Z.E.V. mandate, as it is known in the trade, spurred the development of hybrid vehicles, which supplement gasoline with electric power. Now, with the dropping of the legal challenge — unless other hurdles emerge — every major automaker will have to start selling a range of vehicles with low emission levels of smog-forming pollutants, like hybrids and specially modified gas cars, in a plan that will phase in such vehicles in California between 2005 and 2020.

Automakers will also have to sell tens of thousands of zero-emission vehicles, either battery-powered cars or, far more likely in the long term, vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

Con't.............

[goforit]

1. This is blatantly obvious!!!!....assume Arnold will win and change rules?

These Auto makers are pathetic!!!!

With this type of behavior, they are certainly loosing the heart of the consumer!!!!

Buy Japanese or South Korean!!!

[goforit]

2. Will the consumer choose not to buy American?

Hmmmmm.....

[newyawker99]

4. goforit

Per DU copyright rules
please post only 4 paragraphs
from the news source.


Thank you.

NYer99
DU Moderator

[Rose Siding]

3. The Feds were in this suit. Did they drop it?

Automakers, Bush fight state emission proposal

February 14, 2003 — 8:39 a.m.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Bush administration and automakers urged a federal appeals court Thursday to nullify California rules demanding that car manufacturers reduce emissions or increase miles per gallon for new vehicles sold in the state.

As California was defending the rules in court, state regulators said they are revising regulations for electric and hybrid vehicles they released just last month.

The case before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals centers on a Fresno federal judge's order last year that barred California from demanding that 10 percent of automakers' fleets sold here produce zero emissions beginning next year.
snip>
The government's oral argument and briefs centered only on the separation of powers between the states and federal government. In an interview after the hourlong hearing, Loeb said the government's alignment with automakers was not based on the president's State of the Union address.

An hour before the hearing, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer offered his own explanation for the Bush administration's intervention.

"The federal government and polluters are synonymous," Lockyer said.

http://www.redding.com/news/state/past/20030214topstate083.shtml

This has more to do with the recall than the Bush economy does, imo.
Some other factors:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=149272&mesg_id=149272