NYTimes.com
March 26, 2004
By DANNY HAKIM

DETROIT, March 25 - In the face of rising gasoline prices and stagnating fuel efficiency, Senator John Kerry is sticking with a plan he backed in the Senate to increase the nation's fuel economy standards 50 percent by 2015. That would be the largest increase, by far, since automotive fuel economy standards were first imposed after the oil shocks of the 1970's.

Few think even Mr. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, could actually make good on such a plan if he were elected president, because there is too much opposition from Congressional Republicans and Midwestern Democrats. When Senator Kerry and Senator John McCain pushed such a proposal two years ago, it failed in the Senate on a 62-to-38 vote.

But Mr. Kerry's emergence as the likely Democratic nominee has reinvigorated debate in Detroit and Washington about the nation's plummeting fuel economy.

Environmental groups say they believe that bolstering fuel regulations would be Topic A, or close to it, in a Kerry presidency. The Bush campaign says the Kerry plan would have a devastating effect on a region already hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs. Automakers say they do not have the technology to meet his numbers.

And a who's who of top Democrats in Michigan, considered a battleground state, have been pressing Mr. Kerry to scale back.

"We've all talked to the Kerry camp individually, and together," said Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, a Democrat whose husband is one of two state campaign chairmen for Mr. Kerry.

"We've had meetings with their people, there's been a series of discussions on this," she said, adding, "he is not wedded to a particular miles per gallon and wants to work with the auto manufacturers and do this in a cooperative fashion."

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, also said in an interview that Mr. Kerry was "not locked into any particular approach or any particular number."

But the Kerry campaign Web site says "we should increase our fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015," and the senator's campaign staff said he was sticking to that number, which is similar to his Senate proposal.

Cars and trucks, combined, are now required to average about 24 miles a gallon when they are tested in a lab by the Environmental Protection Agency. Out of the lab and on streets and highways, however, cars and trucks averaged 20.4 miles a gallon in the 2002 model year, the lowest point since 1980. And that figure excludes the largest and least-fuel-efficient vehicles, like Hummers, which are exempted from the regulatory system altogether.

Any current discussion of fuel economy is colored by the conflict in the Middle East, rising gas prices and surging global demand for oil, particularly in China. But amending corporate average fuel economy rules - known as CAFE standards - is also fraught with questions about jobs and safety.

Jobs, because the traditional Big Three - General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Group division of DaimlerChrysler - argue that raising standards would benefit foreign-based rivals, particularly an automaker like Honda that does not sell the largest vehicles. Safety, because one way to improve fuel economy is to make lighter vehicles, which tend to fare worse in crashes with heavier ones.

But the safety question has been complicated by the boom in sport utility vehicles and large pickup trucks, which are heavy but less stable than cars. And a recent government study said lightening the heaviest S.U.V.'s and pickups would save lives by making them less lethal in collisions with other vehicles.

The Kerry approach stands in contrast to the Bush administration's plan to overhaul fuel economy standards for light trucks, a regulatory category that includes S.U.V.'s, pickups and minivans. Though the planning is in its early stages, administration officials have said saving gas is not their top priority. They have envisioned a plan that would potentially do away with a single fleetwide average for light trucks and replace it with multiple mileage targets, depending on size or weight, on the theory such a plan would save lives.

The two sides cited competing studies to bolster their arguments. Scott Stanzel, President Bush's campaign press secretary, said an analysis by the Energy Information Administration concluded that the Kerry plan would cost 450,000 jobs and result in $170 billion in "lost economic output" from 2003 to 2020.

David Wade, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said his candidate "won't accept George Bush's false choice between the environment and jobs."

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