Why Be Soft on Utility Vehicles?
“It’s Sunday,” reads the magazine ad for a rugged sport utility vehicle, “and somewhere out there, some poor sap is plopped down in front of the tube wolfing down a pastrami and rye. You, on the other hand, are flying down some hill named for a form of medieval torture trying not to eat a bowl of mud.” This is how a new generation of American vehicles is being marketed: big, tough, full of power and luxury, the ticket to adventure. Drive this baby and escape sapdom.
The reality is that the immensely popular SUV is the town car of the late 1990s, designed for the roadless wilderness but in fact used to drive to the supermarket, to and from school, to get the cleaning, ferry kids to soccer practice and then cruise out to dinner and a movie. Nearly half of all new vehicles sold today are SUVs.
They are costly, heavy, powerful and they guzzle gasoline and pollute the air. Officially classed as light trucks, the utility vehicles are subject to far fewer pollution controls than are passenger autos. When emission standards were first adopted, the small number of pickup trucks and the few models of utility vehicles that existed then were used mostly on the job. They were truly utilitarian.
Now, staff experts at the California Air Resources Board are proposing that most light trucks, minivans and sport utility vehicles be required to meet the same pollution standards as passenger cars. They are urging the board to adopt the rule a year from now and apply it first to the 2004 model-year vehicles.
The auto industry has fallen into predictable protest mode. Industry officials claim the proposal is premature. They say they need more time for design and testing. State officials counter that the technology is available now.
We are confident the auto makers are up to the challenge of meeting the tougher controls. These are take-charge people who can make sporty vehicles that climb every mountain and ford every stream. They are not the sort to sit at home in front of the tube on Sunday with a pastrami and rye. They need to harness all that energy and spirit and just do it.
