Americans Sold on SUVs
* As a result of my recent visit to Rome, I am now praying for $4-per-gallon gasoline. It is amazing what $4-per-gallon gasoline can do! Approximately one-third of the vehicles on the road in Rome are motor scooters. The rest are very small/cute (“smart”) automobiles. I was also amazed at how uniformly slim, trim, fashionable and attractive the Italian people are.
Back home in Los Angeles I am distressed with the abundance of obese Americans driving big, ugly SUVs. It’s back to the 1960s--Americans are driving big, powerful, gas-guzzling, polluting vehicles through federal loopholes large enough to drive a truck (SUV) through. SUVs have set the air-quality, environmental and energy-conservation movements back 40 years.
Rather than hold my breath for our do-nothing Congress to close the SUV loopholes, I’m praying that an energy shortage and higher gasoline prices take the SUVs off the road.
BLAIR BERKLEY
Monrovia
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“A Clear Lane: Low-Emission Cars Are Few, but They Roll Freely” (July 14) accurately portrays the joy and frustration we electric vehicle (EV) drivers feel. Joy in never buying gas, having smog checks or oil changes. Joy in driving clean, quiet, convenient vehicles that are fun to drive and more environmentally friendly than fossil-fuel vehicles. Joy at driving in carpool lanes solo and not being stuck in traffic.
Our joy is tempered by the frustration we feel due to the auto makers, after building phenomenal vehicles, doing such a poor job marketing them. Donn Walker, from GM, said, “The market for electric vehicles is very small.” Rather, it is the “marketing” that is small. How many advertisements have you seen for EVs versus SUVs? Watch any TV show and you will be inundated with ads aimed at convincing you that you need an 8,000-pound, 10-mpg, four-wheel-drive SUV, seating eight and capable of towing the Queen Mary even though you drive alone 99% of the time, never leave paved roads--and you don’t own a boat!
On the contrary, auto makers are doing everything they can to make EVs fail; from minimal marketing to making it difficult to lease a vehicle to not having any product available to lease. Walker even conceded that GM cannot fill current orders.
This hypocrisy is why the Air Resources Board must maintain the zero-emission vehicle mandate forcing auto makers to make ZEVs. Our health and environment depend upon it.
JIM MONTGOMERY
Redondo Beach
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SUV this, SUV that. From what’s printed in the paper, one would think that SUVs are machines from hell and the drivers are the devil incarnate. Come on, people, get over it.
JEAN OSTLER
Glendora
