GO HONDA!!!!!!

My next car will without a doubt be a Honda!!!



By DANNY HAKIM
New York Times
DETROIT -- When it comes to fuel economy and the environment, there is Honda and there is the rest of the auto industry.

The gap has come into sharp relief as battles rage over how to curb the nation's swelling appetite for oil.

Honda is the only major automaker that has not joined the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry trade group that has led the fight against tougher fuel and emissions standards.

Earlier this year, Honda was the only major automaker that did not back an industry advertising campaign that helped defeat a Senate proposal to raise fuel efficiency standards for the first time since the 1980s. Honda is also not participating in the industry campaign against a California bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

In a stand that amounts to heresy in much of the industry, Honda has told federal regulators that most sport utility vehicles, pickups and minivans should meet the much higher fuel standards required of passenger cars.

And the company, the fifth-largest automaker in the United States, has led the industry in the development of fuel-saving technologies.

"They've sensed there's a market allure to being green, and they've worked at it," said Peter Pestillo, a former vice chairman of Ford and now the chief executive of the auto supply giant Visteon.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler say they can remain profitable only by selling sport utilities and pickups, because they lose money on the cars they sell.

By contrast, Honda is making money in the United States and elsewhere selling mostly passenger cars. Indeed, the company's profit was four times that of GM, currently the most successful among the Big Three, even though its revenue last year was less than a third of GM's.

The average new vehicle sold by Honda in model year 2000 got nearly 30 miles per gallon, about 6 miles more than the average American automobile and more than any other automaker.

Until recently, Ford and Toyota were favorites of environmental groups. Ford's chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr., often spoke out on issues like global warming. Toyota advanced fuel efficient technologies. But watching the two companies support the industry's latest lobbying campaigns, which have gone so far as to portray the sport utility as a species endangered by regulatory meddling, has embittered some groups.

"The only hope I can see for a future with cleaner cars is Honda," said Daniel F. Becker, director of global warming policy for the Sierra Club and an outspoken critic of the auto industry.

"They have repeatedly led the way on technology, they started the race for hybrids, they put on vehicles fuel-saving technologies that Detroit only keeps on the shelves," he added.

Honda recognizes that it has its disagreements with many other automakers. "We cannot agree with the alliance on several issues," said Tom Elliot, an executive vice president of American Honda Corp., the company's unit here.

"It could be CAFE," he added, referring to the corporate average fuel economy standards required by the federal government, "it could be emissions, it could be trade. There are several issues."

Koichi Amemiya, chief executive of Honda's American operations, said in a recent interview that "business and some social obligation have to be equally applied to the whole company."

Despite its heritage as a maker of motorcycles, Honda does not embrace rebellion, and its executives play down their differences with competitors.

"We don't get on the bandstand about it," Elliot said.

But a bandstand is hardly needed. Consider automakers' responses last month to a request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for feedback on ways to improve fuel economy. One of the most contentious issues was the regulatory definition of a truck. When fuel economy standards were introduced in the 1970s, a category called light trucks, which encompassed pickups, was set up for work vehicles used on farms and construction sites. Light trucks are permitted to use 33 percent more gasoline, on average, than passenger cars.

But the light truck category includes sport utilities and minivans, which have become popular. The shift has led to a 7 percent increase in consumption of oil used for driving, even after significant advances in fuel-saving technologies, according to an estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group.

"The functional distinction between cars and trucks (cars for personal use and trucks for work cargo use) has broken down," the federal safety agency said in a statement.

But the idea of coming up with one standard for cars and trucks is anathema to many automakers. GM, in a 336-page report that dwarfed those submitted by other companies, argued that federal fuel standards had not led to improvement on national energy security, gasoline consumption, climate change or air pollution, and added that imposing significantly higher standards for trucks would be a huge disadvantage for the Big Three.

Honda said it would support a combined standard, even though the company sells a popular minivan, the Odyssey, and two small sport utilities, and is adding two larger sport utility models this year.

"There has been a fiction about what a light truck is that has evolved," said Edward Cohen, Honda's top Washington lobbyist. "No one intentionally created the fiction, but the definition that was created many years ago no longer fits."

Honda can maintain enviable profits from smaller vehicles for several reasons. First, it ranks higher in quality than American cars in surveys of buyers, meaning buyers are willing to pay a little more. Second, it costs Honda less to produce a car, because of manufacturing efficiencies, because the company is not unionized and because of favorable exchange rates.

 

ummm, ya.... go Honda for being green... but ummm...

Ford, GM, Chrysler are very important parts of our economy & international standing on the automobile market.

Seeing them LOSE even more money and cut even more employees is not going to benefit you or any of us.


Either way, props to Honda for caring bout our green earth.

 

Isn't this part of the new 5W-20 'requirement' in our new engines? And, per the Amsoil FAQ's, this is a way to look favorable to the environmental dudes in the government.

Anyway, good job Honda! (unless, of course, our engines fall apart on the 5W-20).