All About Alternate Fuel Vehicles (AFV)

Laura Bobak, The Canadian Press /April 27, 2007
Source:
http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=593a16f0-45a8-4948-bcb6-b57bedcd63aa

TORONTO — Vehicle manufacturers and the country’s autoworkers’ union say the Canadian government needs to take it slow when contemplating emissions control regulations that will affect the pivotal automotive industry. Industry leaders for management and unions fear the fortunes of the Big Three will be hit by regulations to be released late Thursday afternoon by Federal Environment Minister John Baird.

Earlier this week, Baird said he’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions, linked to global warming, by 150 million tonnes by 2020, or 20 per cent from current levels. As well, the government has also said it will cut air pollution levels in half by 2015. If the government imposes standards that would suddenly limit sales of many cars currently manufactured in Canada, both sides agree it could harm the industry irreparably.

“It has to be done in an intelligent fashion that doesn’t jeopardize thousands of jobs in the auto industry or the overall economy,” said Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents workers who assemble cars and make auto parts at plants mainly in southern Ontario.

Mark Nantais, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, said Canadian-specific standards would not be cost effective.

If Canada were to adapt regulations as strict as those recently passed in California, 97 per cent of cars manufactured or sold in Canada wouldn’t qualify, he said. The California regulations are still not in effect and are being challenged in court.

In particular, both unions and domestic manufacturers dislike the federal rebate program that would reward consumers for buying fuel efficient and hybrid vehicles, made by foreign manufacturers, and penalize them for purchasing less fuel-efficient sport utility vehicles, large cars and trucks.

“It’s a very disruptive initiative,” Nantais said. “It’s an intrusive measure.”

While executives and workers’ advocates have battled each other bitterly over the years in tough contract negotiations, lately they have been reading from similar road maps as they lobby together to save the flagging fortunes of North America’s Big Three automakers, which suffered combined losses of $15 billion last year.

Ford, General Motors and Chrysler have been closing plants and laying off thousands of workers as they have been steadily losing market share to foreign automakers such as Japan’s Honda, Mazda and Toyota — the latter is on a trajectory to become the world’s top auto manufacturer.

Earlier this week, Toyota surpassed GM in global sales for the first time in a fiscal quarter, in part due to increased demand for fuel-efficient compact and subcompact cars, and partly due to a perception of greater reliability. Toyota produces the Prius, a gas-electric hybrid, and is building a second plant in Ontario. The Sierra Club of Canada says for each litre of gasoline burned, cars, trucks and SUVs produce 2.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide, creating more than 10 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

According to 2004 statistics from Natural Resources Canada, the GMC Yukon produces about 8,100 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per year, while the Toyota Prius produces about 1,930. In the middle is the Dodge Caravan, producing about 4909 kilograms per year. Nantais said the rebate program legislation, which he calls a “feebate” program, unfairly penalizes farmers and rural residents who need pickup trucks, and other people who legitimately require certain types of vehicles to operate their businesses.

With the new surcharges, those people would be dissuaded from buying new vehicles, and will retain older, less fuel-efficient models. He said the government should focus on phasing out the one million pre-1987 vehicles currently on Canadian roads, cars he said have an average of 30 per more more emissions than new models. Nantais said the Canadian auto industry has already voluntarily agreed to reduce its annual emissions by 5.3 tonnes by 2010. He suggested regulations already in place in the United States, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, are sufficient.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association and the Canadian Auto Workers say a better solution would be to simply require all cars ranging from pickup trucks to compacts to be more fuel efficient. The CAW suggests a target of 25 per cent more fuel efficiency by 2014.

“If we throw everybody out of work and we shut the whole economy down in Canada — we contribute about two per cent of the greenhouse gas problem — that will be offset by China, the United States and others, so there’ll be no change at all,” Hargrove said. “It’s just too simplistic, some of the views of the environmentalists on this issue,” Hargrove said, adding jobs lost in North America will simply be replaced by jobs in developing countries.

“Let’s just transfer all the jobs out of Canada to those countries and we’ll all sit around and try to figure out how to buy their vehicles while their people are working and ours are unemployed.” Auto manufacturers employ 50,000 workers directly in Canada, and more than 500,000 when auto parts makers are factored in, Hargrove said.