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TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan: The United States should
consider implementing a European-style gasoline tax if it hopes to
deal with energy security and global warming, the head of Ford Motor
Co. said Wednesday.
“The way to get at is to make
an economic decision just like in Europe where the fuel prices are
seven or eight dollars a gallon,” Ford chief executive officer
Allan Mulally said. “Then our behavior would change
dramatically.”
The current policy of forcing
automakers to maintain an average fuel economy level across their
product lines is not sufficient to cut gasoline consumption and is
harming the industry, Mulally said at an automotive conference in
Traverse City, Michigan.
“I’ve never seen a market
distorting policy like CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy],”
Mulally said.
In order to keep average fuel
economy standards in line, automakers have been forced to produce
more smaller cars than there is demand for in order to be able to
produce the larger ones that customers really want, he said.
While automakers have doubled the
average fuel efficiency of vehicles on the road since CAFE was
implemented in 1975, there are now three times as many vehicles on
the road and they are driving four times as many miles, he said. And
the US now imports 68 percent of its oil, up from 28 percent in
1975.
“Energy independence is really
important,” he said. “But we’ve also got to do it in a
rational way so we don’t destroy a phenomenal manufacturing
industry in the United States.”
When asked by reporters if he was
endorsing a gasoline tax, Mulally said “no, not exactly.”
“I think it’s so important we
all join in this debate and we really decide what we want to do
about energy security and global warming. A piece of that could be a
tax.”
--AFP
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