The news from Detroit was heartening this week -- robust automobile sales, driven mainly by purchases of sport utility vehicles, minivans and a lot of those fancy pickup trucks that are beginning to look as comfortable as luxury cars. The news from Washington was equally heartening -- a set of tough new Federal regulations that, for the first time, will subject those very same vehicles to the strict pollution standards that apply to ordinary cars. For good measure, the Clinton Administration also announced new regulations that will force the oil companies to produce cleaner fuels.
The new rules are designed to address two broad trends that threaten to reverse decades of steady improvement in air quality. One is that Americans are driving more miles every year -- from 1 trillion miles in 1970 to 2.5 trillion miles in 1997. The other is that standard cars are being replaced by so-called light trucks, a category that includes the popular S.U.V.'s, minivans and pickups that have done so much to bring the good times back to Detroit. Light trucks now account for half the vehicles sold in the United States.
Until now, vehicles in this category have been allowed to produce up to three times as much pollution per mile as standard cars.
Under the new rules, which will be phased in starting with the 2004 model year, both standard cars and light trucks will have to meet the same fleetwide average pollution level of 0.07 grams per mile of nitrogen oxides, which are the main contributor to smog and a significant factor in acid rain. The rules would cut allowable pollution from standard cars by more than two-thirds, and from some of the bigger S.U.V.'s by up to 93 percent.
The rule requiring cleaner gasoline will make it easier for the car manufacturers to meet their new targets. Refineries will be required to cut the nationwide average of sulfur in gasoline by about 90 percent, beginning in 2004. This is vital because sulfur clogs up a vehicle's catalytic converter, the device that cleans car exhaust of pollutants.
Americans will pay more under these new rules, although it is not clear how much. The emissions standards could add several hundred dollars to the cost of vehicles in the light truck category, and the sulfur rules could add several cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline.
The automobile companies seem to have accepted the plan. That leaves the Administration with one implacable enemy instead of two -- the oil industry, which has denounced the sulfur requirements as too tough and too expensive. But ever since the original Clean Air Act of 1970, industry has routinely overestimated the costs of new rules, while underestimating the ability of its own engineers to deliver cleaner products at an affordable price. If history is any guide, that will happen again.
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