GM Vice Chairman and blogger extraordinaire Bob Lutz used the spotlight of the New York Auto show to talk about the Bush Administration's plan to raise fuel economy standards four-percent per year through 2017. Mr. Lutz placed a tab of $5,000 per vehicle for the fuel economy initiative, which is a heavy price to pay for an OEM in Aerospace, much less the auto industry. Lutz' comments came in response to a recent Supreme Court decision that the EPA has the express right to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

A Bush administration analysis of the initiative placed an industry cost of $117 billion between 2010 and 2017, with over $40 billion coming from GM alone. The plan, which aims to decrease US oil dependency by 20% by 2017, is focused on several industries, but the car and light truck market could be hit extremely hard. Lutz and other industry leaders are keen to the idea of better-utilizing E85 instead of what Blogger Bob calls an "unaffordable solution". Currently, there are only 1,100 E85-capable gas stations out of 170,000 in the US.

We'd be more than happy to get 20% better fuel economy on our cars, but we probably wouldn't be happy paying an extra $5,000 for it.

[Source: Detroit News]