Bush, automakers push alternative fuel

President Bush and U.S. auto executives Monday promoted alternative fuels but did not discuss in any meaningful way their major point of disagreement: government fuel efficiency requirements.

Rick Wagoner, chief executive of General Motors Corp., and his counterparts from Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group appeared to come away with little.

“Fair to say he is not necessarily advocating regulatory approaches but what kind of market-based approaches can we use,” Wagoner said after the group’s second meeting with Bush in four months.

“We didn’t get a lot more detail than that, but that was the tone of the conversation.”

Bush last year annoyed Detroit’s struggling automakers when he told them to make more relevant products if they wanted to reverse their market-share slide to Toyota Motor Corp. and other overseas competitors.

He has reached out to them since and Monday endorsed their plan to make half of their vehicles capable of running on fuel made from 85% ethanol or biodiesel by 2012.

“That’s a major technological breakthrough for the country,” the president said after reviewing three alternative fuel vehicles on the White House South Lawn with Wagoner, Alan Mulally of Ford and Tom LaSorda of Chrysler.

As part of his plan to reduce gasoline consumption by 20%, Bush has proposed a 4% annual increase in passenger fleet fuel economy to about 34 miles per gallon by 2017.

Leading Democrats and Republicans in Congress have advanced similar proposals as the quickest and most dramatic way to cut oil consumption and reduce imports.

Automakers accept that the government will impose some increase in fuel standards probably next year and agree with Bush that it is necessary to change how those standards are calculated.

But GM, Ford, Chrysler and some overseas rivals that make less fuel efficient pickups and sport utility vehicles contend that the type of efficiency increase advocated by policy chiefs and lawmakers would be too costly. They also say it would do little to save fuel because demand would continue to rise.

“We didn’t talk about the 4%,” Wagoner said about Bush’s proposed increase in passenger fleet fuel economy.

The auto chiefs said they discussed mostly strategies for increasing demand for fuels such as ethanol-gas blends, biodiesel and other alternatives to gasoline.

Environmental and consumer advocates said the meeting was a missed opportunity for Detroit automakers to align themselves with the Bush administration and Congress on an approach for making their vehicles more efficient.

Dan Becker, the Sierra Club’s global warming and energy director, said Bush and the automakers were not addressing real solutions to reduce oil consumption and tailpipe emissions.

“Unfortunately, today we saw the same tired gimmicks from the auto industry,” Becker said.