Honda Bucks Fellow Automakers Supports CAFE

The WALL STREET JOURNAL reported today that Honda Supports Boost to CAFE, Undercutting Rival Auto Makers. As the Senate prepares as early as today to debate whether to toughen the nation's auto-mileage rules, environmental activists aren't the only ones criticizing the Big Three U.S. auto makers' opposition to a big boost.

Also actively undercutting the industry is one of its own: Honda Motor Co. In recent weeks, the rest of the auto industry -- not just the Big Three, but also Japanese car makers including Toyota Motor Corp. -- has stampeded Capitol Hill to squash calls for a big increase in the government's Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards. Honda prefers to operate through "under-the-radar activities like bringing our engineers in and having talks with both sides of the aisle," says Edward B. Cohen, the head of Honda's Washington lobbying shop since September 2000.

The Japanese company makes no campaign contributions, but it has been feeding information to CAFE proponents in the Senate to help them derail the industry's fuel-economy assault. Honda's counsel has proved crucial in emboldening a bipartisan group of senators to propose that auto makers be required to raise the average fuel economy of their fleets by about 50 percent -- to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 from about 24 today.

The other auto makers argue that there is no technology to significantly improve fuel economy without throwing them into an economic tailspin, and that any big CAFE increase would force the industry to make its vehicles lighter and thus less safe.