Green cars continue to be a central theme in this year’s US Presidential election campaigns and now the federal government has moved a step closer to granting the $25bn low-interest loans requested by the auto industry.
According to reports in Reuters, Congressional Democratic leaders have articulated their support for the proposal and House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the loans as “very important to our country”.
The loans have been designed to help car manufacturers meet new fuel efficiency standards and accelerate the development of low carbon vehicles. The likes of Ford, GM and Chrysler would receive credit assistance to help move production away from ‘gas-guzzling’ motor vehicles, such as SUVs, and towards hybrid, electric and hydrogen cars. The new fuel efficiency standards require an improvement of around 40 per cent by 2020.
However, legislators still believe that it will be a struggle to get the necessary legislation passed in the short-term with Congress due to break up at the end of the month ahead of the Presidential election.
Chances are that Congress may not reconvene until early in 2009 and if so, the auto industry will have to wait until then. The move faces opposition among officials who believe that taxpayer support for private companies should not be carried out without serious deliberation. However, the auto industry insists that this is merely a means of financing huge structural changes to meet the Government’s own standards.
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