Automakers Rated on “Green” Car Protection

A new survey is out that ranks which automakers make the least-polluting cars. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new survey is out that ranks which auto-makers make the least-polluting cars. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Together Ford, General Motors, Daimler-Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and Nissan sell nine out of
every ten vehicles in the U.S. An environmental watchdog group, the Union of Concerned
Scientists, found, as in the past, that Honda is the least polluting auto-maker, followed by the
other two Japanese companies. But, Jason Mark, the author of the report, says there’s been a shift
among the U.S. companies.


“The big news is that Ford has now surpassed General Motors as the greenest of the Big Three
car companies on the strength of voluntary commitments that they have made to improve the
environmental performance of their products.”


Federal regulations allow trucks, such as SUVs, to pollute more than cars, but Ford has taken
steps to reduce truck smog-forming emissions on its own.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Cleaning Up the Dirty Diesels

The rule in driving these days seems to be that bigger is better, with
light trucks and sport utility vehicles overtaking the road. But as
automakers bask in their high profits from the pricey vehicles, a new
challenge looms…how to make them more fuel efficient. The trucks guzzle
substantially more gas and emit more pollutants than passenger cars and
the government is putting pressure on automakers to clean them up. Now,
an unlikely candidate is emerging to solve the problem. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert reports: