US Car Manufacturers Say Efficiency is Too Expensive

The car manufacturers have been in Washington griping about the cost of making cars more fuel efficient. GM says it will add $5,000 to $7,000 in today's dollars to the cost of making both cars and light trucks such as SUVs. Their answer: adding a hybrid system to the Chevy Tahoe, butt of so many jokes on TreeHugger last year. According to Forbes, to meet those standards, GM must install smaller battery packs in autos and implement mechanisms that regenerate braking energy and shut down the vehicle's engine when it's idling."After that, you have to start getting into much more aggressive technologies," [GM's manager for energy research and development] Clark says.

No suggestion of perhaps not making any more Tahoes and Escalades and concentrating on smaller, better designed, more fuel efficient cars, just put hybrid engines into the monsters. What are these guys thinking? ::Forbes