Toyota DOES Advocate Higher Fuel Economy Standards

Hello All -

If you have been reading our blog, Open Road, or the nation's newspaper, you may be aware that we're the target of what we feel is an unfair attack by environmental groups claiming that Toyota is actively opposing legislation that would require automakers to raise their corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) numbers significantly higher. That is just so much codswallop. In fact, we put out a call to action recently in our blog asking for readers to write their elected representatives and demand increased fuel economy standards.

Without going into lengthy detail about our efforts with respect to improved fuel economy and lower emissions, I wanted to share with PriusChat members a letter that we are sending to those individuals who are uncertain of Toyota's real agenda on this hot topic. The truth is we at Toyota want new CAFE standards. We want to move forward with fuel economy.


<span style="font-family:Georgia">Thank you for contacting Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. regarding your concerns with Toyota’s position on federally mandated fuel economy increases.

We share your interest in strengthening automotive fuel economy and, in fact, are actively lobbying for a significant increase in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFÉ). Any assertion by anyone or any one website or blog that we are doing otherwise, is simply not true.

There are various bills before Congress that would mandate new CAFÉ targets by 2020 and require both cars and trucks to meet that standard. At Toyota, we favor proposed legislation known as H.R. 2927, the Hill-Terry bill. This measure is aggressive and calls for increases in CAFÉ by as much as 40% by 2022. Although this won’t be easy, we believe it is achievable. The bill maintains separate categories for cars and trucks.

Please also note the following:

• Toyota has always exceeded federal fuel economy requirements, and our passenger car line-up has the highest CAFÉ rating in the automotive industry.

• Toyota is the only major automaker to consistently improve global warming performance since 2001, thanks to hybrids and better conventional technology.

• We’re totally committed to ongoing improvement of fuel economy and emissions in all of our vehicles. In fact, our commitment to this is so deep, we spend $23 million every day on green initiatives and research.

We are continuously striving to improve our fuel economy, regardless of federal mandates.

So please understand that we, too, strongly support increased fuel economy standards. It’s the right thing to do—and, we hope that we’ve been able to provide a little more insight into our environmental commitments and actions.

To learn more, please visit our corporate blog and see our recent posts re this topic at http://blog.toyota.com/2007/10/post.html and at http://blog.toyota.com/2007/09/irvs-sheet-a-ca.html.

Thank you for your interest in Toyota and the environment.

Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.
Corporate Communications</span>