The nation's largest car companies on Monday sought to persuade a federal judge to toss out California's strict tailpipe emissions standards, which they say could wreck the domestic auto market and trigger job losses at auto plants and dealerships nationwide.
The standards, which were passed into law in 2002, force automakers to build cars and light trucks that pump out 30 percent less greenhouse gases by 2016. More than a dozen other states have vowed to adopt them.
The auto industry also has filed three federal suits challenging the rules' validity, asking the courts to scrap the standards on grounds they require manufacturers to produce vehicles using too many different fuel efficiency standards.
California can set its own vehicle pollution standards because it started regulating air pollution before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was created.
AP
Rather than moving forward with green vehicles, as European and Japanese car manufacturers already have, Detroit is choosing to lay on the ground kicking and screaming. Petulance through litigation. What a sad commentary on a once groundbreaking sector of the US economy.
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