WASHINGTON — Sport-utility vehicles may be too big to fit into some parking spaces, but the popular SUVs are perfectly sized to slip through a loophole in federal air-pollution laws.
Because they are characterized as "light trucks" along with vans and pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles are exempted from the strict exhaust-emission standards adopted for passenger cars by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990.
But that may be about to change, in large part because their enormous popularity has made SUVs such as the Ford Explorer and Jeep Cherokee a growing source of air pollution.
On Nov. 5, California is expected to approve new environmental regulations forcing SUVs to meet the same anti-pollution standards as passenger cars, and the federal government may follow suit.
"These are the station wagons of the '90s. They're used by soccer moms to take kids to practice and pick up the groceries," said Jerry Martin, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. "(Because) they're being used as cars, we feel they ought to be regulated as cars."
When the national guidelines were set nearly a decade ago, SUVs were just emerging on the market, and vans and trucks were primarily used as work vehicles. Today light trucks account for nearly half of all new vehicles sold and produce more than three-fourths of pollution-causing vehicle emissions. Even a lightweight SUV can legally release three times as much harmful matter as a passenger car.
If California adopts the recommendations of the California Air Resources Board, the new emission standards will take effect in the model year 2004. Not surprisingly, automakers are resisting.
"We don't want to jeopardize the role these vehicles play," said Bill Noack, a national spokesman for General Motors Corp., which makes Chevrolet's popular Suburban and Blazer, among others.
"There are consumers who want four-wheel drive, who want the extra measure of safety of a larger vehicle. I don't think you should say to those people, `No, you can't have that,' " Noack said.
Representatives of Ford Motor Co., which reduced emissions in its 1999 model SUVs and minivans 40 percent to a level well below current federal limits, complained that meeting California's proposed levels would not be possible with current technology.
"We're really going to have to go back to the lab," said Ford environmental spokeswoman Sara Tatchio.
This year's emission-control changes have cost Ford about $200 per vehicle, according to Tatchio. "Thus far we have been committed to not passing environmental costs on to the consumer," she said.
Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, a non-profit group advocating stricter pollution control, called Ford's actions a step forward. "I don't believe that's as far as they can go," O'Donnell said.
American automakers have reduced emission levels more than 90 percent since the EPA began regulating vehicles in 1970, but according to an EPA study released in June, that progress has been offset by a dramatic increase in the number of miles driven by Americans and by the sudden popularity of SUVs and other light trucks.
"If we're selling more SUVs and driving them more miles, it only follows that somewhere down the road we'll see the damage," said Marion Herz, a spokeswoman for the EPA Office of Mobile Sources.
The EPA study said that without strengthening current regulations, many areas, including Chicago, would not meet clean-air standards for the next decade. Before the end of the year, the agency plans to propose more stringent regulation of vehicle emissions to take effect in 2004.
Chicago's smog problems fall into the second most severe of five classifications, and area environmentalists hope the California plan to buckle down on SUVs will soon be adopted nationwide.
"Our clean-air plans here in Chicago depend on our cars getting cleaner," said Jack Darin, a field representative of the Illinois Sierra Club. "If a large number of the cars on the road don't have to meet those standards, that will really undercut our efforts to make the air here clean and healthy."
Darin said that technology to make SUVs' emissions as clean as passenger cars is available but that manufacturers are reluctant to make any changes to vehicles that have proven so popular and profitable.
"The auto industry has always resisted efforts to make cars cleaner and safer. We need federal controls to force them to be responsible," he said.
But automakers argue that the California plan will not give them enough time for the research and testing necessary to clean up their SUVs without compromising the vehicles' basic function. The result, they say, would be a generation of vehicles that look like SUVs but drive like cars.
Dianne Steed, president of the Coalition for Vehicle Choice, a lobbying arm of the automotive industry, said she planned to mobilize members against the California plan.
"Even though SUVs are used as passenger cars some of the time, we think that people buy them for a different purpose," Steed said. "If these vehicles start driving like cars, people are likely to go out and buy a larger truck, and I'm not sure that you've accomplished anything."