General Motors says it will oppose any efforts to increase fuel-economy standards for cars, SUVs, and light trucks in the U.S. G.M. CEO Rick Wagoner said on Friday that Americans do not want fuel-efficient vehicles as long as gasoline doesn’t cost much at the pump, at least compared to prices abroad. Vice President Dick Cheney, touring a G.M. facility in Michigan yesterday, assured company executives that the Bush administration had no plans to pursue higher fuel-economy standards. In the meantime, with gas prices higher in the U.S. than they have been in the recent past, automakers such as Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, and, yes, G.M. are running ads touting the fuel-efficiency of their vehicles. Toyota has promised to produce 300,000 gas-electric hybrid vehicles per year starting in 2005; it produced 19,000 hybrids last year.
