Consumers deserve better performance and less pollution than U.S. automakers currently provide. Our experts in diesel, gasoline, and advanced vehicle technologies provide consumers and decision makers with the information they need to build a robust economy based on cleaner transportation choices.

Clean Trucks California Campaign
New proposed regulations could help clean up toxic air pollution and global warming emissions from California's Heavy-duty trucks.  Find out more here.

California's Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Regulation
The ZEV regulation provides a balance between advancing future technology and getting near-term partial zero emission vehicles on the road today. The regulation is evolving—get the latest news here!

Biofuels: An Important Part of a Low-Carbon Diet
Biofuels may have the potential to cut global warming pollution, enhance our energy security, and strengthen local economies. But expanding biofuel production does not automatically guarantee we will realize these benefits.

2007 Energy Bill in Review
Historic energy legislation raises fuel economy standards for the first time in 30 years, boosts energy efficiency standards, and requires a significant increase in biofuels production.

2007 Automaker Rankings

Tips to Maximize Your Vehicle’s Fuel Economy

The Truth about Ethanol

Recent Blog Headlines
UCS HybridBlog

• GM Hybrids, Hybrid Rentals, ZEVs and more
• Clean Car Fight Goes “Hollywood”
• Are Plugin Hybrids the Future of Cars?

• Fuel Economy Campaign
  With the help of our coalition partners and network of activists, we made history in December 2007 when Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) containing the first increase in fuel economy standards since 1975. The bill’s hallmark provision boosts Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards to a fleetwide average of at least 35 mpg by 2020. UCS analysis of the potential energy security, greenhouse gas, consumer, and jobs benefits of the raised standards helped build a foundation of support for the bill. We were a primary architect of the successful push for higher standards, providing ongoing analysis to policymakers and the media, activating our members around key votes, and reaching out to powerful new allies in the business, military, agricultural, labor and faith communities. Our staff held countless meetings and several larger briefings on Capitol Hill to explain the benefits of this legislation to House and Senate staff, and to counter the relentless, well-funded “can’t do” tactics of the automakers and their allies that had for 30 years managed to hold sway in Washington. UCS Clean Vehicles staff was invited to the Capitol to take part in the congressional bill-signing ceremony. It was an amazing moment.
  
  UCS also played a lead role in efforts targeting specific corporations, such as Toyota, to expose their efforts to undermine new fuel economy rules and to bolster public support for stronger standards.
  
  To help set the stage for the congressional action, in April 2007, UCS released its biennial Automaker Rankings Report analyzing the environmental performance of eight major auto companies. This analysis showed that, for the fourth consecutive time, Honda was the greenest automaker of those tested. The report generated substantial print, radio, television, and web coverage. Being tagged “greenest automaker” in our rankings has enough cachet that Honda trumpeted their position at the top of the rankings with a major media blitz that included a 30-foot tall image in Times Square that featured UCS vehicles analyst Don MacKenzie, author of the report.

• Biofuels
  The 2007 Energy bill contained provisions to boost the national Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). The provisions require the production of as much as 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, including 21 billion gallons of advanced, low carbon biofuels. Drawing from the first UCS Smart Bioenergy series report, Biofuels: An Important Part of a Low-Carbon Diet, we worked with our coalition to educate policymakers about the risks and benefits of biofuels and to secure sustainability requirements like greenhouse gas standards and protections for sensitive lands. Our biofuels efforts will continue in 2008 under the UCS Smart Bioenergy Initiative, which was launched to educate and guide policymakers and consumers about sustainable bio-based energy and fuels development.

• Advanced Vehicle Efforts
  In 2007, UCS continued to grow its network of clean vehicle enthusiasts, the Driving Change Network. We activated the network for our second annual “Earth Day Challenge,” which petitioned Toyota to make a fuel economy-focused hybrid minivan option available in the U.S. Over 19,000 consumers signed on to the petition. In 2008, UCS will continue to enhance our HybridCenter.org website content and features as well as promote positive advanced vehicles policies.

• California Clean Cars
  UCS led a state-wide advocacy campaign for the adoption of a Clean Car Discount (“feebates”) program which would provide incentives for consumers to purchase lower-emitting vehicles while encouraging automakers to put cleaner vehicles on the market. Although the California State Assembly failed to move the Clean Car Discount proposal forward earlier this year, we are working to ensure that a feebates program will be adopted as part of the state’s package of regulations to meet its goal of reducing global warming emissions 30 percent by 2020.  We intend to bring the Clean Car Discount legislation back for consideration by the legislature at the earliest feasible time. 
  
  UCS published two reports which were used to help strengthen California’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) program. Although the final outcome of the the California Air Resources Board’s regulatory review of the ZEV Program was mixed, the reports gained widespread attention by media and were used by state regulators to win support to re-design all of the passenger vehicle emissions regulations. 
  
  UCS is actively participating in regulatory and legislative processes to strengthen the state’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which requires a 10 percent reduction in the greenhouse gas content of transportation fuels. Although the LCFS legislation UCS helped write was vetoed by the governor in 2007, it has been reintroduced in 2008 and UCS is working to ensure that it becomes law this year.
  
  Additionally, we worked with environmental justice, public health, and community group partners to promote several state regulations aimed at reducing toxic and smog-forming air pollution from diesel trucks and construction equipment. On July 26, 2007, UCS and our allies scored a major victory when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted the nation’s first regulations requiring companies who operate construction equipment to reduce there emissions over the next 13 years.

• States Lead the Way
  In addition to our work in California, UCS has supported groups in other states in efforts to adopt California’s groundbreaking standards to reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks. So far, thirteen states have adopted California’s standards and several more states are considering adoption. To provide state regulators and advocates with a concrete analysis of the technical potential to meet the state standards, UCS developed the Vanguard, a minivan design that demonstrates the automakers’ ability to meet California’s tailpipe standards. This design would exceed the California standard by cutting global warming pollution by more than 40 percent using conventional, off-the-shelf technology.
  
  The Vanguard design was used in testimony and to garner media attention in several states that were either adopting or facing litigation by the auto industry over greenhouse gas standards. It was released in a news conference on March 1, 2007 along with the launch of a series of online action alerts designed to educate state legislators about the advantages of the clean car standards.
  
  Despite overwhelming legal and political support for state authority to regulate vehicle emissions, including recent federal court and Supreme Court victories, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied CA (and by extension the other states with clean car programs) the waiver they need to implement the clean car standard. In response, UCS activists sent hundreds of letters to the EPA and thousands of letters to their state attorney generals regarding the subsequent lawsuit brought by states against the EPA. We also broke new ground, engaging the EPA directly on their blog, and engendering a personal reaction by the EPA’s deputy administrator on our own HybridBlog.org site. We will continue to work with our coalition, state officials and members of Congress on a strategy and legal and policy response to ensure that the state programs ultimately are implemented and expanded to new states around the nation.
  

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