SUVS COULD BE GIVEN CAR STATUS; PROPOSAL SEEKS TO PLUG LOOPHOLE.

Byline: Vanessa Blum Chicago Tribune 

Sport-utility vehicles might be too big to fit into some parking spaces, but the popular SUVs are the perfect size to slip through a loophole in federal air-pollution laws.

Along with vans and pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles are classified as light trucks and exempt from the strict exhaust-emission standards that the Environmental Protection Agency adopted for passenger cars in 1990.

But that may be about to change, largely because their enormous popularity has made SUVs, such as the Ford Explorer and Jeep Cherokee, a growing source of air pollution.

On Thursday, the California California Air Resources Board is expected to approve new environmental regulations forcing SUVs to meet to the same anti-pollution standards as passenger cars, and the federal government often follows California's lead.

``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. ``Since 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 many smog ingredients as a passenger car.

If California adopts the recommendations of its 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 the Chevy Suburban and Chevy Blazer.

``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 by 40 percent, to a level well below limits now legal, complained that meeting California's proposed levels would not be possible with state-of-the-art 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 nonprofit group advocating stricter pollution control, called Ford's actions a step forward. ``I don't believe that's as far as they can go,'' he said.

American automakers have reduced per-mile emission levels by more than 90 percent since the EPA began regulating vehicles in 1970. That progress has been offset, however, by a dramatic increase in the number of miles driven by Americans and the sudden popularity of SUVs and other light trucks, according to an EPA study released in June.

``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 of the EPA's Office of Mobile Sources.

Many areas will not meet clean-air standards for the next decade unless pollution from SUVs is reduced, according to the EPA. Before the end of the year, the agency plans to propose more stringent regulation of vehicles manufactured in 2004 and later.

But manufacturers argue that the California plan would 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, is mobilizing members against the California plan. The coalition is a lobbying arm of the automotive industry.

``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.''