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Gas-tax hike looks good to GM chiefIn a surprising turnabout, General Motors Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner said Tuesday that increasing the federal gasoline tax to guarantee a minimum price of $4 a gallon is an idea "worthy of consideration."
Few industries have been more vigorously opposed to hiking the gas tax than automakers. But GM, which is betting its future on high-priced, energy-efficient cars, has switched its historic view and is now open to the federal government setting a new, higher floor on fuel, which would act as an incentive for consumers to buy hybrid and electric cars.
"It's great that smart people are talking" about ideas to conserve energy, Mr. Wagoner told reporters Tuesday. He was referring to recent comments by Michael Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, who recommended a huge increase in the gas tax to encourage American consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles.
"Michael Jackson is a smart guy," and his idea deserves to be considered, Mr. Wagoner said at a briefing sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
When the price of gasoline jumped above $4 a gallon in July, AutoNation, the nations largest chain of new-car dealers, had a two-day supply of Honda Civic gasoline-electric hybrids. By the end of the year, when gas prices dipped significantly, AutoNation had a 148-day supply of hybrids.
"I have fuel-efficient vehicles parked at my dealerships as far as the eye can see," Mr. Jackson was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "I can't give them away."
Gas priced at $4 a gallon would be "a good start," Mr. Jackson said. The chairman and CEO of General Motors did not disagree.
The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.91 on Tuesday, according to the Energy Information Administration. To reach $4 a gallon, the federal gas tax would have to increase from 18.4 cents a gallon today to more than $2 per gallon.
A GM spokesman acknowledged that the automaker is thinking about the price of gasoline as an incentive to buy hybrids. "Everybody talks about $4 a gallon because, until gas prices hit $4, nobody saw any shift in consumer behavior," said Greg Martin, GM's Washington, D.C., spokesman. "Only then did people put fuel efficiency front and center."
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 mandated an "aggressive increase in mileage standards," Mr. Martin said. As a result, GM is building fuel efficiency into its entire fleet. However, a lot of factors that raise fuel efficiency "are not particularly sexy," he said, adding that it would take $4-a-gallon gas for the market to shift consumer behavior.
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Go for it, Dems.
But make sure it's adjusted for inflation, too.