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If they are going to do this they need to open the door for diesels to be sold in California and ease up on some of the environmental regulations for cars that get particularly good gas mileage. If a car gets three times times as many miles per gallon as another vehicle, but gives off twice as much pollutants per gallon, it’s still going to pollute a good bit less than the other vehicle that has a lot more performance reducing pollution controls on it. There are a lot of great diesels and gasoline powered vehicles sold in other countries that are incredibly fuel efficient, but they can’t be sold here, especially in California, because they aren’t equipped with all the expensive performance reducing pollution control gadgets the government requires. Big SUV’s that get twelve miles per gallon are fine, as long as they are loaded down with pollution control devices, but simple little cars getting better than forty miles per gallon can’t be sold in many cases because they don’t meet pollution control standards. That’s ridiculous.

—If they are going to do this they need to open the door for diesels to be sold in California—

Which is *exactly* what is happening between now and 2008.

Virtually every car maker is rolling out 50-state-legal diesel cars and trucks.

Given the new (as of October 2006) diesel fuel which contains almost no sulfur, they are able to make Diesel engines quiet, not smelly, and use new filter technologies which are squeaky clean on emmisions.
(NOTE: With NO performance reductions)

http://world.honda.com/news/2006/c060925DieselEngine/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/daimlerchrysler.html

Whats also really cool is that clean diesels block not just CO2, but they also block far more NOx (which forms Ozone) and N20 (a super potent green house gas from gasoline catalytic converters). And instead it converts it to inert N2.

Just on carbon emmisions alone, a turbo diesel engine is 33% better than the equivalent gasoline engine. Incluing the nitrogen reductions.

A Jetta Diesel is about comprable to a Prius.

Hell, the European Diesel version of the Scion xA gets 90mpg highway.

All the while Diesels offer some amazing torque increases over gasoline. (Roughly 20% increase)

Mix that in with a mild hybrid system, that uses an electric motor and a small battery instead of an alternator.
And you can have a hummer beating out most sedans in mileage.

One again, have your cake and eat it too.