Parts Suppliers Call for Cleaner Cars, Splitting With Their Main Customers: Automakers

Parts Suppliers Call for Cleaner Cars, Splitting With Their Main Customers: Automakers
In an unusual joint statement, the suppliers said that “It is in the nation’s best interest”
that the United States continue to develop and manufacture “the cleanest and most efficient vehicles in the world.”
While they stopped short of directly criticizing automakers, which the parts suppliers rely
upon for business, they came down clearly on the side of stringent emissions rules.
The reason: Parts suppliers have a particular incentive to push for cleaner standards, experts say, because tougher emissions rules would spur automakers to fill their vehicles with new, more efficient technologies,
and the parts makers would profit from developing that gear.
MEMA signed Thursday’s statement together with four other groups
that represent auto suppliers: Advanced Engine Systems Institute, the Emission Control Technology Association, the Manufacturers of Emission Controls Association, and the Aluminum Association
In the debate over how quickly to make American cars pollute less, the nation’s auto-parts makers are now in open disagreement with the automakers
that buy the countless transmissions, turbochargers and other components that make up modern automobiles.