The Houston Chronicle reports that Nissan spent $3.9m last year on lobbying in Washington, D.C. What's Nissan's beef with the feds? "The U.S. segment of the Japanese automaker lobbied Congress on anti-dumping, currency exchange-rate manipulation and other trade competitiveness issues. The company also lobbied on renewable energy and average fuel economy standards, among other issues." While we'd like a LOT more specific info, it's worth seeing that number in context. According to Opensecrets.org, Toyota spent $2,730,000 and GM spent $6,420,000 on lobbying legislators in '07. Despite the recent battle over federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, both GM and Toyota forked-out about $2m less on their lobbying efforts than they did in the previous year. What does all that tell you? Seriously; I have no idea.
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my guess is that since toyota has vehicle that are environmental friendly they will tend to spend less money lobbying in DC. GM and Nissan on the other hand never reallt had a gasp with vehicles that are envirnmental friendly. So of course they are going to spend more trying to stop or block or influence lawmakers in DC to allow them a little more leverage when designing and producing their vehicles.
Toyota is now deep into gas guzzlers also, so your statement is false. Where do you leave the Tundra?. Even the Lexus LS600h is a guzzler or being hybrid makes it instantly environmentally “responsible”?. They have the IMAGE of being enviroment friendly with the Prius, and can launch guzzlers like the Tundra and nobody throws stones at them.
I remind you that the first to market with an EV was GM, not Toyota, and in Europe many others: Fiat etc…
A big Audi, BMW or Mercedes with a diesel emits less CO2 than the Lexus barge ;) and guzzles a lot less fuel than a gas engine –> better solution ;).
Although the reasons for both GM AND Toyota reductions are interesting…
A few years back, Nissan managed to lobby for getting Mexican-built cars under their US tally – can’t recall if it was for CAFE or something else.