THE DETROIT PROJECT -- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1) Talk about the origin and genesis of this idea.

The idea for The Detroit Project came to co-founder Arianna Huffington while she was watching one of those outrageous drug war ads the Bush administration has flooded the airwaves with. You know, the ones that try and link using drugs to financing terrorism. Instead of shaking her head in disgust and reaching for the Mute button, Arianna decided to channel her indignation. Why not turn the tables and adopt the same tactics the administration was using in the drug war to point out the much more credible link between driving SUVs and our national security?

Arianna then wrote a column posing the possibility for such an ad campaign and was overwhelmed by the response: over 5,000 e-mails from people ranging from businessmen to students, including people out of work, offering to make a contribution to get these ads on the air.

Thus began our campaign to create a series of TV ads designed to win the hearts and minds -- and change the driving habits -- of American consumers by asking them to connect the dots and think about the effect energy wastefulness is having not just on the environment, but on our foreign policy.

2) Why do you call yourself "The Detroit Project?"

We wanted to evoke the sense of shared national sacrifice -- of joining together to achieve an ambitious goal -- that accompanied the Manhattan Project during World War II. That historic wartime effort enlisted the greatest scientific and technical minds in the country to help protect us from the tyranny of fascism. Now, as we fight the war on terrorism, we need to commit the same all-out effort to freeing ourselves from the nations and terrorists holding us hostage through our addiction to oil.

The Detroit Project is about more than just getting people to give up their SUVs. It's about coming together as a nation to put an end to our destructive and short-sighted dependence on oil, especially foreign oil from the Middle East.

It is once again time for this country to summon the strength, the spirit and the drive that have defined the turning points of this great nation.

3) Why are you picking on SUVs? Aren't limousines also guilty of getting low gas mileage?

There are 16 million SUVs in the United States and 50,000 limos. Do the math, and sure, by all means, give up the limos too.

4) There's another anti-SUV group asking "What Would Jesus Drive?" Well, Jesus was a carpenter. Wouldn't he be driving a full-sized pick-up truck that's every bit as inefficient as a large SUV?

We don't have a problem with trucks used for commercial purposes, but only 28 percent of them are used for that reason. That's a major problem. We've chosen to focus on SUVs because they are not a necessity. For instance, just 5 percent of SUVs are used off-road.

5) But won't lighter more fuel-efficient cars mean a reduction in safety?

SUVs are actually very risky to drive: four times more likely than cars to roll over in an accident and three times more likely to kill the occupants in a rollover.

According to Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, the occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars -- 8 percent higher in the largest SUVs.

And SUVs are not just more dangerous for the people inside them, they are proving lethally unsafe for the rest of us: about 1,000 more people die each year in cars hit by SUVs than would have died if the cars had been hit by other cars. Government research has found that massive SUVs, like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe, kill 122 people for every 1 million models on the road, compared to a car like the Honda Accord that kills 21 for every million on the road. And the injuries in SUV-related accidents are more severe.

6) Isn't the industry just responding to consumer demand?

Actually the industry has created the demand. SUV advertising rose from $172.5 million in 1990 to $1.51 billion in 2000. Watch a Ford or Dodge commercial and you'd think it's vaguely un-American not to own a big car or truck.

7) The United States only imports 12 percent of its oil from the Middle East.

That's a big 12 percent. The US imports 2.5 million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia is our second largest foreign supplier of oil. And at least partly to protect the oil, the US spends $60 billion a year to maintain our military presence in the Middle East.

8) Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are supporting our war on terrorism. So what's wrong with supporting them?

In Saudi Arabia, the money you spend at the pump over here pays for a feudal monarchy that gorges itself on excess while bankrolling terrorist mischief abroad with its support of suicide bombers and the "charitable contributions" that ended up in the pockets of 9/11 hijackers. There is no question that our kid glove treatment of the spoiled princes of Saudi Arabia is prompted by our dependence on their oil.

9) There's a huge variety of SUVs on the market right now. Some are large, some are small, some are medium-sized. Not everyone is to blame.

We don't want to demonize anyone. Arianna herself was driving an SUV up until a year ago, a gas-guzzling Lincoln Navigator that got 13 miles per gallon. It was the horror of 9/11, and the persuasion of her friend and Detroit Project co-founder Laurie David, that convinced her to give up her SUV. Like Laurie, Arianna now drives a 52 miles per gallon Toyota Prius. And they both can transport their kids to school without any problem.

10) A Toyota Prius is a fine car, but it barely holds four people. It doesn't work for everybody. If you have a boat, if you want to tow something, if you have two kids and want to carry the neighborhood kids someplace else you need a larger vehicle.

There are other options: in the short term, minivans are safer, more fuel-efficient, and cause less pollution than SUVs. Same with a family station wagon, which consumes at least 6 fewer miles per gallon than an SUV. No small difference when you consider that an improvement of just 3 mpg nationwide would save 1 million barrels of oil per day.

And in the long term, automakers are perfectly capable of producing hybrid SUVs that get 40-45 miles per gallon.

11) What about the Bush Administration's proposed increase of 1.5 mpg?

It's a joke.

After steadfastly opposing any raise in fuel efficiency standards, the Bush administration let it be known in November that it is considering a proposal to increase the standard for light trucks and SUVs by 1.5 miles per gallon by 2007.

While Team Bush hailed the proposed boost as a major victory in the battle for energy independence, Sen. John Kerry, who along with Sen. John McCain last spring proposed raising the SUV standard by 50 percent, called the 7 percent increase "window dressing." Others labeled it "political theater" and "almost an insult in its modesty."

12) Why don't SUVs have to meet the same federal fuel economy standards of passenger cars?

Light trucks and SUVs are currently allowed to average 7 mpg less than cars. This exemption is a holdover from the Ford administration, and was meant to help America's farmers amid the oil embargo. But the oil embargo is well in the past, and SUVs and light trucks now account for more than half of all new vehicles sold.

And how's this for absurd: if an SUV is massive enough, it's entirely exempt from federal fuel economy standards. That's right, build one with a gross vehicle weight of over 8,500 pounds -- like the Ford Excursion or the Hummer -- and the leviathan's lousy gas mileage doesn't even have to be reported to the government.

Chew on that one and see if it doesn't rev your engine: automakers are rewarded for being particularly inefficient. There's the Bush Free Market for you.

13) If Europeans want to drive Fiats and Mini Coopers, fine. But this is America. Standing on the Senate floor before an enlarged photo of a tiny, purple, one-seat European car, Trent Lott said in March 2002, "I don't want Americans to have to drive this car." And many people agree with Trent Lott.

So much for Lott's faith in American ingenuity. The notion that the U.S. automobile manufacturing industry is staffed by inept managers and employees incapable of figuring out how to increase fuel efficiency without compromising comfort and practicality is preposterous.

14) How much money do hybrid owners save at the gas pump?

A lot. If Americans turned in their SUVs for a hybrid, on average they would save $1,000 a year on gasoline alone. Compare that to the $300 tax rebate for every American that President Bush made such a big deal of.

15) What about tax credits?

Hybrids qualify for a tax credit of a few thousand dollars. In contrast, deductions of up to $25,000 are available to those who purchase SUVs weighing more than 6,000 pounds. The Hummer is one of 38 SUVs that qualify for this ludicrous loophole, which experts estimate could be costing the federal Treasury close to a billion dollars a year.

16) How quickly are SUVs selling?

Overall SUV sales, in a time of war, were up six percent in 2002. Think of that: a six percent increase in vehicles that virtually guarantee our continued inability to thumb our noses at oily Persian Gulf potentates. With slogans like "Keep America rolling," Detroit is offering no down payments or finance charges on many SUV models. GM, for instance, enhanced its "Zero, Zero, Zero" program in December by offering no-interest financing on 13 SUVs for up to 60 months.

17) Prototype hybrid SUVs were unveiled at the recent Detroit Auto Show, and GM announced plans to have a million hybrid vehicles for sale by 2007. So aren't automakers already doing the right things?

The real question is: how serious is Detroit about promoting hybrid cars? It's one thing to make a big show of rolling out glittering "concept models" intended for future production and quite another to commit the advertising and marketing resources necessary to ensure that the industry's embrace of hybrid technology isn't just a here-today-gone-tomorrow defensive gambit for the PR cameras.

GM said it would have those million hybrids for sale by 2007 if demand is high. Well, carmakers spent billions convincing Americans to buy gas-guzzling SUVs. Will they do the same for hybrids? Or will they under-advertise them, allow them to crash and burn, then point to the failure as yet more "proof" that American consumers don't really care about anything other than their precious SUVs?

Cars powered by a combination of gas and electricity have been around since 1905, when the Woods Motor Vehicle Co. offered a dual-powered model. Clearly, Detroit is responding to a shift in public opinion -- but is playing catch up with Toyota and Honda, which have been putting out hybrid cars since 1997. How ironic that if American car buyers want to do something truly patriotic right now, they have to buy Japanese to do it.

18) Some TV stations are refusing to run your ads. What do you think of this?

This is not only an outrageous affront to the First Amendment, it's also illogical and bizarre since many of these same stations continue to run the drug war ads our ads parody. What's the difference: that ours were paid for by contributions from ordinary citizens, while theirs were paid for by taking money from taxpayers? Or that the drug ads have been stamped with the Bush administration's seal of approval? Or is that automakers are TV's biggest advertisers?

Here's what we want to know: What are they so afraid of?