"In interviews at the New York International Auto Show this month, top executives of General Motors and the Ford Motor Company, both of which make and sell a lot of cars in Europe, reiterated their support for high gasoline taxes - as opposed to stricter fuel economy regulations.

"Anything that can align the individual customer's purchase decisions with society's goals are the way to go," Ford's chairman and chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr., said, adding that his company has previously supported a 50-cent increase in gas taxes.

"(The current federal gas tax is 18.4 cents, and state taxes vary. All told, taxes account for about 24 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.)

"Mr. Ford said the current regulatory system, which compels automakers to make cars and trucks that meet minimum standards for fuel efficiency, "puts the manufacturer in this tug of war that's unsustainable between what the customer wants and what society says it wants."

[...]

"If you want people to consume something less, the simplest thing to do is price it more dearly," Mr. Wagoner said. "And there is just no track record of sustainable success in the U.S. of doing that, versus Germany, for example, which just regularly says, 'Oh, we have a budget deficit; we're going to raise the fuel taxes by 10 pfennigs, or euros, or whatever,' and do that. And I think that's the rub."

[...]

"New vehicles in the United States, meanwhile, are becoming less fuel efficient, on average. In fact, in the 2002 model year, automotive fuel economy reached its lowest point in more than two decades - a result of the industry's successful lobbying to keep fuel economy regulations largely stagnant as the market has tilted to bigger and faster vehicles, like S.U.V.'s and big pickups. And the largest and most inefficient vehicles, like the Hummer, are not even covered by fuel economy regulations - paradoxically because they are so big.

A family friend is writing a book that makes just this argument!

It may be, he says, that fuel efficiency has led to people driving
more because they can afford to drive more. More fuel efficiency
could make cars a more attractive alternative to things like public
transportation.

In Europe, there are very high fuel taxes and (it seems) more and
better and more widely used public transportation than here. Driving
is actually very expensive, and people do it less.

Of course, the fuel taxes are far from the only factor in those
differences, and the whole story is too complicated for me to claim
I understand it.