GM Goes Green?

American car makers have watched their profits collapse this year as the credit crunch hit sales and crude oil approached $100 a barrel. GM, Ford, and the rest have focused on highly profitable jumbo SUVs and trucks, while fighting any increase in federal fuel economy standards. Now they are scrambling to reverse course (or to look like they are doing so).

GM's vice chairman and product development chief Robert Lutz told Reuters, "We somehow ... let Toyota get ahead of us in terms of environmental technology because they did the Prius hybrid, and we elected not to do that kind of hybrid. We have since realized that letting Toyota gain that mantle of green respectability and technology leadership has really cost us dearly in the marketplace."

Lutz claims that GM will introduce 12 new hybrids in the next 3 years. But the centerpiece of their new strategy is the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid that may manage as much as 100 miles per gallon. Lutz noted that one benefit of producing the Volt would be an increase in GM's fleetwide fuel economy numbers that might be enough to meet new requirements expected to pass Congress soon. In other words, the Volt will make it possible for GM to keep building Yukons, Denalis, and Hummers. By doing what's right ten years late, they'll get to keep doing what's wrong.

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