Gm to Bring Back Electric Car?

The company accused of “killing the electric car” says it’s going to bring a new version of plug-in car back to the market. General Motors recently unveiled plans for a new hybrid SUV. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, the CEO of GM says he’s not sure when the vehicle will be on the roads:

Transcript

The company accused of “killing the electric car” says it’s going to bring a new version of plug-in car back to the market. General Motors recently unveiled plans for a new hybrid SUV. They claim the new technology will get double the gas mileage of any current SUV. But as Dustin Dwyer reports, the CEO of GM says he’s not sure when the vehicle will be on the roads:


GM CEO Rick Wagoner announced the hybrid project at the Los Angeles Auto Show. He said the vehicle would have the ability to be plugged into a wall, to use more electricity and less gas.


The announcement was part of a major speech on GM’s commitment to alternative technologies.


And, although Wagoner set no dates for when his company would have these technologies, Bradley Berman of hybridcars.com says the speech was a big first step.


“For so long, we didn’t even hear the right talk. How can you walk the right walk if you’re not even talking the right talk? At least now it’s the right message. It’s the right way of looking at it. And that sounds promising.”


Berman says GM still has a long way to go to catch up with rival Toyota on hybrid technology.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Cutting the Hybrid Tax Credit

When you buy a hybrid car or truck you’re eligible for a credit on your taxes, but starting in October, the tax credit for all vehicles made by Toyota and Lexus will be phased out. The GLRC’s
Dustin Dwyer explains:

Transcript

When you buy a hybrid car or truck you’re eligible for a credit on your taxes, but starting
in October, the tax credit for all vehicles made by Toyota and Lexus will be phased out.
The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer explains:


If you buy a Toyota Prius in the next two months, you can get the highest hybrid tax
credit on the market, but if you buy after October 1st, you’ll only get half the current
credit, and the credit for all hybrids made by Toyota and Lexus will be phased out
completely within a year.


That’s because Toyota reached a total hybrid sales mark of 60 thousand vehicles in June,
and, according to rules that took effect in January, carmakers that have sold more than 60
thousand hybrids can no longer offer tax credits to their customers.


Bradley Berman is editor of hybridcars.com:


“This cap creates confusion in the marketplace. And that undermines the intent to send a
clear message that consumers should try out hybrids.”


Berman says Detroit carmakers pushed for the cap in an effort to catch up with Japanese
carmakers on hybrid sales.


For the GLRC, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

Feasting on Backyard Weeds

  • Peter Gail holds his favorite weed: the spinach-like lamb's quarters.

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard. There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard.
There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


Peter Gail of Cleveland loves food. He’s got a lot of meat on his bones.


“Gee, you can’t get me to stop. I start eating this stuff and I can’t stop. It’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s addictive (laughs).”


But his favorite foods grow right in his backyard, and probably yours. Gail is what’s
known as an ethno-botanist. He’s on a mission to teach more people about how to eat the
plants growing all around their houses. His latest converts are a troop of boy scouts:


“My grandson was one of the boys in this Boy Scout troop. And when I got over to his
house three days after we got back from scout camp, he grabbed the bag, the plastic bag
of weeds that his mother weeded out of the yard that day and dragged it over to me on the
patio and said find the edible plants in here and show me them.”


Gail says the yard becomes more exciting to most kids when they can sit down and
munch. His own love of the backyard snack started when he was just a boy. His family
faced some tough times. They were saved by a common weed known as lamb’s quarters.


“My dad died and left the family with no money. A friend told my mother we could live
off lamb’s quarters. For six months we went out and every day my brother and I would
gather the young tops of lamb’s quarters and then bring them into the house and my
mother would make them into every kind of spinach dish imaginable, until she learned
how to make a living. And then after that she still, we still liked the plant so we still ate it a lot.”


These days you could pay a lot for lamb’s quarters in a gourmet food store. They’re sold
as Belgium spinach. Or, Gail says, you could just take a quick look around your yard.


Today we’re walking around a backyard in suburban Cleveland. We find lamb’s quarters
at the base of a tree. Some say you can recognize the leaves because they look like the
hindquarters of a lamb. Gail thinks they look more like the silhouette of a Christmas tree:


“You’ll notice it has, when you’re looking down on it, it looks like somebody spilled a
little bit of talcum powder on the very top. It has that little dusting of white that is right on the top and on the underside of the leaves you see the same dusting, but taste one leaf, taste a leaf of that.”


And it does taste like spinach, but the USDA reports it’s even more nutritious than
Popeye’s favorite treat.


“It doesn’t take any cooking. It can be eaten raw, or it can be cooked. It will interfere, if you eat too much raw, with the assimilation of both iron and calcium, so you usually want to cook it. It makes a great addition to omelets, great cooked green, great quiches. Any recipe you use spinach in, you can use lamb’s quarters.”


There’s a lot more than just lamb’s quarters in the yard to eat. This time of year, Peter Gail also recommends sautiing the buds or petals from orange and yellow daylilies. He’s also a big fan of dandelions. He suggests looking for the young, tender leaves because they’re less bitter. Gail says he believes dandelions were brought to America by Italian
immigrants. They’re used in lots of Italian recipes:


“80 percent of the things we call weeds were vegetables brought here by immigrants.
That’s one of the reasons most of the things we call weeds in our backyards aren’t
indigenous plants. They aren’t plants that were from America. They’re plants that are
from Europe and Asia and from South America.”


Gail says over time those traditional foods escaped from gardens into the wild. After
World War II, things changed. Most people started buying food at the grocery store and foraging became unpopular. He says only the poor searched the yard for food:


“One by one, as generations went by, the kids didn’t learn as much the second generation,
the third generation they knew nothing. And by the time we reach where we are now,
almost everybody can walk right by the most nutritious plant going, the most commonly eaten
plant back in the 30s and 40s, and not even have a clue what it is.”


Gail is trying to change that. He wants people to become reacquainted with these plants
so we don’t recklessly destroy them. He travels around the country giving workshops,
taking people on neighborhood forages, and teaching cooking classes. Gail believes we
might need these plants again someday.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Reducing Pvc Use

Environmental groups are praising a group of companies, including Microsoft, Toyota, and Hewlett-Packard. The companies are phasing out the use of a plastic called PVC. But environmentalists say there’s a long way to go to protect the environment from PVC. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups are praising a group of companies, including
Microsoft, Toyota, and Hewlett-Packard. The companies are phasing out
the use of a plastic called PVC, but environmentalists say there’s a long
way to go to protect the environment from PVC. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


PVC, or Polyvinyl Chloride, is a plastic found in a host of construction,
automobile and home use products. When something made of PVC is
burned, it releases toxic chemicals. The most dangerous is dioxin, which
is believed to cause cancer.


Steven Lester of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice says
municipal incinerators aren’t the only ones burning PVC. People in rural
areas do too. He says trash service is much more expensive for those
people.


“Many people find it cheaper to just burn their trash in the backyard and
get rid of it that way.”


Some studies say after industry, open burning is the second highest
source of dioxin in the environment. Only 18 states have banned open
burning, but others are considering it.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Credits for Hybrids in Energy Bill

  • Owners of hybrids like this Honda Insight could save on their taxes. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

President Bush has signed a new energy bill that will raise tax savings for buyers of hybrid vehicles. Supporters predict high credits will boost sales of hybrids, and those cars will save gas. But some experts doubt the move will curb demand for oil. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee
reports:

Transcript

President Bush has signed a new energy bill that will raise tax savings for buyers of hybrid vehicles. Supporters predict high credits will boost sales of hybrids, and those cars will save gas. But some experts doubt the move will curb demand for oil. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:


Starting next year, hybrid-buyers could get up to three thousand dollars in tax credits, depending on the hybrid model. Sounds like a sweet deal, but some environmental groups doubt the move will translate into national fuel savings.


That’s because hybrids make up less than one percent of the car market. Congress didn’t require the other ninety-nine percent of cars to improve their fuel savings. David Friedman directs vehicle research for the Union of Concerned Scientists.


“The only way we could have saved oil in this energy bill is if Congress had actually had raised fuel economy standards or set a real goal for saving, say, a million gallons of oil per day by 2015.”


Overall fuel savings might stall for another reason. The number of hybrid tax credits is limited to 60,000 per car maker. Toyota expects to sell more than 100,000 Prius hybrids this year alone.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

How Long Do You Keep a Polluting Heap?

  • Motor oil dripping from cars can add up and end up contaminating waterways and sediments. (Photo by Brandon Blinkenberg)

Industries and companies get labeled as
“polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the
problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your
Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca
Williams finds herself in that dilemma:

Transcript

Industries and companies get labeled as “polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams finds herself in that dilemma:


(sound of car starting)


This is my ‘89 Toyota Camry. It has 188,000 miles on it. Pieces of
plastic trim fly off on the highway, and I have to climb in from the
backseat when my door gets frozen in the winter. But I got it for free, I get good gas mileage, and my insurance is cheap. But now, it’s leaking oil – lots of oil. I knew it was bad when I started
pouring in a quart of oil every other week.


I thought I’d better take it in to the shop.


(sound of car shop)


My mechanic, Walt Hayes, didn’t exactly have good news for me.


“You know, you’re probably leaking about 80% of that, just from experience, I’d say
you’re burning 20% and leaking 80%.”


Walt says the rear main seal is leaking, and the oil’s just dripping
straight to the ground. Walt tells me the seal costs 25 dollars, but he’d
have to take the transmission out to get to the seal. That means I’d be
paying him 650 dollars.


650 bucks to fix an oil leak, when no one would steal my car’s radio. There’s no way. Obviously, it’s cheaper to spend two dollars on each quart of oil, than to fix the seal.


“Right – what else is going to break, you know? You might fix the rear main
seal, and your transmission might go out next week or something. Your car,
because of its age, is on the edge all the time. So to invest in a 25 dollar seal, spending a lot of money for labor, almost doesn’t make sense on an
older car.”


That’s my mechanic telling me not to fix my car. In fact, he says he’s seen
plenty of people driving even older Toyotas, and he says my engine will
probably hold out a while longer. But now I can’t stop thinking about the
quarts of oil I’m slowly dripping all over town.


I need someone to tell me: is my one leaky car really all that bad? Ralph
Reznick works with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. He
spends his time trying to get polluters to change their behavior.


“That’s a lot for an old car. If you were the only car in the parking lot,
that wouldn’t be very much. But the fact is, there’s a lot of cars just
like yours that are doing the same thing.”


Reznick says the oil and antifreeze and other things that leak from and fall
off cars like mine add up.


“The accumulative impact of your car and other cars, by hitting the
pavement, and washing off the pavement into the waterways, is a very large
impact. It’s one of the largest sources of pollution we’re dealing with
today.”


Reznick says even just a quart of oil can pollute thousands of gallons of
water. And he says toxins in oil can build up in sediment at the bottom of
rivers and lakes. That can be bad news for aquatic animals and plants.
There’s no question – he wants me to fix the leak.


But I am NOT pouring 650 bucks into this car when the only thing it has going
for it is that it’s saving me money. So I can either keep driving it, and
feel pretty guilty, or I can scrap it and get a new car.


But it does take a lot of steel and plastic and aluminum to make a new car.
Maybe I’m doing something right for the environment by driving a car that’s
already got that stuff invested in it.


I went to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan
and talked to Greg Keoleian. He’s done studies on how many years it makes
sense to keep a car. He says if you look at personal costs, and the energy
that goes into a making a midsize car, it makes sense to hang onto it for a
long time… like 16 years.


No problem there – I finally did something right!


Well, sort of.


“In your case, from an emissions point of view, you should definitely
replace your vehicle. It turns out that a small fraction of vehicles are
really contributing to a lot of the local air pollution. Older vehicles
tend to be more polluting, and you would definitely benefit the environment
by retiring your vehicle.”


Keoleian says if I get a newer car, it won’t be leaking oil, and it won’t
putting out nearly as much nitrogen oxide and other chemicals that lead to
smog. Oh yeah, he also says I really need to start looking today.


And so doing the right thing for the environment is going to cost me money.
There’s no way around that. The more I think about my rusty old car, the
more I notice all the OTHER old heaps on the road. Maybe all of you are a
bit like me, hoping to make it through just one more winter without car
payments.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Rolling Out Mainstream Hybrids

  • Like this Honda Insight, the new hybrid Accord will have electricity and gas working in harmony. What's different is that it will have a V6 engine. (photo by Paige Foster)

As gas prices hover around two dollars a gallon, auto manufacturers are starting to roll out more environmentally friendly hybrids that appeal to mainstream buyers. Hybrids conserve fuel by using both electricity and gasoline to power the car. The latest offering comes from Honda. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:

Transcript

As gas prices hover around two dollars a gallon, auto manufacturers are starting to roll out
more environmentally friendly hybrids that appeal to mainstream buyers. Hybrids conserve fuel
by using both electricity and gasoline to power the car. The latest offering comes from
Honda. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:


Honda is bringing a hybrid engine to its best-selling car, the Accord. Unlike other
hybrids on the market, like Toyota’s Prius, this one will be roomier and higher performing.
Anthony Pratt, with J.D. Power & Associates, says those features may woo buyers who typically
have nixed the tiny hybrids currently on the market.


“What they’re trying to do is break the conception that if you’re going to drive a hybrid,
you have to sacrifice performance. in this case, you don’t. They use a three liter, V6 that
has 240 horsepower, so it’s just as powerful as the non-hybrid V6 and you get the fuel efficiency
of a Civic.”


The hybrid Accord hits dealer showrooms in December and will cost $30,000. It will join the
ranks of another hybrid adopted in a popular model, the Ford Escape. And next year,
Toyota’s Highlander and the Lexus RX400H.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Hydraulic Hybrid Gives Fuel Economy a Boost

  • The "Hydraulic Launch Assist" system - the system pressurizes a tank when the vehicle brakes. The pressurized tank then gives the motor a boost of power when the vehicle begins to accelerate. (Photo courtesy of Eaton Fluid Power Group)

Next month, the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a Ford Expedition that sips, not guzzles, gas. It’ll have a new type of technology that should give a huge boost to the fuel economy of big commercial trucks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:

Transcript

Next month, the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a Ford Expedition that sips, not guzzles,
gas. It’ll have a new type of technology that should give a huge boost to the fuel economy of big
commercial trucks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:


(sound of garbage truck)


Every morning garbage trucks spew annoying smog and guzzle fuel. Commercial vehicles, like this
garbage truck, and delivery trucks, get only about 8 miles to the gallon. That compares to 20 miles per
gallon for an average car. But that’s about to change, if the EPA has its way.


The EPA worked with private industry to develop a new way to help launch the engine, called a hydraulic
hybrid. This new technology could double the fuel economy of big, commercial vehicles and cut
emissions in half. It could also make the trucks a lot quieter. Christopher Grundler runs the EPA division
that helped design the new hydraulic hybrid.


“We’re pretty bullish about this technology, because it’s cheap and it delivers other attributes that
American consumers want, meaning performance and the ability to tow vehicles and so on. It’s
particularly well suited for larger vehicles, so that’s why we’re excited about it.”


This hydraulic power source is expected to hike big truck costs by only a couple thousand dollars. That’s
not much, considering the cost of those trucks these days can run 40 to 45 thousand dollars.


(sound of hydraulic hybrid)


Hydraulic hybrids are different from the electric hybrids now on the road in Toyota and Honda vehicles.
Electric hybrids use a small gasoline engine along with an electric generator and use batteries to story
energy. But the hydraulic system is different. It uses a tank that stores energy as a compressed nitrogen
gas. When you want to accelerate, the high pressure gas runs a motor and the energy is used to drive the
wheels. The system uses the energy that’s generated by braking and helps keep the hydraulic system
pressurized. So for vehicles that stop and go a lot, this system is especially efficient. The holding tank can
store so much energy that there’s swift pick-up. EPA’s test vehicle starts effortlessly and lurches forward
like a race car.


Next month, at the Society of Automotive Engineers conference in Detroit, the EPA will be displaying this
technology in an Expedition, Ford’s second largest SUV.


The agency is working with Eaton Corporation. Eaton is a large worldwide industrial supplier that makes
hydraulic parts. Steve Nash is a manager with Eaton and he says hydraulic trucks could be a big market
for the company.


“We know that the greatest benefit of a regenerative braking product like a hybrid hydraulic or electric is
that you need to be doing a lot of start and stop type driving and with certain vocations, such as refuse
vehicles, such as city transit busses, such as shuttle busses and pick-up and delivery vehicles, it’s a perfect
application because they do a lot of start and stop-type driving.”


Eaton first worked with Ford Motor Company to develop the technology. Ford later dropped the project,
but Nash says Eaton forged ahead.


“We saw the opportunities as being so attractive that we decided to continue on our own and that’s where
we are today.”


Eaton’s now working with Workhouse Custom Chasses. That’s a truck manufacturer in Indiana. They
plan to bring out roughly 150 hydraulic delivery trucks within the next year. And that’s just a start.


Christopher Grundler says that commercial trucks burn a huge amount of fuel, so cutting fuel costs in half
makes them a perfect target market.


“Those customers care a lot more about fuel economy than the average American driver. It’s a significant
business cost to them so there is a market for fuel economy in these segments, much more so than in the
car and light truck segments.”


An industry observer says that might be true. Bill Viznik is an automotive journalist who covers
technology for Wards Communications. But he says the systems are really heavy. So they have limited
use and don’t make sense for smaller, personal vehicles.


“SUVs already are large, bulky and heavy and certainly don’t need a lot of extra weight added to them, so
I think at this point to look at adding a system like this to a conventional SUV, like a Ford Explorer,
something like that, you reach a point of quickly diminishing return. If you add a lot of weight to the
vehicle then it makes everything ratchet up from there.”

Viznik says hydraulics can actually make fuel economy worse for small vehicles. But the Environmental
Protection Agency is more optimistic. Christopher Grundler thinks hydraulic SUVs are possible.


“It depends on the SUV. I think for smaller SUVs, it does provide a packaging challenge for the hydraulic
technology, but I think for larger SUVs, the medium to large SUVs, this technology is well-suited as well
as the larger urban delivery trucks.”


EPA plans to announce partnerships with private companies later this year to begin testing the hydraulic
hybrid engines in delivery trucks like those Fed Ex uses. The final determination will depend on how well
they fare on the street.


For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Halpert.

Related Links

Hybrid Suvs Roll Into Showroom

For the past few years, people who have wanted to buy a more energy-efficient car have had to think small. That’s about to change. The floor of this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit offered a look at several new energy-efficient models due out later this year or within the next few years. The auto industry hasn’t sold very many of the cars carrying one type of new technology so far, but officials hope more choices will boost sales. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:

Transcript

For the past few years, people who have wanted to buy a more energy-efficient car have had to
think small. That’s about to change. The floor of this year’s North American International Auto
Show in Detroit offered a look at several new energy-efficient models due out later this year or
within the next few years. The auto industry hasn’t sold very many of the cars carrying one type
of new technology so far, but officials hope more choices will boost sales. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:


At the Toyota display at this year’s auto show, a small crowd formed around the newest version
of the gasoline-electric Prius. Toyota’s sold the car since 1997, and has made it bigger for this
year. What makes this car different is it’s powered by a gasoline-electric hybrid engine. A few
months ago, Denny Jones of Toledo, Ohio ordered a new Prius. He’s still waiting for delivery, so
he drove to Detroit to sit in one at the auto show.


“First of all, I’ve had other Toyotas, so I like the quality. They’ve made improvements on this
one. There’s hatchback. On the first style you couldn’t have a hatchback. They get better
mileage than the first one. And, overall it is a larger car.”


Gasoline-electric hybrid engines have lower emissions and get better mileage than cars with
standard gasoline engines. Toyota says the Prius gets about 50-miles per gallon. But the only
hybrids on the market so far have been small cars like the Prius and the Honda Civic.


Later this year and next, larger hybrids will roll into showrooms. Honda will offer a hybrid
Accord. And Ford will sell a hybrid version of its Escape SUV. Jerry Bissi braved an afternoon
snowstorm to come to the auto show, and was checking one out.


“I prefer to have an SUV-type vehicle for driving back and forth, all-wheel drive, the weather
conditions we have today outside. So I prefer something like that rather than the car.”


There will be several hybrid SUV’s available by next year. Toyota will sell a hybrid Highlander,
and its luxury division Lexus will offer its own model.


“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the world’s first luxury hybrid vehicle, the
Lexus RX-400-H.”


Denny Clements is a vice-president at Lexus. He says there seems to be a pent-up demand for
larger hybrids.


“Our dealers have taken a huge amount of orders just off word of mouth about Prius, I think. I
think what we have when you talk to our customers is there is a lot of very affluent people who
would like to make a statement about Middle East oil, would like to make a statement about who
they are, but they don’t want to make the sacrifices in terms of luxury amenities.”


Toyota says Americans bought about 21-thousand hybrid Priuses last year. But that’s a drop in
the bucket compared to the almost 16-million vehicles sold in the U.S. last year.


“If you added up all the hybrids that have ever been made since the beginning of time, they don’t
equal the production of one high-volume auto plant in one year.”


That’s David Cole. He heads the Center for Automotive Research. He says some people have
shied away from hybrids because they’ve only been available as small cars, and others have been
wary of the new technology. But mostly, Cole says a lot of people aren’t willing to pay more for
a hybrid.


“Where it is going to be in the future is dependant on one thing in my judgment and that is
economics. Can it be done at a cost that consumers will pay for?”


So far, Toyota, Lexus and Ford aren’t saying what their new hybrids will cost. Right now a new
hybrid Honda Civic costs about two-thousand dollars more than the most expensive gasoline
model. The federal government offers a tax deduction to hybrid-buyers to help close that gap, but
it is being phased out during the next few years. Some automakers and environmental groups say
it’s not enough anyway. They want Congress to pass a federal tax credit for people who buy
hybrids.


David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says the automakers’ decision to
offer hybrid engines in more models is an opportunity for the country to become less dependant
on imported oil – if enough people can be persuaded to buy the vehicles.


“If automakers put some of their 10-to-15 billion dollars of advertising muscle behind this, and if
the government is willing to get these tax credits out there, I think we can see hybrids grow into a
significant portion of the market.”


Back at the auto show, Jerry Bissi says he’d consider buying a hybrid SUV. He says he thinks
others will too, if the price is right and they prove to be reliable.


“I think there are a lot of people sitting on the fence. They’re going to watch the first one, see
how it does. If it does prove to be good, they’ll jump on the bandwagon and be late joiners.”


Buyers might need some convincing, though. On this afternoon at the auto show, Ford’s hybrid
version of the Escape SUV drew only a few visitors compared to the crowds surrounding the
standard gasoline-engine Escape and the company’s larger Explorer SUV.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.

Related Links

Suv Hybrids on the Horizon

The world’s largest automaker says it will offer hybrid engines on pickup trucks beginning this fall. The new type of engine is a combination of gasoline and electric motors. General Motors says it will expand its hybrid offerings to several types of vehicles during the next four years. Other automakers are also adding hybrids to their product lines. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland reports, GM says it will need help making the hybrid program a success:

Transcript

The world’s largest automaker says it will offer hybrid engines on pickup trucks beginning this
fall. The new type of engine is a combination of gasoline and electric motors. General Motors
says it will expand its hybrid offerings to several types of vehicles during the next four years. Other
automakers are also adding hybrids to their product lines. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Michael Leland reports, GM says it will need help making the hybrid program a success:


(ambient sound up)


General Motors says it believes there is a strong market for hybrid vehicles, if those vehicles are
the larger models popular with most consumers. At the North American International Auto Show
in Detroit, GM C.E.O., Rick Wagoner said that’s why his company is putting the engines in
pickup trucks, SUVs and midsize cars.


“We play in the whole market. We sell the biggest trucks, we sell the smallest cars, we are going
to offer the full range of technologies, and you know what? The customer is going to buy what
they want to buy. What we are trying to do is, very importantly, offer products that people want
to buy.”


(fade ambient sound)


There are several types of hybrid engines, but most are a combination of a traditional gasoline,
internal combustion engine, and a small electric motor. The result is higher gas mileage and
lower emissions. Existing hybrid cars get as much as 68 miles to the gallon.


Later this year, GM will offer hybrid engines in its Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup
trucks. During the next few years, the company will offer them in other SUVs and midsize cars.


GM is not alone in planning larger hybrid vehicles. In a few months, Ford begins selling a hybrid
version of its Escape SUV, and within a couple of years, Toyota will offer a hybrid Lexus SUV.


David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that promotes a
cleaner environment. He says this is a good trend.


“This allows consumers to own their SUV, own their minivan, own their pickup truck and able to
afford paying gas every month.”


But while hybrids can save their owners money at the gas pump, they also cost more than
traditional gasoline-powered vehicles – as much as four-thousand dollars more. GM’s Rick
Wagoner says that’s why the federal government needs to help promote the new technology.


“Whether that is in the mandatory use of hybrid vehicles in government fleets or extensive
consumer tax credits to encourage retail sales. In our view, both of these will be required and
maybe more.”


People who buy hybrid-engine cars now can qualify for a two-thousand dollar tax deduction. The
Union of Concerned Scientists and automakers say a tax credit would be better. They say a credit
would save car owners more money in the long run.


Analyst David Cole at the Center for Automotive Research says incentives could help persuade
more people to give hybrid technology a try.


“I think today that the consumer is extremely confused by all of the technology that’s out there.
Ultimately what really counts is whether it is going to deliver value at an affordable price, and that
question has not been answered yet.”


GM says it considers hybrid engine vehicles a way to help reduce emissions. The vehicles can
also help reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil now, while carmakers develop hydrogen-based
fuel cell engines. That technology is still considered a long way off for most drivers. David
Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists looks forward to a day when several types of
engines are available.


“When a consumer walks into a showroom, they should be able to choose conventional vehicles,
hybrid vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, and then the market will really shake out a lot of good options
for consumers who want to save money on fuel.”


Only about 40-thousand hybrid vehicles were sold last year. But, General Motors says it hopes to
sell as many as a million by 2007 if the demand is there. The automaker believes the way to
create that demand is through tax incentives.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.