Green Cars: A Tough Sell

  • Hybrid cars like this Honda Insight look good to consumers at first...until they see the price tag. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

We’re hearing a lot more from automakers these days about new
technologies that will save you gas. Most of the technologies they talk about
are not in showrooms yet. So when will they be? And which technologies
will find their way to your car first? Dustin Dwyer has some answers:

Transcript

We’re hearing a lot more from automakers these days about new
technologies that will save you gas. Most of the technologies they talk about
are not in showrooms yet. So when will they be? And which technologies
will find their way to your car first? Dustin Dwyer has some answers:


There is already one kind of car out there that will save you a lot of gas. You’ve heard of
it before. It’s a hybrid. And it seems like everyone says they want one. They say they do:


“I live in the world where I don’t deal with what people say they think, or what they give
to a survey. I live in the world where they write the check.”


That’s Mike Jackson. He’s the head of the country’s largest chain of car dealerships –
Autonation. Jackson is pretty much the prototypical, no-nonsense businessman. He’s also
somewhat of an unlikely environmentalist, but Jackson doesn’t have much faith in today’s
hybrids:


“70% of our customers want to talk about hybrids when they walk through the door.
They’re aware of it. They think it’s a great idea. And they’re predisposed to buy hybrids.
You then get them at the table.”


Jackson says that’s when the customer asks how much extra the hybrid costs, and how
long it takes to make that money up by saving at the pump. That’s when the deal falls
apart:


“And we have a two percent closing rate.”


Jackson says, plain and simple, most people just aren’t willing to pay the extra money to
get a hybrid. So he says to really cut gas use, the industry still needs mass market
solutions, and the first technology that he’s looking out for is something that Ford
announced earlier this year. Ford’s chief marketing guy, Jim Farley calls it Ecoboost:


“Which uses direct fuel injection and turbocharging to get big engine power and all that
low end torque we love from smaller, inherently more fuel efficient engines.”


Direct injection and turbocharging have been around,
but mostly as a way to make cars go faster. Now the idea is to use them on small engines
so that when a customer comes in and wants a big powerful engine, Ford can give them
Ecoboost, which promises the same power with 20 percent less gas, and 15 percent fewer
CO2 emissions. Ford plans to put Ecoboost in more than half a million cars per year
within the next five years.


In that same time frame, you can also expect to see more diesel engines coming out from
all the automakers. Diesel will get you better mileage, and it’s now cleaner in some ways
than gasoline. But it can create more smog-forming gases such as nitrous oxide.


Ethanol is also still out there. But at best, most people say today’s corn ethanol really
doesn’t save any fossil fuels when you look at what it takes to raise the corn. So the big
hope is cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from grasses, or even used tires.


Nobody’s found a good way to make it yet and Mike Jackson, the no-nonsense car
salesman, says he’s not holding his breath. Instead, he’s looking for the real game
changer – hybrid vehicles that can be charged through a wall socket and run on electricity
alone for miles before a gas engine has to kick in. Jackson expects those plug-in hybrids
on the road within five years:


“The cost-benefit ratio is going to be so compelling, and people are going to be so
enthralled at the idea they don’t have to go to the gas station, just go home and plug it into
the socket, this idea will win over American consumers.”


The auto companies are scrambling to make a plug in hybrid. Right now the race is
basically between General Motors and Toyota. Both say they might be able to build a
plug in hybrid by 2010.


The problem is the battery. To get the higher charge, hybrids need a new kind of battery –
something called a lithium ion battery. It’s the same kind of battery, it turns out, that’s
used in your cell phone, but there are some challenges scaling that up for an automobile.
Lithium ion batteries can overheat, and right now they’re more expensive than the
batteries in today’s hybrids.


But Bob Lutz at General Motors says you can bet those problems will be solved:


“Every manufacturer in the world is hot on the trail of lithium ion technology, and the
battery manufacturers all say it’s going to work.”


And once you have viable lithium ion batteries, you’re talking about cars that can get
more than 100 miles to the gallon or better.


Most people say the next step is hydrogen fuel cells. With the fuel cells, you put
hydrogen in, and the only thing that comes out of the tail pipe is water vapor.
Some in the industry say fuel cells could be ready for the mass market in the 2020s.
Mike Jackson isn’t so sure. He pegs the arrival of fuel cells at somewhere between not in
our lifetime and never.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Autos Part 1: Making Green Mainstream

  • Fisker Automotive plans to sell 16,000 of its Karma plug-in hybrid sports cars beginning in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Fisker Automotive)

For a lot of people, the words “hybrid vehicle” bring to mind dinky little
commuter cars that would get creamed in the fast lane. But red-blooded
horsepower fans might soon be able to get speed, performance, and fuel
efficiency in the same car. In the first of a two-part series on green cars, Sarah Hulett brings us this story about the marriage of
mean and green:

Transcript

For a lot of people, the words “hybrid vehicle” bring to mind dinky little
commuter cars that would get creamed in the fast lane. But red-blooded
horsepower fans might soon be able to get speed, performance, and fuel
efficiency in the same car. In the first of a two-part series on green cars, Sarah Hulett brings us this story about the marriage of
mean and green:


Tougher fuel economy standards are on the horizon, and record oil prices are
already here. So it’s no surprise to hear auto executives talking up the green
virtues of their products.


(Montage:) “GM will continue to drive the development of electrically-
driven vehicles…It’s Chrysler’s mission more environmentally responsible…plug-in hybrid…Saturn has a green
heritage…more fuel efficient, more environmentally-friendly vehicles.”


But typically, performance has taken a back seat to fuel efficiency, and vice
versa.


David Cole is president of the Center for Automotive Research. He says in
the past, the auto industry has taken a bipolar view of the car-buying public:


“One pole was fun, people want to have fun in a car, and another pole was
green, and if you’re green you’re probably not going to have a lot of fun. But
I think what we’ve seen is that they’ve come together.”


(Eric Merkle:) “That was the most unusual thing I saw at this year’s auto show: a biofuel
Ferrari, a Ferrari that runs on corn.”


Erich Merkle is an auto analyst with IRN. That’s a car industry consulting
firm. Merkle is talking about the recent Detroit auto show where Ferrari
showed an F430 Spider with a biofuel engine:


“It just seems so… odd, I guess, to see a vehicle like an F430 running on
ethanol. But Ferrari’s trying to put their hat in, throw their hat into the ring
too, and trying to do their part.”


Ferrari officials say the biofuel sports car is part of the company’s effort to
cut its emissions by 40% over the next five years, and Ferrari’s not the only
luxury performance car company offering wealthy car buyers a greener
option.


Fisker Automotive has a plug-in hybrid it plans to put on the market by the
end of next year. The Karma sports car has batteries that can power the car
for 50 miles. It also has a high-performance, four-cylinder engine for
backup:


“This re-defines performance. It’s performance that doesn’t hurt the
environment.”


Vic Doolan is the former president of BMW North America, and he now sits
on the board at Fisker. He says the Karma can do zero to 60 in under six
seconds:


“The person buying this car will want to drive a nice car, want to be seen in
the right circles, but on the other hand, they want to do something that not
only feels good to drive, but feels good to the heart. It’s to my mind a car
with a conscience, and I think it’s for people with a conscience – about the
environment, at least.”


A Fisker Karma could be yours for 80,000 dollars.


But analyst Erich Merkle says he’s not overly optimistic about the greening
of the luxury, high-performance car market:


“I still don’t think it’s the customer that’s really asking for that. And the other
thing you have to ask yourself is what kind of a difference can a company
like Fisker actually make. Sure, it’s nice, it’s something to see, and
something to kind of ooh and aah over. But at the end of the day, it’s still a very,
very low-volume vehicle, if it even makes it to market.”


Fisker plans to make 16,000 of the sports cars. That’s not a lot of volume.
But the big companies are also looking to sell efficient performance vehicles
to the masses.


Chrysler design chief Trevor Creed says the company had a certain customer
in mind when it created its Dodge concept sports wagon:


“They want to be environmentally responsible, but they also have a need for
speed. We can meet all of those needs, by combining our shared electric
motor with a lightweight aluminum structure to create a future performance
vehicle like this. Ladies and gentlemen: the Dodge ZEO.”


You’re probably not going to see the electric-only ZEO in your local Dodge
dealer lot any time soon, but another big car company is making
turbocharged engines that’ll be available in some cars as soon as this year.
Ford’s EcoBoost powertrain promises 20% better fuel economy, without
sacrificing performance. So Ford says its new cars will be fast, and efficient.


And if you’re looking for a cool, green car for your mid-life crisis but the
Ferarri’s out of your reach, the sporty plug-in Chevy Volt is expected to be
available in 2010.


For the Environment Report, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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