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There’s a chart on fueleconomy.gov that’s a graphic illustration of what happened to GM. The chart is a compilation of 2009 hybrid vehicles. It lists 27 hybrid vehicles in descending order from the highest mileage cars to the lowest.
At the top of the chart, perch some of the highest mileage vehicles available on the market, the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic and the Nissan Altima. The top two clock in at 40 mpg and up. The Altima at 33-35 mpg.
The lowest mileage vehicles reside at the bottom of the chart. And the bottom five are all GM products: The GMC Yukon, Chevy Tahoe, GMC Sierra, Chevrolet Silverado and Cadillac Escalade.
You’d expect Doug Fox, the cordial co-chair of the North American International Auto Show, which opens to the public on Saturday, to have some good spin on how this event would rise above the stench of economic panic in the Motor City, and the country.
Not only did he have the goods, by the end of the conversation, I was convinced that this is a pivotal, but not hopeless time for the car industry.
Green Car Journal editors have chosen the five finalists for the 2009 Green Car of the Year award. They include two “clean” diesels — the BMW 335d and Volkswagen Jetta TDI — the Ford Fusion Hybrid, the Saturn Vue 2-Mode Hybrid, and the Euro-bred smart fortwo. The winner will be announced Nov. 20 at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
According to the Journal’s experts, the five models are important milestones for their manufacturers. The VW and BMW clean diesels signal the advent of highly efficient, advanced diesel sedans that meet emissions requirements in all 50 states. Ford’s Fusion Hybrid is the American automaker’s first hybrid sedan. Saturn’s Vue 2-Mode represents the first time GM has used its two-mode hybrid system in a V-6 front-drive platform. The smart fortwo is fuel efficient micro car from Europe that just made ti the U.S. in recent months.
Jennifer Drukker expected people would stare at her new car. What she didn’t expect was this: “I was at the first stop light after I’d driven off with the car. It was literally the first time I came to a stop after driving off with the car,” she recalls. “The driver of the car next to me rolls down the windows and starts shouting questions.”
If it seems an extreme response to a Chevrolet Equinox, a fairly mainstream SUV, consider that the paint job includes the word “fuel cell” on the sides.
Fuel cell vehicles that turn abundant hydrogen into electricity are one promising alternative to gasoline-burning, toxic-fume-spewing internal-combustion engines. Widespread availability of such cars – which emit water vapor instead of greenhouse gases and stuff that’s flat out unhealthy – is years in the future.
But for Jennifer Drukker, Jamie Lee Curtis (yes, that one) and a handful of other drivers, the future is now.
Pushed by the dwindling prospects for fossil fuels, the auto industry is undergoing changes not seen since the days of Henry Ford. Today’s innovators aren’t just looking to gear up production, they’re trying to dial back energy use, and that’s produced a bumper crop of wild and wacky (and some not so wacky) concept cars.
It would cost less to manufacture (and buy), less to maintain, less to fuel and there would be no emissions. The makers of this car, Air Car Factories, are either on drugs or they’ve seized the Holy Grail. Their car would run on compressed air collected by see-saw devices on the road. Each car would be refueled through regenerative driving. The Barcelona-based company expects to begin with electric models, until testing is completed on the Air Car. A green dream? We hope it’s a reality.
That’s right. This is a car designed by a shoe maker. It doesn’t much look like a shoe. More like…nothing you’ve seen before. The car is intended to be “athletic.” No joke. “An athlete training to drive the Nike ONE uses a physical resistance simulator, that mimics the vehicle’s controls, along with the digital simulation within GT4 to train their muscles and mind for specific tracks and competition scenarios,” explains Phil Frank, lead designer, who said his team was inspired by the principals of Nike founder Bill Bowerman. The long term plan is that any movement by the driver would be converted into electricity through nanotechnology using a “Spark Suit.” Frank calls it “the ultimate in convergent technologies.” We agree.
