If timing is everything, Rick Wagoner's could not have been sweeter.
Just hours after the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington heard global warming arguments for the first time in history, a continent away inside the Los Angeles Convention Centre, the General Motors chairman and CEO conceded that Thomas Edison was indeed right about electric cars.
Wagoner, sketching out GM's future strategy on “green technology” in a keynote address at the Los Angeles Auto Show, noted that in 1907 three technologies were competing to power the automobile — gasoline, steam and electricity. Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, backed electricity. Gasoline won out for the next 100 years, though that is about to change.
An explosion of interest in fuel-saving vehicles and the obvious link between oil and national security are having a profound effect on the auto industry, Wagoner said. Oil can no longer continue to be the fuel source, as it is now, for 99 per cent of the vehicles on the road.
“It looks like Edison might not have had a bad idea. It is highly unlikely oil alone will provide the energy for future automobiles,” said Wagoner.
Wagoner said GM now has in place, as part of its overall turnaround strategy, an ambitious plan to develop technologies for cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Electric vehicles will ultimately form the core of the strategy, though in the near-term GM plans to develop and introduce vehicles that can be powered by a number of sources of energy.
“GM's commitment to improving fuel economy, reducing vehicle emissions and developing electrically driven vehicles is not a short-term strategy,” Wagoner said.
“We see energy and environmental leadership as a critical element of GM's ongoing turnaround plan.”
Wagoner added: “We must — as a business necessity — develop alternative sources of propulsion.”
One alternative: the plug-in hybrid. Wagoner said GM is the first auto maker to announce plans to build a plug-in hybrid vehicle. Plug-in gas-electric hybrids will significantly expand fuel economy through greater use of advanced batteries and less reliance on conventional gasoline engines.
Plug-ins, as envisaged by GM and others, would have larger, more sophisticated batteries able to store significantly more energy. The vehicles could go 35-60 km on electric power alone. A small on-board gas engine would be capable of recharging the batters, though ideally to recharge, the cars would be plugged into garage outlets.
Bottom line: plug-ins should provide greater range under electric power than current hybrid models, thus reducing fuel consumption and pollution.
Aside from hybrids, Wagoner pointed to GM's leadership in ethanol and E85 (gasoline and ethanol blend) fuelled vehicles. He, in fact, emphasized that while in the long-term Edison will prove correct about electric cars, in the near- and medium-term there will not be a single solution to weaning developed countries off their reliance on foreign oil. A variety of measures will be needed.
Wagoner was hardly alone. Many other auto industry executives also touted their environmental plans. They were unanimous is agreeing that the stakes are high in the scramble to develop energy-saving, earth-friendly technologies that meet consumer demands for no-compromises transportation, while also cutting the reliance on imported oil.
Wagoner, for his part, noted that the United States imports 64 per cent of its oil and Europe imports 79 per cent. China, with its exploding economy, now imports 49 per cent of its oil, though that number continues to rise. And Japan, he said, imports virtually 100 per cent of its oil. The need for change is obvious.
Executives at German car makers agreed on the need for better fuel efficiency. But reflecting their particular expertise and experience, they eschewed any discussion of hybrids, and instead focused on the fuel efficiency of diesel.
