What will GM do now? (Pt 2)

With Honda about to introduce a fuel cell car, The Wall Street Journal says that GM is hustling to green itself. But you don't have to read too far between the lines to think that it's just a thin coat of green paint.

"We have to have people think we are part of the solution, not part of the problem," said Lawrence Burns, GM's vice president for research and development and global planning."

[so at first they thought ethanol vehicles would do the trick--this part snipped]

By early last year, Mr. Lutz and others had concluded GM had to do come up with a much more dramatic idea for addressing global warming and oil consumption -- a environmental "halo" vehicle, such as the Prius, that would cast a glow over GM's entire product line. [The article goes on to discuss the Chevy Volt, which could get up to 150 mpg.]

Now, "halo vehicle" could be just an unfortunate turn of phrase, so I don't want to take a cheap shot at GM just on that basis. But look, the Prius and the Honda hybrids are much more than "halo" vehicles. If anything, they point out the efficiencies of the more mundane offerings in the Toyota and Honda product lines, like the Corolla, which can get into the mid-30s or better.

I'll be thrilled if GM follows through and introduces a mid- to high-end fuel efficient vehicle based on advanced technology, aimed at the people who are buying $25-30,000+ cars now. But they will never be thought of as a "green" company unless those "halo" vehicles can draw attention to lower-end efficient cars. A 150 mpg Chevy Volt is great, but it needs to draw attention to a 35 mpg Chevy Cobalt. There was nothing in the WSJ article suggesting that GM is even thinking about the low end of their line.