Chat Live With GM About The Environment

A great opportunity to chat to an executive from the automotive world, on Wednesday February 6th GM executive Brent Dewar (North America Vice President of Field Sales, Service and Parts) will be online answering questions regarding GM’s environmental programs and positions.

“Since the environment is a hot topic in today’s world, GM wants to set the record straights on its policies and initiatives. The chats are your exclusive chance to ask questions about the company and how it impacts the environment. ”

The first chat will take place Wednesday, February 6 from:
6pm to 7pm GMT
12pm to 1pm EST (time zone where chat takes place)
10am to 11am PST

Follow this link to ask a question at the time above. The chats are open to everyone.

This video of Brent Dewar below talking about environmentalism will give you an idea of what to expect.

Win With The Super Cars Shout Out Competition

What if you could be rewarded by thanking other people who, by driving less polluting cars, are doing a small part to help the environment? Well, with the Super Cars Shout Out Competition from PlanetThoughts.org you can.

This contest allows you to place a simple, colourful flier on high mileage cars that you encounter, showing the vehicle owner that she or he has done something worthy. Optionally you can re-use a copy of the flier on multiple vehicles to avoid paper waste, but then the car owner never knows that he/she was recognized, so we don’t recommend that. Printing fliers on recycled paper with high post-consumer content is recommended.

Of course, we would still prefer it if everyone could all walk, bicycle, car pool and car share, or use mass transit rather than driving individually-owned vehicles. Using more efficient cars simply makes this habit or need less damaging to our environment by reducing global warming gases, and saving fuel as well. Hopefully these cars are part of a transition to a better set of solutions.

The prize for this competition is at least $500 guaranteed. So if you are not in it for the fun and the mission, there is another reason to join in. And to make this fun for the wise car buyers, they will give $50 per month to one randomly selected car owner who contacts them that month and who has a valid photo of their of car uploaded on our site by any other entrant. Note: no individual or their family can win more than one secondary prize (the $50), but such winners are still eligible for the grand prize.

How to enter
1. Download and print one or more of the cool looking fliers (recycled paper obviously prefered and possibly two per page).
2. Find a 40+ mpg US (16.74 kmpl) car from the list.
3. Place the flier under the windshield wiper.
4. Use a digital camera or good cell phone to photograph it (and either take the flier with you to reuse or leave it for the car owner).
5. Upload the image(s) to the PlanetThoughts.org website.
6. Repeat

There are, of course, some simple rules to stop people rigging the competition, but nothing difficult.

It really is a great actionable idea that can win you some cash, so take a look.

Green Cars and Green Claims - Part 2

This is part two of a three-part series. For the first part go here, or follow this link for all Detroit Auto Show 2008 articles.

Toyota

Toyota is well known for their Prius, but this is a purpose built hybrid, not an exisiting model with a hybrid option. They hope to have all models with a hybrid option by 2020, however seem to be falling behind the competition in this respect, perhaps as a result of resting on the success of the Prius. They will have 400 demonstration plug-in hybrids by 2010 but not models for sale. It plans to offer diesel engines on the Tundra and Sequioa, though these are still pretty inefficient vehicles.

Their stand was made of eco-friendly materials and incorporated energy efficient elements such as using LEDs. They also unveiled the Toyota A-BAT concept runs on the same hybrid powertrain as the Prius (below left), and had an excellent cutaway of a fuel cell hybrid, demonstrating how it worked (below right).

Lexus didn’t have much of a green angle (like most of the luxury manufacturers) with only their RX 400 SUV on show, to my eye at least.

Ferrari

Yes, even the great gas guzzler Ferrari had a F430 Spider bio fuel vehicle on display, even though it’s just a concept. It runs on E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline for those who don’t know), and has actually slightly more horsepower than the current version.

Honda

Honda have the Accord ES is a “near zero” emission vehicle yet I don’t know whether it was because I was tired or they hadn’t yet put all the vehicles out for the public show, but I couldn’t find one on display.
[Read more]

Green Cars and Green Claims - Part 1

This is part one of a three-part series. Follow this link for all Detroit Auto Show 2008 articles.

At the Detroit Auto Show I’ve seen many claims and examples of cleaner vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles. As a guest of GM I had the closest look at their vehicles, but there were plenty of unveilings and new technologies from most auto manufacturers. In this three-part series I’ll take a look at some of the major green announcements and vehicles from the show.

GM

Most of GM’s brands had a green announcement in one sort or another, even Hummer. Under their banner of “gas friendly to gas free”, GM unveiled five different programs to reduce gasoline usage. These were:

- Fuel efficiency
- Ethanol E85 (see my Coskata announcement)
- Hybrid
- Electric (such as the Chevy Volt)
- Fuel cell (hydrogen)

In fact, most of the talk with any GM employee turned to green issues whether in press conferences, group interviews or one-on-one talks. The wind seems to have truly shifted firmly in the belief that in order to sell more cars in the future, the reliance on (mainly) foreign oil needs to be broken - see my interview with Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman.

Saturn extended their commitment to the Green Line of the Vue and Aura, positioning Saturn as the green brand for GM. The 2009 Vue Two mode hybrid uses a system that has been used in buses since 2003 in over 1,000 vehicles in 70 cities. Apparently it is 50% more fuel efficient than it’s non-hybrid version, and can get 500 miles on one tank. The engine turns off when idling, it uses electric only at low speed, and has seamless regenerative braking. They also showed their Flextreme concept vehicle that can drive for 30 miles on electric power only.
[Read more]

Bob Lutz GM Vice Chairman Interview

As a guest of GM at the Detroit Auto Show, I was fortunate enough to sit down with a small group of people (that gradually got larger the more we talked…) and speak with Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman.

Loved by some, criticised by others, Bob is quoted as saying a few years ago that hybrid cars were just a “marketing tool”. Having publicly admitted that was wrong a while ago, it was very interesting to hear his thoughts on the future of alternative fuel and alternative fuel vehicles.

Our video below is a short (~4 minutes) excerpt of the interview, where Bob talked about the reasons behind the Coskata announcement and the progress on the Chevy Volt.

In addition Bob talked about being involved in the Chevy Volt and hybrid programs at GM more than any others, the need for government intervention in the distribution infrastructure of ethanol and whilst the cost to produce ethanol could be ~$1 per gallon, once profit margins and taxes have been added it was more likely to be $2 per gallon. For more of the interview there are a few other links.

Firstly Clayton over at Gas 2.0 has a great transcript of part of our conversation, specifically around the ethanol and Coskata announcement.

You can find the full video here (over 20 minutes), from Matt Kelly’s excellent Next Gear Show Green. It’s honestly a fascinating watch and if you’re even only slightly interested in the auto industry, hearing the thoughts on the future of fuel directly from a high level executive is well worth your time.

For more info on the Chevy Volt, take a look at GM-Volt.

Keep tuned this week and next for more details on the Chevy Volt, green claims from the Auto Show and an interview with GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner.

Ethanol From Garbage?

In Detroit General Motors (GM) announced a deal with a small company called Coskata to produce ethanol for <$1 per gallon from virtually anything.

Currently ethanol is primarily corn or plant based, but that has its concerns with water usage. What Coskata have done is create a process that allows almost any material to be “turned into” ethanol. That means plastic, trash, wood, old tyres/tires, waste and so on can be used, just not glass or metal.

The great thing about this process is that it takes around 1 gallon of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. This compares to about 3 or 4 gallons of water for traditional corn/plant based ethanol that use cellulosic production. They also say they do not use genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the production, just “carefully selected ones”. The result is 97% ethanol with the rest being water. The production and use of this ethanol apparently emits 84% less greenhouse gases than gasoline.

Ethanol also has it’s advantages over other alternative fuels for several reasons:
- It’s suitable for the current refuelling structure (i.e. gas/petrol stations).
- It doesn’t ned to be imported (in the US), cutting reliance on other countries and reducing the environmental impact of drilling, processing and shipping oil.
- It doesn’t require a change in customer behaviour, you can fill up your vehicle in a similar fashion that you do now.

Currently only 1% of the US’s 170,000 gas stations offer ethanol, but by the end of 2008 GM will have 25 co-called “flex-fuel” models and potentially 50% of new GM vehicles could be capable of running on ethanol.

More information will be disclosed in my report on my (small group) interview with Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman that will be posted in a day or two.

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