A Sudden 180 For GM's Bob Lutz On Hybrids

[hatrack]

"General Motors isn't the powerhouse it used to be in the American car market, as its recent financial and sales troubles attest. But what the senior executives of the world's biggest car maker think about where the industry is headed still merits attention.

At a recent conference in New York City hosted by Morgan Stanley auto analyst Stephen Girsky, GM's vice chairman for product development, Bob Lutz, offered some candid comments on industry trends and vehicle technology. Mr. Girsky set up a quiz-show format in which he tossed out the name of a feature and Mr. Lutz weighed in on whether consumers considered it important or not. Mr. Lutz's presentation was accessible by a conference call.

Mr. Lutz's responses indicate that GM has done an intellectual 180 on the issue of hybrid gas-electric vehicles. Not long ago, GM executives expressed little enthusiasm for hybrid vehicles, and pooh-poohed the Toyota Prius as a money loser that made little contribution to saving fuel and distracted the industry from efforts to build cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

EDIT

Mr. Lutz's embrace of hybrids comes late, but better late than never, from a GM shareholder point of view. In March, as gasoline prices jumped above $2 a gallon, Toyota more than doubled Prius sales to 10,236 vehicles -- even though dealers had just 13 days' supply of the hybrid cars on the ground by month's end, which is effectively no inventory at all. The Prius outsold, in no particular order, the big Chevy Suburban sport utility vehicle, the Ford Expedition large SUV, and Toyota's own big Sequoia SUV, whose sales fell 12.5% last month. All those vehicles easily outsold the Prius a year ago. Domestic large SUVs, as a group, were stacked up on dealer lots at the end of March, with 120 days' supply, according to Autodata Corp."

EDIT

You may need to link through here:

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=8177

To get to here:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111297060817401992,00.html?mod=todays_free_feature

[Jacobin]

1. Quite the 'visionary', no?

Finally answered the clue phone that's been ringing for a decade and will now give lip service to what should have been a company imperative

[cheezus]

2. man, those things are creepy

freaks me out when they start silently moving

love it

[Coastie for Truth]

3. I don't think Bob Lutz has hit the road to Damascus yet

in the interview he said:

"Q: Hybrid?

A: Growing. And whether the market becomes giant, or flattens out at 300,000 units a year -- which in the context of the American market is a pittance -- it has become symbolic of: "Is this company technologically capable? Is this company environmentally aware?" And it's a sort of go/no-go gauge. If you have hybrids you're OK, and if you don't you're not. I'd say Toyota scored a major coup with hybrids even though they didn't have a business case.

So, I read that as an indication that neither Lutz nor GM is sold on hybrids.

They still have the legal right to put Chevie bowties on Priuses and make them at the Nummi Plant in Fremont CA (like the Prizm/Corolla and the Vibe/Matrix). Forced Toyota into that deal almost 15 years ago in a legal move to "protect" the GM EV1 from the Toyota RAV4 EV.

[BrainRants]

4. Amazing what an 80% drop in earnings will do for ones vision, isn't it?

As long as GM (& Ford) continue to "create" 12MPG penis extensions they will wind up following the leaders of Toyota, Honda, etc. as the alternative fuel vehicles mature.

Check out the Compressed Air powered car that GM didn't invent:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/03/30/spark.air.car/index.html

[cprise]

5. Schitzophrenia. Very sad.

Around 2000 they were all gung-ho for hybrids. GM flips over on the issue about every 2 years. All told, I doubt they will be a significant part of any switch to better fuels regardless of the technology involved. Whoever succeeds in leading us toward alternatives will probably (again) wipe the floor with GM for a generation or more.

[Coastie for Truth]

6. Altho GM's use of their HR function in PR is up and running

This month's engineering journals all have ads by GM for (young, naive) engineers to come and work for GM on fuel cells, fuel cell automotive systems, and hybrid automotive systems.

If my knowledge of the far flung geography of GM's real estate is still good - the "fuel cell" site mentioned in the ads is the old Corvair aluminum block site in upstate New York (Pataki must have paid them to rehab it - like he paid IBM to rehab Endicott).

Sacrificial lambs to satisfy GM's need to placate the media, the shareholders, and CARB (California Air Resources Board) - just like the scads of young naive engineers they hired for the EV1 project -- and then laid off en masse.