Big Auto

How my intern stood up to Big Auto

Even as it begs for a big taxpayer bailout, GM is still spending billions on marketing, peddling its giant gas-guzzlers to Americans who want them less and less. It has even got the cash to try and enlist college students in its efforts to greenwash. My intern, Meg Imholt, is also the president of EcoSense, […]

Carmakers hope to head off lithium shortages

According to this article from the BBC, production of hybrid and electric cars may be stifled by a shortage of lithium at some point in the next decade. Mitsubishi’s general manager in La Paz, Eichi Maeyama, said: The demand for lithium won’t double but increase by five times. There is plenty of lithium out there, […]

Who’s to blame for the crisis in the auto industry?

Detroit is in a free fall. Some say it’s their own doing by deciding to push big gas guzzlers rather fuel efficient cars. With that choice, the Big Three maximized their short-term profits but conceded the auto market of the future to foreign companies. There is plenty of blame to pass around. Executives made exceedingly […]

‘Meet the Press’ takes on cars and energy independence

This Sunday, “Meet the Press” was devoted to the auto industry’s travails and to energy independence. (They decided to go totally counterintuitive and have … T. Boone Pickens as a guest. Isn’t that guy’s 15 minutes over yet?) Also, Thomas Friedman was one of the roundtablers. Here’s the video: [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1011974&w=425&h=350&fv=launch%3D27751726%26width%3D400%26height%3D320]

To save themselves, the Big Three should become ‘transportmakers’

Irony of ironies, the one set of products that could save GM is the one that GM destroyed — the electric trolley systems of America. According to the well-known research of Bradford Snell, GM killed the electric trolley, because in 1922 they decided that the only way to increase car sales was to eliminate the […]

Bush: all the bailout, none of the social benefits

I see that Bush is delightful as always: Complaining about what it termed partisan "gridlock" in Congress, the White House late Friday called on lawmakers to let U.S. auto makers get quick access to a $25 billion federal loan program, by dropping a requirement that the money be spent on converting to fuel-efficient vehicles.

Because small fixes make the biggest difference

Despite the excellent reasons to reject the GM bailout, consider this: a strings-attached investment that tweaked GM’s production model could reap huge climate benefits — perhaps bigger than anything else we do to autos in the near term. That’s because the biggest opportunities in fuel economy are at the low end of the fleet, not […]

Republicans refuse bailout; Obama wants auto czar

Looks like there will be no auto bailout with this Congress and this president. The NYT reports today: The prospects of a government rescue for the foundering American automakers dwindled Thursday as Democratic Congressional leaders conceded that they would face potentially insurmountable Republican opposition during a lame-duck session next week. Nor does it appear that […]

Call it ‘green mobility’

With an auto industry bailout careening down the pike, Climate Solutions policy director KC Golden has some vitally needed insights regarding what we need to demand from industry leader GM in return. —– We should not rescue General Motors as we know it. But Congress could use the proposed bailout as an opportunity to begin […]