Big Auto

As GM announces plant closings, Obama touts green jobs

General Motors Corp. announced this morning that it is closing its Janesville, Wis., assembly plant, which produces SUVs and pickup trucks, along with three other North American plants that churn out gas-guzzlers. CEO Rick Wagoner says it’s because the company is moving toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, as fewer Americans are buying big automobiles these days. […]

How much would you pay for cheap gas?

Suppose you're a commodity trader. Someone offers you a future contract to buy gasoline at $2.99/gallon for the next three years. If you think that you can sell that gasoline for more than that, you might think this is a license to print money, and would therefore pay for that privilege. Which raises the following questions:

1. How much would you pay for that future "strip"?
2. Is the answer to Question 1 more or less than a Chrysler?

March small car sales up; SUV, truck sales down

Is $3.25 to $3.50 a gallon the long-awaited for inflexion point for driving a shift in U.S. car-buying habits? Obviously we can't know for sure, but the Detroit News reported that "cars outsold light trucks" in March. (One auto industry insider told me yesterday that this was only the second time that has ever happened in some two decades.)

Yes, the recession no doubt had an impact on the sales of big, expensive vehicles. But since gasoline prices are going to mostly be going up over the next decade or two, possibly to well above $4 or even $5 a gallon (see "Peak Oil? Bring it on!"), this should be (yet one more) wake-up call to Detroit.

What exactly happened in March? According to a cars.com blog:

Solving the climate problem will solve the peak oil problem, too

I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy: peak oil.

Here is the short version:

1. We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
2. There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer, if the industrialized countries don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
3. Many people are expecting unconventional oil -- such as the tar sands and liquid coal -- to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
4. Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not "destroy suburbia" or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
5. We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.

Is CARB up to its old tricks?

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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If you've seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? (which is ranked No. 8 on Netflix in documentary rentals), then you know the EV story up to 2003. What you might not know is that it looks like one of the players in the movie, the California Air Resources Board, is up to no good again.

In killing Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) the first time, they put off progress on this front for a decade. Now they are preparing, at their March 27 meeting, to kill BEVs a second time and probably waste another decade. We don't have another decade. In Part 2 you will find information on what you can do to let CARB know what you think.

This post provides background on the CARB's sorry zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) legacy. For background on BEVs, PHEVs (plug-in hybrid EVs), and FCVs (fuel cell vehicles) see Joe's January post on plug-in hybrids and electric cars. The major automakers are likely to produce plug-in hybrids on their own, but not ZEVs, and yet eventually we want ZEVs to be a part of the fleet to get the greenhouse gas reduction necessary in 2050.

Back in 1990, to help fix chronically unhealthy air in California cities, CARB required that 2 percent of California new vehicle sales have zero emissions by 1998. Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) were then supposed to reach 3 percent by 2001, and 10 percent by 2003, and it was presumed that ZEV meant BEV. In 1996, under automaker pressure, CARB removed the 2 percent and 3 percent requirements but left the 10 percent goal in place. It also allowed low emission vehicles (misleadingly called Partial ZEVs or PZEVs) to substitute for some ZEVs.

In 2001 they tinkered again and added a new category, Advanced Technology (AT) PZEVs, which are essentially hybrids. They also changed the 10 percent goal to 2 percent ZEVs, 2 percent AT PZEVs, and 6 percent PZEVs. The program began to resemble a Rube Goldberg contraption at this point, with gold, silver, and bronze categories. The program's complexity has continued to grow since.

How cars are like cigarettes

Check out this five-star excellent post on the many similarities between tobacco and cars by Michael O'Hare. He makes the point that once-unquestioned social conventions can change quickly once activists refuse to accept "that's just the way it is" and start highlighting the costs these conventions impose.

Years after everyone else, GM and Toyota execs skeptical about hydrogen cars

That Saturday Night Live-esque headline was inspired by a story in The Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Top executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. Tuesday expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale.

Really? Hydrogen cars of dubious viability? Who ever could have guessed that in a million years? And electric cars are "a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale"? I'm shocked, shocked that anyone could come to that conclusion.

The Big Three attempt to persuade other states of the danger of fuel efficiency standards

Automakers are ramping up their PR effort to persuade states not to adopt California’s auto emission standards, which they fear will survive the Bush administration’s latest monkey wrench. But their arguments are as silly as ever: Dave McCurdy, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers … said the California-inspired initiative would result in a […]

Feinstein agrees with Big Auto about federal fuel efficiency standards

UPDATE: Feinstein is now trying to dig out of this. In all the galling news of today, this probably ranks as a mere annoyance, but still: Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) has her imprimatur on an expression of opinion that could, if it became law, void her own state’s pioneering tailpipe pollution laws, just when the courts […]