Carmakers Go Green for L.A. Auto Show
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 30, 2006 — -- The auto companies are trying to put on a "green" face for The Los Angeles Auto Show opening here Friday, hoping to attract the attention of car buyers looking for fuel-efficient and environmentally cleaner vehicles.
Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and BMW are rolling out new gas-electric hybrids and hydrogen-fueled cars, not all of which will be available for the public to buy any time soon.
Much of what is happening here is image-building on the part of car companies that have fallen behind in the race for new technologies, according to Tom Libby of the marketing research firm J.D. Power & Associates.
"Right now, Toyota and Honda enjoy a very strong image in terms of environmentally friendly vehicles and the other manufacturers see that and they want to improve their images so they are considered in the same light as Toyota and Honda," Libby said.
Some analysts say the American car companies have lagged behind because they have been losing money in recent years and have nothing to put into research to develop alternative technologies.
But
"We must as a business necessity develop alternative sources of propulsion based on alternative sources of energy in order to meet the world's growing demand for out products," said General Motors chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner in a morning speech.
Wagoner's remarks reflected what may the industry-wide belief that no one knows for sure what will be the winning technologies of the future: gas, electric, hydrogen, ethanol or combinations of fuel systems.
"We believe the best way to power to automobile in the years to come is to do so with many different sources of energy," Wagoner said.
At this convention GM will be highlighting a hybrid GMC Yukon, the Saturn Vue sport utility and the Chevrolet Equinox fuel-cell driven car. Wagoner even promised the development of a bio-fuel burning Hummer, the gas-guzzling SUV originally developed for the military.
Among other cars featured:
Ford's fuel-cell Explorer. It cost about a million dollars to build just one of them. The fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity, which then powers front and rear electric engines. It looks like a normal Explorer, but the fuel tank runs like a drive train through the passenger compartment and the power system is about 1500 pounds heavier.
On 10 kilograms of hydrogen it has a range of 350 miles, good, but not attractive at the current price of $12 per kilogram. The price needs to come down to $3 per kilogram and a lot of technical bugs need to be worked out, putting this car 10 to 15 years off into the future.
BMW's Hydrogen 7. This is a 12-cylinder luxury car that burns both hydrogen and regular gasoline. BMW plans to build about 100 of them, but they are not available at any price. The company says they will be driven by high profile people like politicians, environmentalists, athletes and celebrities.
Bert Holland of BMW North America said that the company believes there is still a lot of potential for the internal combustion engine without getting into the expense of a fuel cell.
"It's basically our belief that hydrogen is the right thing to do," Holland said.
DaimlerChrysler AG and Volkwagen AG will be showing cars powered by bio-diesel, gas-electric hybrid and E85 ethanol fuels.
But drivers do not need to wait for a Buck Rogers future of automobile technology, said Jason Mark, vehicles director for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mark toured the auto show, pointing out how existing technology on engines, transmissions and body design can significantly increase gas mileage.
A six-speed automatic transmission, available on some car models now, will increase gas mileage by about one mile per gallon, Mark said.
He pointed to a Chevy Tahoe with a V-8 engine that uses a technology called "cylinder deactivation." Basically the engines turns off four cylinders when it doesn't need them. Cruising on the highway it runs on four cylinders, but towing the family boat it uses all eight.
Mark said that if car companies put together some of these existing technologies, the result can be a big fuel saving.
"Put them together in a package, you get a car that does 35 miles to the gallon instead of 25," he said.