It’s an Audi-tastic day! Johan de Nysschen, President of Audi US, certainly took some major heat over the interwebs today for his inflammatory and derogatory statements that the Chevy Volt is a “car for idiots” and that electric cars are only for intellectual elites to “make a statement.” They were especially curious comments because they came at the same time that Audi launched a website touting the power of electricity.

So, knowing how these things usually go, after some serious damage control conference calls between the Audi communications folks and higher level management, de Nysschen was probably forced to respond with a much more diplomatic take on his positions — what he should have done in the first place. It’s so hard to backpedal once you’ve said something as concrete as “you’re an idiot if you buy this car.”

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Bring on the war of words. In a frank conversation with MSN writer Lawrence Ulrich, Audi of America President Johan de Nysschen has said that the Chevy Volt will fail and that anybody who buys the car is an idiot. Not only that, de Nysschen has lumped proponents of any type of electric car into a category of “intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are.”

I’m guessing that means a fair amount of the people reading this would be considered idiots and pompous intellectual elites in Mr. de Nysschen’s book. Funny that. Hearing an Audi executive mocking any other car as being for intellectual pompous elites is, err, interesting, given that Audi is known for being in exactly that category themselves. Agh.

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Last year, when the carsplosion really started to hit the fan, GM came before congress and laid it all out bare begging for help. And months later, after some tumultuous change, we have a completely new GM about to emerge from bankruptcy — but now the question is, with its reduced size, influence and output, can GM actually deliver on many of the products that were promised when GM came begging way back when?

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With the onslaught of electric concepts and announcements coming out of the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, you’d think that the entire world is about to junk their old jalopies and rush out and buy electric cars tomorrow.

But, alas, as much as millions of Americans would love to pay 3 cents a mile on their daily commutes, our choices for electric cars are, at the moment, severely lacking.

Although the promise of the 2009 Detroit Auto Show reeks of desperation, it’s not all smoke and mirrors. Believe it or not, there are a bunch of noteworthy electric cars, both all-battery and extended range plug-ins, reaching US production sometime in the next two years.

So, if you’ve got the time to wait and you find yourself longing for the cheapest, quietest, and most earth-friendly commute you could imagine, take a gander at this list… electric bliss is closer than you probably thought.

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We all know how fast things can spread online. One blog picks up a story, then every other blog under the sun races to post their take on the story in the hopes of beating everybody else to the punch. This was certainly the case this week after GM announced they were delaying construction on the new plant in Flint, MI, devoted to building the Volt engine.

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So, finally we complete the trifecta. Chrysler says they need $7 billion in loans to stay afloat through 2009 and have pointed to the example of their ENVI design unit in leading the turnaround with the introduction of many new Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEV), City Electric Vehicles (CEV), Range-extended Electric Vehicles (ReEV), and full-function battery electric vehicles (BEV) by 2012.

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Unlike Ford, which in their tail wagging earlier today made a huge shift to focusing on electric car development, GM chose to focus their restructuring plan on the fact that they have a large number of fuel efficient vehicles (defined as 30+ mpg on the highway) already on the road. Plus, they say that by 2012 more than half of their cars will be flex-fuel capable.

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A senior economist at the Argonne National Laboratory has come to an interesting conclusion: vehicles that rely on internal combustion engines are superior to electric vehicles in terms of what consumers would buy and what would save significant fuel.

Even though Tesla is delivering their cars to consumers several years before the Volt hits the show rooms, from the perspective of Dan Santini, you and I are more likely to get our hands on Volt-style vehicles first.

Some of the main obstacles that stand between us and pure EVs were identified at the 1st International Conference on Advanced Lithium Batteries for Automotive Applications, sponsored by the Argonne National Laboratory (where Dan Santini works).

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The company has already stated its intentions not to be left behind the competition when it comes to green and fuel efficient vehicle technologies. The electric MPV is the first in a series of three possible production electric cars that will be viewed by dealers later this month, with the one that’s best received going into production first.

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No word on pricing yet, but unofficial estimates have ranged from $30,000 to $48,000. Sounds to me like GM is pushing the price estimates as high as possible to make the final price sound like a deal when they actually announce it.

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>>Read the rest of this post at CleanTechnica.com

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In the world of hybrid and electric cars, the upcoming commercial release of the Chevrolet Volt must surely rank as the most widely (and wildly) anticipated event. Now GM has ramped up the expectation levels another notch by releasing two teaser pictures providing us with a sneak-peak of its much vaunted plug-in hybrid model.

The release of the pictures, showing parts of the front and rear ends, will be seen in the industry as a signal that GM is still very much on track for the forecast 2010 launch of this pioneering car.

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Editor’s Note: This is Anthony’s first post as a contributor to Gas 2.0. Anthony works on sugar-based biofuels at the Raines Lab of Petroleum Alternatives, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have a lot of admiration for Al Gore.  I was in the 7th grade when he lost his bid for the presidency, and even then I could feel that something awful was upon us.  Fast forward eight years and we find ourselves in a world where Al Gore is running a campaign to help mankind in a much more focused manner.  Instead of defecting to the private sector, Gore remains a public servant dedicated to the environment.  Recently, he called for the United States to lead the way to stop global warming, and now he is calling for the United States to be off of carbon based fuels by the year 2018.

Gore’s battle cry could not have come at a better time.

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/07/18/2018-the-year-of-petroleum-independence/feed/ http://gas2.org/2008/07/04/the-chevrolet-beat-americas-new-mini-car/ http://gas2.org/2008/07/04/the-chevrolet-beat-americas-new-mini-car/#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:34:20 +0000 Max Lindberg http://gas2.org/2008/07/04/the-chevrolet-beat-americas-new-mini-car/

This mean-lookin’ machine may wind up in your rear-view mirror someday, as GM is thinking hard about bringing this 40mpg car to America.  Don’t you just love the way some cars take on an actual head-on personality.  Engineers must love to do this sort of thing.

It’s called the Beat, and it’s a car that would normally be sold in other markets, such as Asia and Latin America.  But with the high price of gas, and GM’s plunging losses ($38.7 billion in 2007), the company that brought you the Hummer may just have to re-invent itself.  And, no, it isn’t a hybrid.

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]]> http://gas2.org/2008/07/04/the-chevrolet-beat-americas-new-mini-car/feed/ http://davidanderson.greenoptions.com/2007/09/29/the-green-blogosphere-therapy-for-corporate-america/ http://davidanderson.greenoptions.com/2007/09/29/the-green-blogosphere-therapy-for-corporate-america/#comments Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:18:15 +0000 David Anderson http://davidanderson.greenoptions.com/2007/09/29/the-green-blogosphere-therapy-for-corporate-america/ Each year in recent memory, General Motors (GM) has invited the press and other key influencers out to the famous Milford Proving Grounds to spend a day testing out its upcoming model year line of vehicles on a closed course. The company has learned a lot from their last (hilarious) attempt to leverage social media, and for the first time ever, they decided to bestow the same access upon writers from around the blogosphere. Although they made sure that a smattering of green blogs were in attendance, tech blogs, trend blogs, and others were represented as well. Since by now, they have all covered major aspects of the event and GM’s green and non-green offerings , I’ve decided to use the opportunity to take a look at how the proceedings reflect on GM’s move toward sustainability, both in its marketing, and in reality.

First, credit where credit’s due: GM is one of the few major public corporations (and the first I’ve seen in the auto industry) to realize that social media, and the blogosphere in particular, doesn’t take kindly to being treated like any old marketing mechanism. On-message spin doesn’t work online because bloggers are people who take pride in peering through the fog, and distilling information for their readers. Conversations on the web are not one-way, and information can’t be controlled in the ways executives are used to. They are learning that the blogosphere is never afraid to call “bullshit” when it sees it, and the possibility of instant feedback ensures that all viewpoints can be heard, immediately.

Okay, I’m being too kind. I’d guess that the vast majority of the company’s top executives still don’t understand exactly why they approved the creation of their social media unit, but at least they know they needed one. They managed to hire people who realize that success in the blogosphere is about having an honest conversation, good or bad, and that admitting mistakes builds trust with consumers. But a disconnect remains. Bob Lutz, GM’s main internal blogger, has advocated for a gas tax to help create consumer demand to force the industry to invest aggressively in breakthrough transportation technologies. That’s great, but if he can’t speak for the company, is it doing any good?

GM’s social media people hope that it will. I honestly got the sense that they really do want to help change the company’s culture from the inside. Obviously, that’s a long road. In this environment, only an honest, respectful dialogue is ever going to overcome the decades of inertia of a behemoth like GM.

Finally, with the advent of our medium, that dialogue is becoming possible in ways it never has been. One thing’s for sure: the louder and more aggressive the environmental community is in calling GM a bunch of fascists who pushed the Hummer on unsuspecting Americans, the less they’re helping their (and our) cause. They only provoke a more defensive reaction from the people at the top of the company. Despite my distaste for Hummer owners, no sane person can fault a company that answers to shareholders for responding to demand in a high-margin niche. A part of me can’t help but think that activists who try to pressure corporations into putting the planet above profit are missing the forest for the trees.

Obviously, something is seriously wrong with a system in which well-meaning people continue to create products that ignore the environmental, resource, and economic crises that lie ahead. But it’s not as if they’re acting irrationally, given the information available to them. We all work in a system that is fundamentally flawed, and if activists want things to get better, they might be better off banding together to address root causes rather than the symptoms. If every person with a “downstream” (i.e. GM- or DuPont-specific) complaint joined a national movement to advocate for public financing of elections, or changing the way corporate rights are considered under the law, we might finally be able to start addressing the fundamental tensions between activists and the business world.

As an activist who runs a business, I can say with confidence that both sides are well-meaning. No one wants a world in which our grandkids look back and scream “What were you thinking?!” So let’s start working together to create a future we can be proud of. None of us can succeed without the rest of us.

Note: GM paid for my airfare and accommodations in connection with my coverage of the event. Finally, in the spirit of honest, open dialogue, I’d like to issue a formal invitation for someone from GM to discuss with an electric vehicle activist the issue of the EV1 electric car, including the “hows” and “whys” of its history. The movie Who Killed the Electric Car? was a great way to start the conversation, but film remains a one-way medium, and I am personally interested to see a real conversation about the issue develop. Email me, and I’ll make sure it gets set up.

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