Detroit's 'green' plans may be dead on arrival

Ok... so let me get this straight. Detroit is "too late", so they shouldn't bother?

Fact is that gas CAN and WILL go up. Detroit already does big cars. Investment now will mean that they won't be caught with their pants down when gas goes back up.

It's not a matter of IF, but WHEN.

And it is precisely this type of thinking that got the big three in the mess they are in now.
Like it or not the only way out of this mess is to go green.

While the fact may in fact be that gas will indeed go back up, it doesn't change the fact that for years americans were not interested in fuel effiency. To fault the companies for not developing and bringing to market an item that wouldn't sell is insane. Gas then shot up to 4+ bucks a gallon and all of a sudden everyone was wondering why the big three had no such offerings.........

And while we are on the subject of "green" just what makes an electic hybrid so "green" anyways? Are we to assume that a car that you have to plug in at night to recharge, thus increasing demand at the local coal burning, sulfur spewing power plant is in anyway cleaner than gas? Not to mention the fact that should any significant number of us decide all of a sudden to own these cars, our power grid will not be able to handle the additional demand. Then what, evryone fires up their diesel powered generators.........LOL its a vicous cycle, of which no one seems to be thinking in long terms.

I agree, Elizabeth.


I was anti-Green car for the lack of "uumph", but im really consindering the 2010 Fusion Hybrid.

btw, look at gas today, up a dollar to $38.50/barrell and still 4 more hours of trading. Unpredictable, why rely on oil.

Going green is fine I suppose. These companies built what the market wanted, that's what most companies do. That is not what got them in trouble. The market will decide what sells. Their problems are more complex than not going green. I will buy what I need and what I like. My purchases won't be based on some goofy notion of saving the planet. The planet will do fine; humans, I don't know.

The big 3 kinda have to go green since washington is now telling them what kind of cars they can build! Personally, I think they need to look at converting cars to natural gas, but, washington seems to think otherwise!

The only leverage, that Detroit has at the moment, is hybrid battery development over Japan. We still have the lead. We develop, Japan/China make them. So the Big 3 together with our government consortium(USABC) that is financing the development had better go "green" or it is all for naught if not an outright embarassment