GM Has Learned Nothing

Believe me -- I'm shocked too, but this is actually a great column Tom Friedman's written puncturing the faux-environmentalism of GM. Right now, remember, GM is offering a year of unlimited gasoline at $1.99 a gallon for buyers of certain cars, trucks, and SUVs. Good plan? Sure is -- it's unlikely to cost more than a $1,000 per customer, but will have far more resonance than a similarly hefty rebate. That said, it's a treatment of symptoms so GM can avoid a cure; pay for the consumer's gasoline so they'll buy your inefficient autos. A better strategy might include more fuel efficient cars, but that's apparently out of the question. GM, after all, is already a leader in E85 compatible cars, a bullshit metric that Friedman capably eviscerates:

Ah, says Mr. Harris, but we offer nine vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol-gas blends, and have made 1.9 million such cars and trucks. Toyota makes none. The truth: The Big Three U.S. automakers started making flex-fuel cars in the mid-1990's after they were given a shameful federal loophole.

As the Des Moines Register explained in an article on May 26: "The loophole works this way: A dual-fuel vehicle that can run on either gasoline or 85 percent ethanol, or E85, is credited with a much higher mileage rating than it really gets. That keeps the overall mileage of the cars and trucks that a company like Ford or General Motors makes in any given year within the government's mileage limits."

By agreeing to build flex-fuel vehicles credited with phony mileage, Detroit gets to make many more bigger, heavier gas guzzlers, the paper explained, "without having to pay fines for exceeding the federal mileage standards." For instance, the 2006 G.M.C. two-wheel-drive Yukon 1500 actually gets 15 m.p.g. city and 20 m.p.g. highway. But under this loophole it is rated as getting 33 miles per gallon for purposes of meeting the government's fleet fuel economy standards. "The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that the loophole increased U.S. oil consumption by 80,000 barrels per day in 2005 alone," the paper said.

If G.M., Ford and Chrysler really care about saving oil and the environment, why exploit this loophole? And by the way, even though G.M. has made 1.9 million flex-fuel vehicles, it and the other automakers for a long time did little to inform customers that their cars could run on ethanol — because their real interest was the mileage loophole to make more big cars. Most people didn't know they were driving a flex-fuel car. "Until recently, the only way to tell was by checking the vehicle identification number," the paper noted. Recently, General Motors has put yellow gas caps on its dual-fuel vehicles to alert customers.

It was, quite literally, the least they could do.