North American International Auto Show: Fueling the Future
By Paul Wilson, The Columbus Dispatch
January 18, 2008
DETROIT -- At its heart, the North American International Auto Show is a display of automotive performance. But this year, the Motor City's century-old roots in the auto industry are showing greener than ever before.
With gasoline prices around $3 a gallon and $100 oil still fresh in drivers' minds, automakers stepped up efforts to go green -- even if the evidence sometimes came in faraway concept cars.
New hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles and cars and trucks that run on biofuels dot the show floor at the Cobo Center. The auto show opens to the public Saturday.
The trend was especially apparent when an analyst walked by the Ferrari display and saw the F430 Spider Bio Fuel concept vehicle.
"A Ferrari that runs on biofuel?" said Erich Merkle, analyst with IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids, Mich. "What's the world coming to?"
The show's green emphasis wasn't all-encompassing, as Ford and Chrysler started Sunday's media preview by showing the redesigned Ford F-150 and Dodge Ram. But this year's Detroit show was more like its greener counterpart in Los Angeles, said Brett Smith, analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"The L.A. show has been about power and fuel efficiency," he said. "This year, you see the Detroit show more like that."
Honda, which employs nearly 16,000 in Ohio and has two assembly plants in the state, will sell three new hybrids -- counting a scheduled redesign for the Civic -- in the next few years, said Takeo Fukui, Honda's president and chief executive.
One of them has not been named, but Fukui called it an "affordable family hybrid." It will be a "dedicated" hybrid, not a modified version of an existing gasoline-only car. Fukui hopes the new hybrid will reach 200,000 in worldwide sales and 100,000 in the U.S.
"This new model will come under the Civic in price but will meet a lot of people's needs," said Ben Knight, vice president of Honda R&D Americas.
Fukui also hopes to sell the CR-Z hybrid sports car -- displayed at this year's show -- by 2011. The automaker plans for hybrids to make up 10 percent of its global sales by early next decade.
For automakers, global warming is "the single most important challenge we face," Fukui said. "We believe this challenge cannot be met with a single technology."
Honda will not try hybrid technology on larger vehicles, Fukui said. The systems work better with smaller cars that are more lightweight and compact, he said. That's not the strategy of other automakers, such as Chrysler, which said a hybrid version of its Dodge Ram is likely by 2010. But analysts said Honda knows what it's doing.
"Honda is darn good at strategy," Smith said.
Honda plans to use diesel engines -- about 30 percent more fuel efficient than those that run on gasoline -- on larger vehicles. Americans will be able to buy a diesel Acura, Honda's luxury brand, next year.
The automaker has not said which Honda or Acura model will be made to run on diesel, or where the vehicles will be built.
Diesel vehicles are popular in Europe, but they could be a tough sell in the U.S. Many drivers still remember problems with diesel-powered vehicles built in the early 1980s, and Knight said some drivers view diesel as "noisy and dirty."
"We all know today that the modern diesel can be quite different than that," Knight said.
Honda also showed off its FCX Clarity, a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle that produces no emissions. The automaker plans to lease a small number of the vehicles in southern California this summer.
General Motors announced a partnership at the show with an Illinois company to commercialize a process for turning biomass into ethanol.
Ethanol is the primary ingredient in E85, which powers flex-fuel vehicles.
The Illinois company, Coskata, "affordably and efficiently makes ethanol from practically any renewable source, including garbage, old tires and plant waste," GM said. The company says it can make ethanol for less than $1 a gallon.
"The holy grail has been to get ethanol to the area of $1 a gallon," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. "And there are feedstocks everywhere. You're not looking at huge production costs."
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