Our coverage of the North American International Auto Show

January 21st, 2008

Our coverage of the North American International Auto Show

In case you missed any of it, here’s a recap of our blog posts and photos from NAIAS in Detroit:

Posted in Auto Shows

7 Comments

January 21st, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Edward Hayes

This is good news, it is.

The one, two punch of the Cadillac Provoq and Saab 9-4X is the finest example yet of platform sharing and brand differentiation at GM.

GM is striking right at the heart of the best selling luxury segment challenging the Lexus RX 450 crossover’s compact luxury sales dominance with two credible alternatives.

The Cadillac CTS Coupe is the best looking luxury coupe since the original Lexus SC 400 coupe. (It’s hard to believe the Lexus SC once looked good.)

As I said before, I hope all future wagons are designed to be crossovers in nature, it’s truly hard to find a successful station wagon, so I hope the forthcoming CTS wagon is indeed another hot crossover alternative that can be successful in the US as well as Europe.

Needless to say the power train technologies, with hybrids, E-flex, and cellulose ethanol announcements are timely and welcome news.

Did you get the latest? Not only do they say we are running out of oil (not true), and running out of corn (not true), but now they tell us we are likely to run out of lithium for electric cars if they are produced in volume. So I like the Coskata prospects, of course, until someone tells us we are going to run out of garbage. Come on over to NJ I got some for ya.

I assume the concerns are credible if, and I say if we banked all of our future transportation needs on one or two sources. But that is not our approach, GM’s approach always has been the “Buffet”

HEED - hybrid, hydrogen, electric, ethanol, and diesel.

The bottom line is this. We need diversity and let’s take corn ethanol as just one example. The yield from an acre of corn has doubled in the last seven years. The yields have increased due to the expectation of corn ethanol development and the better price farmers get for their crop. They used those profits to upgrade their seeds and technology. Now it will take only half the land and half the farmers to produce the same amount of corn as we did in 2000. If we did not use corn ethanol today think of the farm depression that would result not to mention the massive layoffs in the ethanol industry. In a farm economy that is already being subsidized with the government paying farmers to keep 30 million acres of land from being farmed at all.

The corn ethanol infrastructure (the massive factories, train tracks, highway links, and river links) these will make it easier to transition our energy source as it transfers to cellulose which will also need this same transportation infrastructure that the corn ethanol economy is developing.

A lot of these hubs, indeed, would have been lost if we waited 5 or more years for the cellulose infrastructure to develop.

A note on oil. The Bakken oil field under Montana, North Dakota and Canada hold by one late geologist’s account up to 200-500 billion barrels of oil. Google the word, you will see that the flat table of oil can be accessed now that we can drill horizontally.

Not to mention the 2 trillion barrels of oil in the form of oil shale under Colorado. Technology to get it that is cost effective is just a matter of time.

Hydrogen technology is accelerating. The amazingly compact and discreet package under the Cadillac Provoq is testament to the fact that this too is on its way to marketability.

Still the world’s need for transportation is growing fast, therefore, the race to develop these technologies must grow faster and, indeed, each one of these energy opportunities must be explored, developed and utilized, no question.

Even Toyota now acknowledges that a diverse approach to our transportation needs is more desirable than an all hybrid fleet.

Bottom line is we need GM, the world needs GM because they are the only company that is realistically approaching the needs of a diversified world with the diverse energy requirements that the future of transportation will demand.

It is best all other automakers HEED also before it is too late.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Christopher Popa

Was that ONE whole picture of the Buick Riviera Concept I saw in the NAIAS photo album? No mention of the car at all otherwise, so not a fair recap for Buick!
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Jason

What about the Riviera? I think that was the coolest car there! Buick’s new products are pretty cool, why not talk them up? Especially all the positive posts regarding the Riv!
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Gary Dikkers

Edward Hayes said: “The yield from an acre of corn has doubled in the last seven years. The yields have increased due to the expectation of corn ethanol development and the better price farmers get for their crop.”

Mr Hayes,

The increase in corn yield is almost solely due to increased use of nitrogen fertilizers. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas which is — unfortunately — a fossil fuel. Corn ethanol is nothing more than recycled natural gas, and does nothing to break our addiction to fossil fuels.

If corn ethanol were actually efficient, don’t you realize that corn farmers and ethanol plants would use some of the ethanol they make to make more ethanol, instead of remaining dependent on the continued consumption of expensive fossil fuels?

Edward Hayes said: “So I like the Coskata prospects, of course, until someone tells us we are going to run out of garbage.”

Coskata does sound promising, and I hope it pans out. But you do realize that if the Coskata people can do what they say, that means the death knell for corn ethanol?

If Coskata can produce ethanol at a return on energy invested of almost 8 to 1, corn ethanol with a return on energy invested of at best 1.2 to 1 will never be able to compete in a free market.

The corn ethanol folks should be very afraid of Coskata — that is unless they plan to have their lobbyists and politicians put into effect an internal protective tariff against cellulosic ethanol that would negate Coskata’s advantage. (Just as the corn ethanol people had their politicians put into effect protective tariffs against efficient, low-cost, imported Brazilian sugar ethanol.)

Edward Hayes said: “…now they tell us we are likely to run out of lithium for electric cars if they are produced in volume.”

I don’t know if we’ll run out, but it is a definite concern. Every major auto maker is now making plans to produce and sell electric cars with lithium-ion batteries. Putting millions of electric cars on the road will take millions of tons of lithium, not to mention the huge quantities aleady consumed making rechargeable batteries for computers, cell phones, and consumer electronics.

Do you know where all that lithium will all come from?

If I was in the lithium extraction business — or a lithium commodity speculator — I’d have a very big smile on my face.

Most lithium now comes from a few mines in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.
Do you know if those handful of South American mines can provide the millions of tons of lithium that industry is planning on using?
Can you say the price of lithium won’t spike dramatically as more and more car makers start seeking to but the stuff?
What if the coming demand for lithium causes such a spike in the price of lithium that GM can’t sell a Volt for less than $80,000?
Here’s a thought: If you were GM, and had true faith in electric cars and Li-ion batteries, wouldn’t you already be investing in the lithium extraction business and trying to corner the lithium market?

To my simple way of thinking, it seems there is probably a lot more money to be made in the lithium extraction or commodity business than in the hyper-competitive auto business.

For all we know, GM might be developing the Volt in order to profit from the future demand for lithium from mines they already control.

Best regards,

Gary Dikkers
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Gary Dikkers

Edward Hayes said: “If we did not use corn ethanol today think of the farm depression that would result not to mention the massive layoffs in the ethanol industry.”

Mr Hayes,

What you say about layoffs in the ethanol industry might be true, but that doesn’t mean corn ethanol is a good thing. From today’s Wall Street Journal: More bad news for ethanol

“Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought – higher, indeed, than fossil fuel.”

Regards,

Gary Dikkers
January 29th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Edward Hayes

My position from the beginning has been - and I was the first to say it…

HEED - Hybrid, hydrogen, electric, ethanol and diesel is the only answer.

No one fuel or technology will deliver the transportation needs of tomorrow no matter how promising or cheap. Because believe me if all we drove on was ethanol from garbage, before you know it we would have a couple of garbage conglomerates cornering the market for garbage supply and disposal.

Likewise today’s problems stem not from a shortage of oil but an oil cartel and monopoly while the automobile industry is the opposite, highly fragmented because of laws such as Japans in which companies like Mitsubishi Motors cannot be brought or go out of business.

Coskata’s process is actually a plus for farmers because they can turn their corn waist into ethanol as well further improving their margins.

I am not trying to educate or change Gary Dikkers mind, I can’t change my mother’s or brother’s mind about Honda being better than any GM brand, so I definitely can’t change someone’s mind casting some far flung blog whose got his mind made up.

My mission is to tell GM what everyone around me is thinking and feeling and let them know the pressures, aspirations, and thoughts many in my circle share. I got a huge ExxonMobil headquarters within walking distance of my home and a Honda dealership next to it. And there are corn fields and wheat fields straddling every nook and cranny. I got a friend who is trading in his Scion for an Astra, he was a HUGE Scion fan who is now gung-ho for GM. This is a microcosm for the world.

The only thing I can do is tell GM what I am thinking and feeling and what others around me are saying because this microcosm in which I live is in fact the world.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Judy Moore

Mr Hayes - you are exactly correct. There are many “in this circle” that are thinking these exact same things and thanks to GM for taking the “buffet” approach and advancing the world as we move forward to finding a better transportation fuel and/or technology.

As I have heard many say “there isn’t one silver bullet”. As we move through many different types of technologies and continue to discover new and cleaner forms daily, there are going to be some hiccups along the way. That doesn’t mean that GM, who has taken the lead on so many of our new transportation choices is trying to undermine the American consumers or single-handly fix this problem. What it does mean is that they are spending billions of dollars to try to help find a solution and to give alternatives as we move forward to a better solution.

The way I see it is that we have two issues - 1) dependency on foreign oil and 2) emissions problems. While we are using ethanol we are growing the corn on our American soil; we are helping our American farmers, who have struggled tremendously over the last years to save their farms; we are utilizing an enormous amount of pre-existing infrastructure suitable for making and transporting products for the production of ethanol. As for the emissions - no one likes the fact that we have an emissions problem. That is part of the reason we are all looking for that “silver bullet” but we can’t go from a society that fills our skies with tons of dirty air to nothing over night. It’s a growing process. If we find an abundant alternative transportation fuel/technology that is emissions free, then we can start to point fingers and find out ways to totally eliminate those issues. Right now, it appears we need to continue to search for that “silver bullet” on American soil, and cut down on all of the emissions possible in the process. This will provide us with a better world - one day at a time.

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Our coverage of the North American International Auto Show

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Edward Hayes

Christopher Popa

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Gary Dikkers

Edward Hayes

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