GM's missing hybrids at Frankfurt Auto show

There has been a great amount of news regarding hybrid cars at the Frankfurt Autoshow.

"In the future, the cars you see from Toyota will be 100 percent hybrid," Kazuo Okamoto, executive vice president, told reporters in Frankfurt Monday, without giving a specific timetable. (NYTimes)

An AP auto writer noted, "At the Frankfurt auto show this week, German automakers Volkswagen AG, Audi AG and Porsche AG said they were forming an alliance to develop hybrid engines. Last week, BMW AG joined General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG in a similar partnership."

Additionally, "French automaker PSA Peugeot-Citroen also wants to develop hybrid technology and may join forces with another company to share costs, Chairman and Chief Executive Jean-Martin Folz said." And, "Audi unveiled the first gas-electric hybrid vehicle from a European automaker at the show, a version of its new Q7 sport-utility vehicle that will go on sale in 2008."

Even, DaimlerChrysler, one of GM's hybrid partners, "also said it will release its first hybrid Mercedes before the next Frankfurt auto show, which will be held in 2007."

Yet, it was GM that was missing at the hybrid party.

A European Auto Correspondent wrote, "Record fuel costs pushed hybrid cars to centre stage at the world's biggest car show this week...", while noting that GM was "one of the seemingly few companies at the Frankfurt show not to trumpet a new hybrid offering or highlight its plans to make one."

It is particularly ironic that GM told the European autowriter that the U.S. government made a mistake by giving hybrids favored treatment, rather than setting environmental standards to let the market decide how to meet them.

GM lobbyists have for decades convinced the government NOT to address fuel efficiency because GM has claimed it would interfere with fuel cell development. Additionally, the government has created loopholes, even tax incentives, enabling GM to create larger, foreign-oil guzzling trucks and SUVs. Essentially, GM has paid the government to handcraft its perfect market.

GM is an important American company because it employs a great number of Americans. Still, GM has become the least 'American' acting auto company. In the wake of 911, two wars in Iraq, and Katrina, GM plans to push its large trucks and SUVs full force ahead, even at the expense of some new, more fuel efficient sedans according to a recent AutoWeek article.

Perhaps hybrids aren't the only answer, or even the best answer, but they are a positive action. Consumers, or market forces, have expressed strong interest in this automotive development, yet GM offers only criticisms.

GM is an automaker, not an auto critic, and it's about time GM focuses on innovation rather than excuses.