I spoke with General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner during a round table interview with other journalists today. It seems that he high hopes for ethanol. Hasn't President George Bush been pitching the idea of hydrogen and backing the industry in his rhetoric as of late? Do President Bush and the CEO of the world's largest automaker speak on a regular basis?
Here are some exerts of what Wagoner had to say about ethanol and other alternative fuel subjects:
I think the game has been defined relatively narrowly in the U.S. with hybrids. I think that people are waking up to this much broader playing field. I think our position as fuel cells is strong. I think that the conversations around e-flex. I think that there is growing evidence that this ethanol thing is real, and we are growing there.... ..By end of this year, we bring out the two-mode hybrid system, and it is the most sophisticated hybrid system in the world. We take it very seriously.
Europe's announcement about mandating CO2 caps was not good news, Wagoner said:
The 130 grams [CO2 limits] were kind of new news. This isn’t just what GM thinks, but what position the industry is going to take. We are active in the debates and discussions and it is a very thought about target at this point. We haven’t said at this point that it is something we can’t do, but it is obviously going to take some time and it is not going to be inexpensive. People are going to find that it is too expensive and inappropriate to stack everything on one sector. Some of it is going to be team work. So if we want to get CO2 emissions down, if we can enhance the availability of ethanol, that would be a big help, and it is far more cost efficient than other things we want to do. It is not a panacea, but a contributor. We think it would be appropriate to broaden the areas of discussions. We are seeing more conversation along those lines in the United States.
