American Carmakers Should Fully Get Into The Hybrid Vehicle Development Game May 2005

A Non-Registered Visitor writes "American Carmakers Should Fully Get Into The Hybrid-Vehicle Development Game

Toyota, Honda and Ford all have entries in the hybrid-vehicle sector of the auto market -- as well as in the national 2005 Tour de Sol 100 MPG Challenge to be held in Saratoga Springs and Albany, NY, May 13-16. Do you think American carmakers -- especially General Motors, which has a market value of only $15 billion on annual sales of $193 billion as well as an S&P junk-bond rating -- should fully get into the hybrid-vehicle development game? Or should they instead put most of their R&D resources into fuel-cell technology?

I think American carmakers should put on a full-court press to develop hybrid vehicles that can compete with, for example, Toyota's Prius (see link, below). It may well be that fuel-cell technology will eventually become the killer app. But if that ever happens, I feel it would occur many years from now. In the meantime, hybrid vehicles can serve as a transitional technology to help us to start weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.

By the way, I'm open to the possibility that there may be an unlimited supply of oil and gas in the Earth (see links, below) -- although not an unlimited supply of fossil-based fuels. That said, I think it's foolish and even crazy to continue burning any type of fuel whose waste products wreak havoc with our health and well-being. It's these types of fuel that cause us to put our military in harm's way.

Hopefully, the U.S. will be able to proclaim proudly someday -- as Costa Rica does now -- that it gets 90% of its energy from non-fossil fuels.

To learn more about the 2005 Tour de Sol 100 MPG Challenge, visit www.TourDeSol.org.

To hear a 30-minute Q&A about why American car makers especially General Motors should fully get into the hybrid-vehicle development market, listen to The Business Beat on Sunday, May 8 at 10 p.m. (Eastern) on WICN/90.5 FM, the NPR affiliate for Central New England, and at www.WICN.org. The guests will be: James Dunn of the Center for Technology Commercialization in Westboro, MA; Craig Van Batenburg of the Automotive Career Development Center in Worcester, MA; and Gilles Labelle of the Hybrid Center at Westboro Toyota in Westboro, MA.

To listen now, visit www.BestRateOfClimb.com/businessbeatmay8.htm.

To learn more about the corporate-relations services offered by Best Rate Of Climb, visit www.BestRateOfClimb.com."