Detroit \u2014 What if the vehicles of the future don\u2019t make money?<\/P>
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General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz continued his habit of talking truth to power last week \u2014 despite the fact that his company is now a subsidiary of the U.S. government. GM owners Barack Oama and Nancy Pelosi routinely claim that America is transitioning to a green transportation future, but Lutz stepped all over their lines at an industry event Friday when he said that hybrids will never comprise more than 10 percent of the U.S. market. Lutz was only expressing an industry consensus that hybrid-electrics are niche vehicles (like muscle cars) that enhance a company\u2019s image but are too limited in appeal to go mainstream.<\/P>
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Worse, Lutz said that hybrids are money pits that will have to be subsidized by other GM vehicles.<\/P>
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Lutz has spearheaded GM\u2019s plug-in Chevy Volt (due later this year) as a \u201chalo car\u201d enhancing GM\u2019s green image. But he has also been skeptical of hybrids, pointing out the paradox of consumers who say they like fuel-efficient vehicles even as they are unwilling to pay hybrid premiums.<\/P>
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Meanwhile, Washington is pushing Detroit companies to build more hybrids. A good idea? GM\u2019s taxpayer shareholders may want to listen to car guy Lutz.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Detroit \u2014 What if the vehicles of the future don\u2019t make money? General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz continued his habit of talking truth to power last week \u2014 despite the fact that his company is now a subsidiary of the U.S. government. GM owners Barack Oama and Nancy Pelosi routinely claim that America is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4083,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions\/4083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}