Newsmaker: Can this CEO paint GM green?

Rick Wagoner isn't likely to win applause from a Greenpeace audience--at least any time soon.

As the head of General Motors, Wagoner runs one of the biggest auto companies in the world. But more to the point, he directs the company most identified with big, gas-guzzling SUVs. GM also tends to come out with energy-efficient ideas, such as hydrogen cars or electric vehicles, that never seem to make it.

However, Wagoner says the Detroit giant is serious about fuel efficiency.

So far, GM has sold millions of flex-fuel cars that can run on E85 ethanol and is working with big box retailers to expand the supply of ethanol stations. GM also has invested in Coskata, an ethanol company whose technology promises to deliver ethanol from nonfood sources. At the same time, GM says it's on track to deliver the Chevy Volt, an electric car that runs primarily on batteries, by 2010.

Wagoner met with CNET News.com (and some other media outlets) at CES 2008 last week--and just ahead of this week's big Detroit auto show--to discuss these issues and some of the other concepts being touted inside GM.

Q: Can you talk about reported delays or glitches with the Volt?
Wagoner: No glitches. I think the biggest thing that's getting attention is whether we can stay on schedule with battery development. We still have plenty to do but we see that the chemistry can give you the 40-mile range (on a charge) and things of that sort have been favorable.

I've gotten hundreds of communications from customers who have bought their flex-fuel vehicles from us and they're frustrated that they don't have an ethanol station near their house.

Again, it takes about four years to get a concept car to market. You'll say, "Why can't you do it in two years?" and that's vehicle development. In this case we're basically doing kind of three things simultaneously: the vehicle side, which I have a high degree of confidence we can do; the battery side, which is progressing very well, but this is--we're basically pushing the technology needle to do everything that we want out of a battery technology. I would categorize that as emerging as opposed to highly developed; then just the electronic interface of all that is different, it's doable but it's different. We learned a lot back when we did the EV1, but there's a whole lot more electronics on a vehicle today than it was then. Going for 2010 was a stretch. It's still a stretch, but we're putting resources like crazy on it and we haven't seen anything to date which says that we've hit a glitch on it.

Why were you talking about moving away from petroleum-based power trains and petroleum-based infrastructure to electricity? Where is the electricity going to come from and is GM planning to get involved in the sustainability of electricity production?
Wagoner: We're just trying to get the vehicles that don't use so much oil right now. Our focus is this idea of diversity. I don't think it's going to be any time soon that we're not going to use oil. But in view of the world's growing demand for energy in the automotive sector, can we come up with alternatives that are effective in convenience, cost, safety, etc.? And the answer is yes: we're working on all those.

We've been pretty proactive in recognizing developing opportunities of biofuels, but we do not see our function as a company to be an energy provider. We're a transportation provider and we need to work within this constraint--this world that we're in, which is more expensive petroleum and greater sensitivities around emissions and ever greater demand for the product. We need to solve that equation.

Are you likely to distribute the biofuel in the future?
Wagoner: Well, we've been doing more than I thought we would need to. This is really an interesting issue. We have something that is a legitimate substitute for petroleum in the near term. If you look at really moving the needle over in say, the next 10 years, and having a chance to reduce the reliance on petroleum, it's the best thing in that time frame.

I've gotten hundreds of communications from customers who have bought their flex-fuel vehicles from us and they're frustrated that they don't have an ethanol station near their house. We continue to do what we can. We work with a number of so-called, big box retailers to encourage them. I guess the number of stations when we really started focusing on this was maybe 500 or 600 and I think we're up to maybe 1,400 now across the U.S. But that's out of a total of 170,000 (filling stations). We don't need 170,000 to solve the problem. We probably need 15,000 or 20,000, but it's been slow, painfully slow.

More Newsmakers

[Steve Jordan]

Same old song and dance.

GM has always talked a good game, but I still see more truck and SUV ads on TV than hybrids, or anything else for that matter. Their "Just wait, and we'll deliver" rhetoric is 30 years old, now. Put up, or shut up.

[K A Cheah]

Using the "Wrong Technologies"

Nikola Tesla the Greatest Inventor of the last century had invented the Technologies to run cars & power stations without fuel one Century ago and these technologies might still be classified top secret immediately after his death. It is time to resurrect Nikola Tesla's life-works to produce electrical power without fuel and sharing them as it was intended by the Greatest Inventor himself.

Stanley Meyer had invented the Technology to turn Water into unlimited amount of fuel for making Unlimited Power Supply and to run cars and all internal combustion engines with HHO "on demand basis only" and so no storage of the HHO gases is required as it is safer & cheaper to store water instead, but unfortunately he was murdered. He had about more than 40 patents in this Technology. No one Car/Technology Company has pursued this technology further by buying up his technology and put them to good use to save our this planet Earth from Global Warming causing adversed climatic changes and disasters and hardship owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels, thus releasing & emitting enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere. I think some company like Google should buy this Patented Technologies from Stanley Meyer's family and make this open source technology for the world to improve on and make good use of this Technology to save our world call Planet Earth.

Also those Zero Fuel Technologies invented by Nikola Tesla should be declassified and resurrected by the next President of USA to run cars and power-stations to save our Planet Earth from destruction and doom owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels for the whole of last Century. Our World the planet earth must be saved from the exploits of greed of the vested self interests of the fossil oil & fuels producers that pumped the unlimited amount of Greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere for the last century.

[willdryden]

Releasing Tesla's technology

The U. S. government will never release Nikola Tesla?s technology because of the economic chaos that it would create. Just think of all the people who are employed in the energy sector worldwide that would be put out of work.

[mtoc]

G.M. boss

stop trying to paint GM green and concentrate on painting the bottom line BLACK.
read my lips....profit, market share, quality etc.
when will the Futurama BS end and the start of taking care of the present begin? GM is a multi ring circus that is going down the toilet. very sad! Ford and Chrysler are not far behind.