Green Car Proponents Say Government Support for R&D Is Growing in Importance
By Greg Johnson March 26, 2009
And you thought it was tough trying to figure out which fuel-efficient car to drive off the dealer lot.
Ichiro Sakai, assistant vice president of American Honda Motor Co., said earlier this week that vehicle manufacturers face similar challenges when it comes to allocating limited R&D dollars among competing (and expensive) green technologies.
"We suffer from market preference," Sakai said during a transportation program sponsored by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
That's a polite way of saying Honda doesn't want to get too far ahead of the green automobile pack -- only to discover that consumers aren't interested in buying what it has to sell. A case in point: the ongoing debate over whether lower gasoline prices have dulled consumer demand for smaller, fuel-efficient cars.
Honda sees the wisdom of advancing such technologies as pure-electric vehicles and increased use of biofuels. But EE Publishing's ClimateWire (a subscription-only news service) reports that Sakai also told the audience that such market realities as fuel economy regulations force it to concentrate on picking "lots of low-hanging fruit for the future of internal combustion engines."
In what's becoming a common industry refrain, Sakai suggested that governments must shoulder more of the R&D expense for such promising technologies as hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. (Honda, of course, has the FCX Clarity, one of the few fuel-cell electric cars competing with battery-electric technology.)
It's not just an academic debate. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee touched on the important question of which competing green technologies will win the most funding from the Obama administration.
ClimateWire also reports that John Viera, Ford Motor Co.'s director of sustainable business strategies, recently said that his company's R&D budget has shrunk over the years. Viera described Uncle Sam as the nation's "largest venture capitalist."
The news service also included a prediction from John Casesa, an auto industry analyst and managing partner of Casesa Shapiro Group, that the global recession will slow the pace of advanced technology development.
"Some of this stuff that might have been quickly accepted is going to face a longer adoption cycle because of the economics," Casesa said. The longtime auto industry analyst predicts that, come 2020, the internal combustion engine will still be center stage, with electric cars playing only a minor role.
So what is a green-thinking society to do? Sakai suggests a "three-legged stool" solution.
Car companies would provide feedback to government on technological advances and market demand. Governments would use that data to structure market-based incentives (Sakai calls them "feebates") that would range from fuel-efficiency standards to tax rebates for greener vehicles.
Consumers would then weigh the incentives and buy vehicles that make economic and environmental sense.
Greg Johnson, Contributor
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