Talk is Cheap: Public and Pols Need To Make Decisions, Concessions As Well

Talk is Cheap: Public and Pols Need To Make Decisions, Concessions As Well

Successfully Restructuring Auto Industry Isn't Something That's Entirely Up to Detroit

There's an old Caribbean folksong in which a son calls his father's effort to explain the birds and bees "as clear as mud, but it covered the ground."

That pretty much describes the Obama administration's early direction to General Motors and Chrysler as it rejected the automakers' initial restructuring plans this morning and said they'd be given financial support for a limited period to come up with better plans.

In both cases, the President said in his televised address on the auto industry restructuring  this morning, that means a plan to be economically viable while building and selling "the fuel efficient cars and trucks that will carry us to an energy independent future."

America's automakers, Obama said, should "lead the world in manufacturing the next generation of clean cars."

He covered the necessary ground, but without much clarity in terms of just how those goals are to be achieved. That's to be left it up to the automakers and the administration's auto industry restructuring team.

If Chrysler is to survive, the President said, it is likely to do so as part of a another, stronger company: its proposed deal with Italy's Fiat is at the top of the list. Obama said that Fiat executives, in discussions with the White House, have promised to make that company's fuel-efficiency technologies available to Chrysler and to "build new fuel-efficient engines and cars here in the U.S."

In GM's case, Obama said the company has shown that it has the technological wherewithal - witness upcoming vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid and the Equinox fuel-cell electric sport utility vehicle - but hasn't moved fast enough to bring them to market.

So in rejecting GM's initial revitalization plan, the administration this morning tells the company that going forward depends on it declaring "a significant focus on developing high fuel-efficiency cars that have broad consumer appeal because they are cost-effective, have good performance and are reliable, durable and safe."

That's all easy to demand; the difficulty is in executing.

One thing the government can do - must do - to help is to direct some of its tremendous resources toward educating and persuading the American public that fuel efficiency isn't just about saving money at the pump but about reducing our national dependence on oil and cutting down on the tailpipe emissions that harm our health and contribute to the carbon dioxide overload that threatens global climatic stability.

It's easy to tell GM and Chrysler to make cars that save fuel, cut emissions and sell well. It may even be easy for the automakers to achieve the first two of those goals - we'll see as details emerge in the further perfection of their revitalization plans and things become less muddy.

But guaranteeing the saleability of such vehicles is no easy task in a country that has seen the financial devastation fuel shortages and of $4 gasoline and then forgotten it and turned back to relatively thirsty pickups and SUVs as soon as the price of fuel dropped.

If marketability of green cars is what Washington demands, then the politicians who find it so easy to tell Detroit what to do are going to have to make some hard decisions and political concessions of their own. As is a public that wants it all but often balks at paying for it.

If we really want clean, green cars and trucks then we are going to have to rethink federal and state fuel-tax philosophies that help make gasoline so cheap that we don't think it criminal when an automaker launches a 12 mpg SUV and markets it as the ideal family car.

Government will have to look at tax credits and other incentives to get people into those cleaner, greener cars and trucks that typically are loaded with expensive new technologies and thus cost more than conventional vehicles.

And we finally are going to have to fund development of inter- and intra-city mass transit systems that people can use, instead of their cars, to conveniently get from point A to point B without the massive waste of time that travel and commuting on most mass transit now entails.

Saving the American auto industry isn't just a matter for Detroit to worry about. It is an effort in which we all must have a hand.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor
 

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.