Detroit dinosaurs drag their heels over gas-guzzlers

There’s one thing you can always count on with America’s car industry, if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster. In the Twenties, the president of General Motors insisted his company couldn’t possibly afford to make windscreens with safety glass. In the Fifties, auto executives warned Congress that making seat belts compulsory would wipe out their profits. And when air bags came along, there was universal lamenting. Now they’re complaining again this time about fuel-economy standards.

Congress is currently debating a bill that would require automakers’ fleets to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Polls suggest that three-quarters of the public support the move, yet America’s car industry is fighting it all the way, asserting that making all its vehicles more fuel-efficient is technically unfeasible and economically suicidal.

What are the dinosaurs of Detroit thinking? Their share of the US car market has fallen to a record low, yet the US carmakers still refuse to move with the times or show any imagination. The contrast with Toyota, which recently old its millionth hybrid car, is striking. Back in the early Nineties, the CEO of Toyota challenged his staff to come up with a new technology project to mark the new millennium. The result was the Prius, a new hybrid vehicle that was the company’s third best-selling car in the US last year. Is it any wonder that Toyota overtook GM in sales for the first half of 2007 to become the world’s largest automaker?