Green Machines and Politics.(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

Critics will cite the juxtaposition of the GM Hy-wire fuel-cell car on our cover with news of a V16-powered ultraluxury Cadillac concept car as evidence of corporate deceit, or at least insincerity. I can already hear the indignation as they ask: ``How can you simultaneously promote a shift to a hydrogen economy and display a damn-the-torpedoes, full-consumption-ahead 1000-hp gasoline-burner?'' (For now, let us set aside the counterpoint, the one that will come from car buffs who suspect GM is drawing our attention away from its plans to abandon us and our love for internal combustion by showing its ultimate guzzler.) The harshest will charge that programs like the Hy-wire concept are really diversions, small investments made to score political points while Detroit carries on with business as usual.

Such claims are always loudest when it's a domestic company, the legacy of Detroit's early heel dragging on safety and pollution concerns. Today it's a little different. Does anyone seriously suppose that only domestic automakers are conflicted on this score? Just one counterexample of a dozen possible: Mercedes-Benz has been claiming a leadership position in fuel-cell technology for more than a decade now, rolling out one demonstrator after another, even as it developed the Maybach. Yet our message boards and in-boxes seem never to fill up with tirades about that.

From a public relations standpoint, nobody handles environmental matters better than Honda, but then Honda demonstrates a corporate-wide concern with efficiency deeper than public relations. Slow to install V8s in the Acura NSX and RL, though that's what a conventional reading of the competitive marketplace would demand, Honda just put its FCX into fleet use with the city of Los Angeles. The FCX is largely a development from the company's canceled EV Plus electric car, using a fuel cell rather than batteries to ...