The battering taken by the automotive industry in 2008 could be a catalyst for an energy-efficiency revolution in motoring, or an excuse to dodge emissions cuts.
 | Crash TestThe global automotive industry has been involved in a head-on collision with the realities of economic recession (Photo: Reuters) |
When the bosses of the struggling U.S. car firms General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler went cap-in-hand to the U.S. Congress by corporate jet, sympathy was in short supply. Lawmakers sent them packing.
A month later, the chastened executives returned to Washington D.C. in hybrid cars, offering billions of investment in fuel-efficiency, hybrids, and electric vehicles in return for a bailout. They also promised to sell the offending jets.
The humbling of the Detroit Big Three crystallized a shift: away from powerful, wasteful, and dirty vehicles dependent on cheap oil towards smaller, more fuel–efficient vehicles that run on a variety of cleaner fuels. U.S. manufacturers had resisted fuel-efficiency standards for years. When the credit crunch and soaring gasoline prices struck, they had no Plan B.
American carmakers did not suffer alone. Manufacturers around the world lost money, cut jobs, mothballed factories, and lobbied governments for help as consumers and companies stopped buying new cars.
While some suggested the car crash marked the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine, others said collapsing oil prices and the economic crisis would stifle investment in low-carbon motoring and let carmakers off the hook.
This view seemed vindicated when British, German, and Italian governments watered down a landmark EU deal to cut tailpipe emissions by 18 percent. The target date has now been postponed from 2012 to 2015 so manufacturers can continue making gas-guzzlers.
Nevertheless, the EU deal did agree progressive reductions in car emissions up to 2020, with fines for non-compliance. France introduced bonuses for consumers who buy environmentally friendly vehicles and penalties for those who go for heavily polluting cars instead. French President Nicholas Sarkozy suggested aid for carmakers could come in the form of loans for consumers to buy environmentally friendly cars.
Meanwhile, in India and China small, low-power cars are the norm. The oil price volatility of recent times has pushed fuel efficiency up the motoring agenda. The seeds of a revolution in motoring are there. After all, the other big automotive story of 2008 was the tiny, fuel-efficient Tata Nano, future versions of which will run on compressed air and electricity.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: December 19, 2008
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