GM to Build 1 Million Gas-Ethanol Trucks

General Motors Corp. said Wednesday that it will build more than 1 million trucks that can run either on gasoline or a gas-ethanol blend by the 2004 model year.

The new trucks would give the world’s largest auto maker more fuel-efficiency credits--even though fuel economy is about 20% worse than with gasoline and only a handful of consumers, mostly in the Midwest, are able to buy the ethanol blend.

But GM will not sell the alternative-fuel vehicles in California, because they do not meet the state’s tough standards on evaporative fuel emissions. Instead, GM will shop conventional vehicles to the state’s dealers.

The government provides the mileage bonus to promote production of vehicles that use the fuel, which is cleaner burning than gasoline and produces fewer greenhouse gases.

Under federal standards for corporate average fuel economy, the so-called flex-fuel vehicles are credited with getting almost triple the fuel efficiency they actually achieve.

In GM’s case, that will ultimately add about 1 mile per gallon to its truck fleet’s CAFE rating, said Mark A. Maher, director of powertrain systems for the company’s truck group.

The U.S. requires auto makers’ passenger cars to average 27.5 mpg and light trucks--pickups, minivans and sport-utility vehicles--to average 20.7 mpg. The companies face fines if they repeatedly miss those targets.

“There are incentives in the CAFE rules to produce these vehicles to get them into the market,” Maher said, referring to flex-fuel cars and trucks. “Because only if they are in the market will there be pressures to deliver the fuel. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation.”

This provision of the CAFE requirement has outraged environmentalists, who say it makes a mockery of fuel-economy rules.

GM acknowledges that few motorists will be able to use the flex-fuel vehicles because fewer than 200 fueling stations around the country offer the required E85 fuel, a blend of 15% gasoline with 85% ethanol.

Ethanol is a type of alcohol that produces less carbon dioxide, a so-called greenhouse gas linked to global warming. But in certain concentrations, a gasoline-ethanol mix produces more smog-causing evaporative emissions and thus would not comply with California’s tough air-quality regulations.

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Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.