GM has big hybrid plans

In a series of nationwide ads, General Motors is telling consumers that it offers “Hybrid Power to the People.”

The ads say that the world’s largest automaker is building “hybrid engines where they’ll do the most good,” meaning in big pickup trucks, SUVs and other large vehicles.

The GM strategy should be considered carefully. If GM is right, consumers could be better off and the U.S. will lower oil imports. If wrong, GM will again damage the U.S. auto industry and trail its foreign competitors. Environmentalists already dispute much of what GM is saying.

GM believes that by boosting the efficiency of the most inefficient vehicles, it will save more oil, produce less pollution and satisfy more consumers than by producing highly efficient small vehicles that might offer larger proportional improvements.

“The best place for hybrid technology is larger vehicles,” said Ken Stewart, GM’s marketing director for new ventures, including hybrids. “We want to start big, because that is the largest benefit to society.”

Stewart points to GM’s hybrid systems for municipal buses. A recent sale of 235 of those buses will reportedly save 750,000 gallons of fuel per year, equal to the savings of 8,000 hybrid cars.

The GM approach is a stark contrast to such vehicles as the Toyota Prius, which applies hybrid technology to a small car. It ranks among the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road.

In GM’s view, few people want to drive something like the Prius, relative to the numbers who drive trucks and SUVs. The feeling is that it’s a pipe dream to think that large numbers of American consumers can be pulled out of their SUVs and put into subcompacts.

Even though gasoline prices are rising sharply, they are still much lower than the adjusted-for-inflation prices of the 1970s, and even lower relative to the disposable incomes of millions of Americans. Consumers also have demonstrated that they are willing to pay $25,000 and more for big SUVs, despite the well-documented safety problems to occupants and to those who share the road with SUVs.

GM just started selling its first hybrid pickup, a version of its Silverado. Its 5.3-liter V-8 gasoline engine includes an electric motor that replaces the standard engine starter motor and allows the gas engine to shut down at standstills. It provides the impulse to get the truck moving. The vehicle also uses regenerative braking to charge the battery when slowing down.

Unfortunately, the vehicle is being sold in only six states, including California. (The hybrid option on the Silverado costs $1,500 more than the standard powertrain, a GM spokeswoman said.) And in an environmental blunder, ads show it kicking up a dust storm in what looks like an off-road area of the desert.

GM is also counting on “displacement on demand,” in which a six-cylinder engine shuts down half its capacity when it doesn’t need the power. A sophisticated engine controller disables the valve train and fuel injectors on half the engine, allowing the other half to provide cruising power. When the system becomes available in a couple of years, it will go on the GM Envoy and Trailblazer, midsized SUVs.

Such technology is helping GM achieve a 10% increase in fuel economy on some models, and improvement may increase in highway driving, Stewart said.

But are GM vehicles really hybrids if they don’t have the full complement of features that result in the 50% improvements some other manufacturers boast?

“All hybrids are hybrids,” Stewart said. “The key is how do you build a hybrid without giving up the attributes that consumers want?” Maybe GM is right, but some critics say the automaker is not being truthful in its ad campaign.

“GM is not really building hybrids,” said Dan Becker, director of the global warming project at the Sierra Club. “They have postponed building the real hybrids until 2007. And they are only making 500 of the Silverado hybrids. They are spending almost as much money on advertising them as on their vehicles.”

Becker drives a Prius and takes the view that smaller hybrids would be more environmentally friendly than big hybrids. He blames at least part of the public’s devotion to SUVs on GM and other manufacturers, who spend a collective $13 billion in advertising on the big vehicles.

“They are making $8,000 to $20,000 per vehicle,” he added. “That’s why they can afford to give $6,000 rebates and still make a profit. They have suckered the American public.”

In the last four decades, GM has heard such disparaging talk many times. It has struggled with declining market share and tougher foreign competition. In response, it has improved the reliability and quality of its vehicles. Perhaps its new strategy will finally make it known as a company other than a purveyor of gas guzzlers.

Ralph Vartabedian can be

reached at ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.