Today, February 8th from 12pm-1pm EST, GM is going to talk about GreenWashing and answer candidate questions from anyone who loggs into the chat session.  Ok.  so what does this mean.  Well, I looks like GM is not doing this as a one off event - it looks more like they are building in infrastructure on their website to create a more active conversation with GM lovers and GM haters.

GreenWashing, which is the topic of this LiveChat session, is when a company, like GM, who provides information in a commercial, webiste, newspaper or other types of media that makes them or their products look more Green then they really are.  GreenWashing is certainly going to be a hot topic as Green becomes a feature on GM cars.  Defining Green as it relates to cars will be an important factor in car sales and there are many GreenWashing watchdogs out there. 

What's GM Doing Beyond a LiveChat session about GreenWashing? In addition to the LiveChat sessions GM has launched its Thoughts section of GM Next where GM posses questions and users get to answer the question.  There's not a lot of responses to their questions and I for one would like to see more people challenge GM to ask tougher questions and address tougher answers.  In general, it seems a bit light.

For example:

Larry Burns, VP, GM R&D asks "How should GM best address global energy issues we’ll face for the next 100 years?"  First he responds and the GM posts reponses from other folks.  They post, based on criteria that is not shown, one entry they want to highlight.  In the case of the above question, they highlighted the following answer, which I think is a little to pro GM.

 

In the words of a former Saudi oil minister, "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil." 

Rising oil prices, foreign suppliers and global warming mean we must break our fossil fuel binge.   The next 100 years (indeed the next 10 years) must become the age of clean electricity, efficiency and renewable fuels.  Car makers can embrace this transition and create wealth and jobs in the process.

In the very short term, automakers should: 1) build much more fuel efficient cars and trucks  2) add plug-in capability to all vehicles and 3) support government efforts to clean up our fleet.

There are four cleaner energy alternatives:  electricity, ethanol, biodiesel, and hydrogen.  Each has tradeoffs.  Hydrogen takes 3 to 4 times more energy to make from electricity then charging batteries. Corn based ethanol is cheaper to make but uses fossil fuels to grow and depletes our world food supply.  Ethanol from switchgrass and renewable Biodiesel are very promising but commercial plants are early stages.

In the short term, plug-in hybrids and short range EVs remain “the killer app” because cheap electricity is available to 180 million vehicles at night without building new power plants.  While ½ of our U.S. power is still made from coal, plug-in vehicles run cleaner overall and get better as geothermal, wind and solar are added to the grid.  These cars use no energy while idling and even get power back from braking.  I've been very impressed with my ten years driving plug-in cars which can now hopefully reach everyone.

Making transportation fun is part of the what auto companies do best; and this should continue whether its plugin cars, renewable biodiesel buses, or switchgrass ethanol motorcycles.

Posted by Steve Newcomb on February 6, 2008 11:36 AM | Permalink