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What is Lutz talking about? Audi's 3.0 TDI quattro A4 does 0-60 in 6.1 secs and has a combined mpg of 49.0 (US gallons) while meeting Euro 4 emission standards. Link.

80% of vehicles will be hybrids. And 80% of GM vehicles will still be SUVs and 80% of GM vehicles will get less than 30 mpg.

So not much will change, except for the price.

JN2 - according to your link, it gets 40.9 UK MPG.
This is nearer 33 US MPG.
However there are loads of cars which do get > 35 US MPG, and some of these are very fast, such as the BMW 520 d Efficient Dynamics @ 55 mpg US (or 44 US).
You can see a road test where they pitted it against a Prius on a long run.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/used_car_reviews/article3552994.ece

Obviously the article is biased towards the BMW, but it shows how efficient BMW diesels have become.

Nothing like a little pressure from the EU to get things moving.

GM may have to go to school (in Europe or in Asia) to learn how to make 35+ mpg cars/SUVs and light trucks.

Proper Hybrid, Diesel, PHEV, BEV mix should give 40 to 50 mpg average by 2020. The 35 mpg goal is rather low.

Of course, less weight and drag would also help.

Nobody needs a 2-ton vehicle to go to work, drive around, go shopping and take the chidren to school unless it do does 40+ mpg.

Somebody should tell the Big Three (and many other car manufacturers) to stop complaining and do it.

Mahony,
The comparison between the Prius and the BMW is interesting, but not entirely fair. The energy content of Diesel is 38.6 MJ/litre verus 34,8 for regular gasoline. So in fact the Prius won. Considering that the biggest part of their journey was highway driving, the Prius performed well. In everyday stop'n'go traffic, that most of us experience, the difference would have been even bigger. Nevertheless congrats to BMW for devleoping such a great car.

Hmmm...prius vs BMW? $55,000 + vehicle versus a $25,000 vehicle.

i think everybody seems to forget how many cars (diesel cars that is) gm produces in europe that actually get decent fuel economy. they just don't sell them in the us. it's not like it would be that hard. saturn is already becoming the us version of opel. just meet t2b5 emissions and sell some diesel saturns. seems like a no brainer to me.

Sean: It is a no brainer, one that even Lutz can figure out. And that's precisely why I find his constant hammering on this "woe is us, CAFE is so mean to us" silliness so hard to figure out. What does he expect, that Congress will suddenly say, "Oh, we're sorry to have burdened you so. We'll change the law and make it easier for you to become extinct through your own stupidity."

All snark aside, I just can't figure this out.

GM could easily get the required mileage requirements if they added supplemental hydrogen systems to their autos. People are getting 25-50% improvement in mileage and meeting stringent emission standards because a few percent of hydrogen added to the gasoline provides more complete combustion and also increases power.

mahonj - oops, you're right; I converted the wrong way: 40.9 mpg(UK) = 34.0 mpg(US). Damn close to the US target of 35mpg though!

WTF???
What happen to the fuel-cell cars GM promised by 2010?

Gyroguy,
Yea, and these H2 supplementation systems range from DIY jobs to commercial systems, like the Hy-Drive's HGS (though its for diesel trucks).

Okay listen, my boss says us 'gandists gotto turn in at leat 1500 words of capital bashing or we go to the re-education camp. So... "These GM war mongers just want to steal our money and make us behave like mechanical robots!"

I think Lutz is way off the mark.  My predictions:

• Either 80% of GM's vehicles will be hybrid by 2015, or GM will no longer exist as a company.
• Lutz will be out of his job by 2010.

I suspect gm will have to do the following ...

1 Sell most work trucks with a weaker engine and a lighter weight and then count on an aftermarket engine and weight mod to enable the biggest work trucks to keep thier towing cap.. either that or onlt sell the big work trucks in mexico.

2 Fire us workers and expand mexico operations to trim margins so they can profit from cheaper small cars.
3 Slap as many kinds of jybrid systems as they can find batteries for into everything they can still sell at a profit after doing so.

4 Most vital... go bankrupt and default on health and pension plans.

5 invest in mexico india china and everywhere but the us until after bankruptcy and natural death of former and current us workforce as well as simple tech changes and public car buying habits have changed enough to warrant investment again.

Personaly I suspect fm and ford will take the current depression as an oportunity to remodel and clean house and pop out the other end far better for it.

Of course Lutz didn't forget to complain about the new CAFE standard that will cost $7000/car blablaba, Toyota offer 46MPG for less than this premium NOW, so in 2020 they will offer it for much less. In fact it is very clear that in 2020 the price of gaz will force the market to much more agressive mileage than the CAFE standard, even if ethanol is ramped up to 30 billions gallons, so.

80% of hybrid is not difficult to achieve if take GM definition of what is an hybrid since they call a stop and start system an hybrid.

You are right Wintermane, depression are always opportunities to clean up the business, but no choce anyway, the current business model is no longer sustainable, the collapse of oil price in 1986 saved the big 3, it won't happened again.

Except if oil announces a 500BB find of "abiotic" carbon in North America. Then peak is pushed out 100 years and electrifying transport will happen only if those who lead the transition today are *fully* supported.

I'm sure Lutz would likely have given the same answer decades ago when asked what would be done once leaded gasoline was banned: "We don't know."

Yeah GM, it's obvious that in the North American market, you sure don't know.

I think this is what, the 10th year since the Prius was introduced?

It makes me ashamed.

1 It will be costly and hard even for toyota because up until now they spread the costs out over alot of cheaper cars but now all the cars will be featuring more spendy parts across the board.

Also yes they have no idea how to do the heavy duty light truck in 2020... no one does and the very simple fact is that it might be impossiblee. This will either result in no heavy towing trucks or in a massive increase in medium trucks or as I said before it might force companies to buy the trucks and augment them or buy them in mexico.

2 Most people realy have yet to blom onto just how much this realy will pusg prices up so ya lutz has to hammer it home and talk about operating cost.

3 People are still under the mad delusion that this was ever going to happen without all 3 or at least 2 us companies needing to enter bankruptcy just to handle what they NEED to do on a basic level to meet the goals this quickly.

Just when you hoped oil would run out...

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html

All the negativity on this site just brings it back around. Talk about pathetic.

If there's so much oil in N. Dakota, why didn't anyone start pumping it after the 1970's oil shocks?

This sounds like one more plea to avoid kicking the petroleum addiction.  We keep hearing things like this:

• Shell is going to pull a billion barrels of oil out of the Green River shale, so we don't need to do anything.
• The "Jack" find in the Gulf of Mexico shows a lot of oil there, so we don't need to do anything.
• Brazil hit a huge field off their coast, so we don't need to do anything.
• Titan is covered with hydrocarbons, so we don't need to do anything.

All I have to say is that the cornucopians have failed to reverse declining US oil production in 30 years of trying, and the consequences of them being wrong are far worse than the consequences of the peak-oilers being wrong.

For the naives who still think that there is plenty of oil left in the ground of US they should better get informed at the right source. US oil production declined by 50% since 1970, surely and steadily, even using 1st and secondary recovery techniques, 40 years of decline, so how do you reverse a curve that has been declining during 40 years ? why do they go extract these poor quality tar sands in Alberta or Jack field 15000 feet under sea ? because there is plenty oil left in Oklahoma, give me a break that is laughable (by the way the 15 billions barrels of Jack field represent barely 2 years of US consumption at present rate, and that all they have discovered these 10 past years)
As for the abiotic theory, don't dream on it, it is a scam invented by the soviet during the cold war.

It is truly remarkable how people don't want to accept the facts when it comes to oil, even 40 years after it has been proven by the fact that Hubbert was right. Because oil has been plentiful so far so it will be plentiful in the future, the truth is that discovery of oil has peaked in 1964 and we only discover one barrel for 4 that we consume, the average EROI in the oil industry as declined from 100 to 10, the tars sand are at 3, no way they will be able to meet the demand 10 years from now with these numbers, NO WAY. Over 100 country that produce oil today, 60 are on the decline, the inly country where the production can be drasticaly increased at low cost is ....IRAQ so it is easy to explain why we are there....

Lutz does not realize how lucky he is. The US Congress is forcing all the US auto makers to develop hybrids and diesels in order to meet government mandated efficiency standards. Lucky him because his company is going to need that efficiency increase for reasons unrelated to government mandates.

The available supply of oil for US drivers is going to go down due to a combination of exhausting oil fields and rising Asian demand. When gasoline hits $5, $6, $7, $8 per US gallon GM, Ford, and Chrysler are going to be lucky that the US Congress forced them to have high efficiency car designs already well developed.

I agree with Treehugger and E-P: A few decades after peak discovery comes peak production. That has happened for many nations. It is about to happen for the whole world.

In 2000, GM was saying that the hybrid was just a fad. By 2005 they were scrambling to get in the game that was suppose to be only a fad. If we let narrow minded short sighted idiots run America's companies, we get what we deserve.