It's the end of the driving world as you know it, some of the automotive industry's top engineers and executives said Tuesday during a University of Michigan forum on alternative-fuel vehicles.
More than 700 people filled the Power Center in Ann Arbor to hear hybrid and advanced technology directors from General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and Ford Motor Co. discuss what their companies are doing to address increasing consumer demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Speakers at the TechKnow forum said the internal combustion engine that drives most cars and trucks is not going away, but those vehicles will have more company on the road, in the form of gas hybrids, diesel hybrids, biodiesel vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, in three to 20 years.
“Are we at the edge of a revolution? I think we are,” said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. “We're at a period of time when more exciting things are happening than I can recall, and I've been around a long time.”
But Nancy Gioia, Ford director of sustainable mobility technologies and hybrid vehicle programs, said: “There's no one silver bullet. We're looking at a suite of technologies. … It's very possible all of these fuels will be used.”
Toyota has already sold more than 1 million Prius hybrids, and Toyota vice president of research and materials engineering Chuck Gulash said Toyota's hybrid technology will continue to be the core of any new fuel system. GM, Ford and Chrysler have committed to more ethanol-using vehicles, and GM has been reporting progress in fuel-cell and electric vehicles.
“We're all the people working on these things and we don't know the answer,” Cole said. “The answer is a big question mark. … We don't know enough to pick the winners and losers today.”
