Hybrid Car Review

President Bush is meeing with the Big 3 today and at the top of his agenda items will be hybrids and other alternative energy cars. Spokesman Tony Snow said Bush wants these companies to grow, but isn't willing to bail them out. Also:

Snow signaled that Bush would raise energy issues at the meeting and support Detroit's efforts to explore alternatives to gasoline, which Snow said "gives us a little better ability to try to wean ourselves from an addiction to oil, especially foreign oil."

The Big 3 (Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler) execs have been trying to meet with George Bush for what seems like a year now (It's interesting that he's willing to do so recently after his Republican party lost its majority in Congress). They want to discuss with him possible incentives to retool factories that help lower their costs. At the same time, they are not asking for a bailout, like the airline industry has gone through.

Ford has recently backed away from going all out on hybrids, and has instead switched to looking into other alternative fuel sources. This is a cheaper (for Ford) plan to 'go green' than by redesigning their cars to go hybrid.

GM recently announced it would be looking into a plug-in hybrid, while releasing the Saturn Vue Hybrid. They also have plans to release the Saturn Aura hybrid as well as the Chevy Silverado hybrid and GMC Sierra hybrid. The Vue and Aura are built on a mild hybrid system, but the Silverado and Sierra hybrids will be built on the dual mode hybrid system developed jointly by BMW, DaimlerChrysler and GM.

DaimlerChrysler is supposed to use the dual mode hybrid in 2008 with the Durango.

Source: Reuters Report