Partnership for a Hybrid System Breakthrough

History is what journalism often ignores in its rush to declare winners, losers and breakthroughs. Those things are news. They have urgency. They fit nicely into headlines.

History is more gradual and nuanced. It is the antithesis of the news flash. That means it frequently is an uninvited guest at news conferences.

Perhaps that is why so many in the media were surprised last week when two global automotive rivals, General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG, announced they were working together to develop a new generation of hybrid car systems for cars and trucks.

Hybrids typically employ gasoline engines and electric motors to improve fuel economy and reduce tailpipe emissions.

Media reports portrayed the GM/DaimlerChrysler announcement as the beginning of an odd-couple union. History says otherwise.

The alliance between GM and DaimlerChrysler did not begin last week. It started with the U.S. Council for Automotive Research, formed in 1992 by the Clinton administration to help American car companies defray the expense of developing new, lightweight automotive materials; hybrid cars and trucks; and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

Unfortunately, USCAR was sold to the American public, Congress and the media as a super-car program designed to yield an affordable family sedan that could get 75 miles per gallon or thereabouts with little or no pollution. It was a matter of using hype and headlines to loosen congressional purse strings.

America's Big Three car companies -- then GM, Ford and Chrysler -- were involved in USCAR. Eventually, Japanese partners of American car companies -- including Toyota Motor Corp., a joint-venture partner with GM -- participated in the group's research. What was then Germany's Daimler-Benz AG, maker of Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks, joined the program in the late 1990s when it bought America's Chrysler Corp. and became DaimlerChrysler AG.

USCAR developed many new technologies -- including fuel-saving, lightweight composite materials; new engine systems; and new, more fuel-efficient transmissions. It explored other possibilities, including the now-discarded notion of developing a 42-volt battery to replace the 12-volt units currently used in most cars and trucks.

But none of that research yielded a magical, super-fuel-saving car. The media, impatient with the gradual nature of scientific and technological research, and deprived of a "silver bullet" headline, erroneously declared USCAR a failure.

In terms of public relations, it did not help that USCAR had internal divisions. Some companies, such as GM, wanted to pour all of their resources into hydrogen fuel cells. Others wanted to pursue advanced diesel-engine technology. Others, notably Toyota, chose gasoline hybrids (and in doing so chose for the time being to bypass the more expensive and, in the United States, politically troublesome route of developing diesel-electrics, which generally are regarded as more efficient than gasoline-electrics).

USCAR in 2002 became FreedomCAR (Cooperative Automotive Research), primarily focused on the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars that run on electricity produced by a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. GM and DaimlerChrysler favored that new approach. But they had a public relations problem of their own.

The media had declared Toyota a winner in the fuel-economy race, basically because of Toyota's success in developing and promoting its gas-electric hybrid Prius sedan. As a result, GM and DaimlerChrysler were being portrayed as fuel-economy obstructionists, instead of as two companies that simply chose what they thought was the better route to reach their goals of fuel economy and emissions control.

What to do? Simple. GM and DaimlerChrysler reached into the hybrid research they had conducted separately, and together at USCAR. There are many, many ways to do hybrids -- some better than others, some more expensive.

GM and DaimlerChrysler have decided to go with what they say is a better idea -- a gasoline-electric hybrid system that allows greater use of electrical power at higher speeds and under heavier loads than is currently possible with hybrid vehicles from Toyota, Honda and Ford Motor Co. Using more electrical power means using less onboard fossil fuel. GM and DaimlerChrysler also plan, at some point, to introduce diesel-electric hybrids.

The first of the GM/DaimlerChrysler hybrid systems are scheduled to come to market in 2007. That does not mean GM and Chrysler have abandoned their dream of super-clean hydrogen cars, or that hybrids as a group eventually will dominate the U.S. automotive market.

Today, car companies, including Toyota and Honda, have a far easier time and make much more money selling SUVs, trucks and high-performance cars with conventional internal-combustion engines than they do selling hybrids.

Hybrids accounted for less than 1 percent of the 16.7 million new cars sold in the United States last year, according to figures compiled by Automotive News, a Detroit-based trade journal.

At best, many auto industry analysts believe, hybrids will account for 15 percent of the market in the next decade. Advanced gasoline engines, super-clean diesels, cars powered by compressed natural gas -- and hydrogen -- will help make up the rest of the market in years to come.

But if GM and DaimlerChrysler are successful with their proposed "new" hybrids, they will have gained something they don't have now -- enough credibility in the high-mileage, clean-car derby to get the media to show up at a hydrogen-car news conference and take the announcement seriously.