Automakers Tout Hybrids, but Power Rules Showrooms

Ford Motor Co. plans to build 20,000 Escape hybrid SUVs, but will sell nearly 10 times as many ordinary Escapes, which get half the gas mileage. (Jim Sulley -- AP)

The Sierra Club has singled Ford out for criticism "because he gets it -- he gets the relationship between the environment and competitiveness," said David Hamilton, who directs the club's global warming and energy program. "Ford continues to move, so we continue to push them."

Now the pace of change is speeding up. California, which accounts for more than 12 percent of all vehicles sold in the United States, recently passed a greenhouse gas emissions law that would force automakers to improve gas mileage by nearly 30 percent over the next few years. Several other states are considering similar action, as is Canada.

There's also the competitive pressure from Toyota, which has passed Ford as the world's second-biggest automaker and gained enormous environmental stature from the Prius.

"The world is changing in the automotive business," said Jacquelyn A. Ottman, whose J. Ottman Consulting Inc. in New York urges companies to adopt ecological marketing practices.

Toyota has done a good job of painting itself green, she said, while still making lots of big SUVs and pickups with average fuel economy only slightly better than that of Ford's comparable products. Detroit's automakers can't stand by and let Toyota get all the credit, Ottman said, which is why they've started marketing themselves as environmentally sensitive. "It's like every once in awhile reminding your wife you're the loving husband, so you show up with some flowers," she said. "It's just a legitimate form of corporate communication to let people know that they're working on these technologies."

GM has launched ad campaigns in newspapers and magazines and on television, radio and the Internet to tout not only its hybrid trucks, under the tag line "Hybrid Power to the People," but also its work on hydrogen technology. Like other car companies, GM is developing fuel cells that generate electricity from hydrogen, producing water vapor but no pollution. Earlier this month, GM and Shell Hydrogen opened the nation's first public hydrogen fuel pumping station on Benning Road NE in the District, aimed at demonstrating the concept to members of Congress.

Hydrogen power is years away from widespread use, if not decades, but GM believes the public wants to know more about such new technologies, Stewart said.

"Consumers are just a little bit more interested overall" in alternative technologies, he said. "We feel as a leader we've got to make sure we get the word out on our leadership capabilities with technology. . . . There is more visible marketing now that's taking place."

GM is supplying diesel-electric hybrid engines for buses in Seattle, and holding events in cities nationwide where lawmakers and journalists can try out new GM technologies. But the company isn't going to rush out products just because people like the Prius, Stewart said; GM is interested only in ventures that can appeal to a mass market.

The hybrid phenomenon "is gaining in importance," he said, "but if you add up all hybrid sales last year it was less than half a percent of the industry overall."