At the Alternative Fuel Cars Forum in Ann Arbor the other day Sebastian, Jeremy and I got spend twenty minutes chatting with Dr. David Cole, the Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. As a long-time professor at the University of Michigan, Dr. Cole trained many of the top engineers in the auto industry and across country.

Sam: We're talking to David Cole, the Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. We're here at the Alternative Fuel Vehicles Forum at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cole, where do you think that we're going with alternative fuel vehicles in the next few years and what do you think is going to be the primary direction that we're going to end up taking?

David Cole: Well, to begin I think we're making really amazing progress on two fronts. Both in the fuel side, on the energy side and then on the power train side, particularly with some of the hybrid technologies or advanced diesel technologies as well as the plain old ordinary gasoline internal combustion engine. We are finding that there's a reasonable level of potential improvement there maybe in the area of 20 to 25 percent at a relatively low cost and of course we are looking down the road a little bit further at some very exciting technologies with fuel cells and I'm sure we're going to hear a bit about that today from Larry Burns, who has been very deeply immersed in the fuel cell issue.

Continue reading Dr. Cole's comments on bio-fuels, CAFE, and oil prices and more after the jump.

GM recently announced a program to lower gas costs for buyers of some of the company's most gas-inefficient vehicles. GM's "fuel price protection program" reimburses the buyer enough money to bring the cost of all of that buyer's gas during the first year down to $1.99 a gallon. The reimbursement process is slightly confusing, and GM, the supposed "Live Green, Go Yellow" company, has taken a lot of flack since its introduction a few weeks ago. Instead of encouraging less gas consumption, the program seems designed to encourage more gas usage. The program only applies to buyers in Florida and California and ends July 5. There are no plans to expand the program outside of those two states.

Critics are comparing GM's promotion to "a crack dealer looking to keep his addicts on a tight leash" and calling it "lunacy", according to the Detroit News.
Eric Haxthausen, who works at Environmental Defense, said the program is "a gimmick, and if GM would focus more on making fuel-efficient cars and trucks, they wouldn't need such gimmicks."

My least favorite part of the article is from David Cole, head of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, who politicizes the program. He said, "The liberal philosophy is we ought to not be buying GM SUVs and instead buying Toyota Priuses. That's their perfect world but it's not the world in which we live." As if clean air and better mileage is something only "liberals" want. How does that make sense?

[Source: Detroit News]