This was an interesting auto show to say the least. Clearly, “green” and fuel efficiency was the big message that most of the auto companies were trying to push. There are some great concepts and some great new powertrain technologies out there. But I can’t help but be a bit suspicious.

It’s clear that GM and the other auto makers are taking the “green” trend seriously.  All the GM execs seemed as though they’d been through a training course on how to pitch their green message – desiring to be a leader in all of the advanced power train technologies.

But if you looked at the show floor, you couldn’t really get a real impression for this.  The Chevy exhibit was the “greenest” of the show by far.  It exhibited GM’s “gas friendly to gas free” marketing concept very elegantly.  But the floor was a bit disappointing.  They had hybrids and flexfuel…trucks.  Big ones.  The Hybrid Tahoe gets a great fuel economy improvement over the non-hybrid version; but I couldn’t verify it because they didn’t have the mileages posted on any of their vehicles. They had two small (and rather unattractive) Chevy’s that got ok fuel economy (mid 30’s MPG if I remember – again, they weren’t posted).  They showed off a hybrid version of the Malibu – the one they say is in limited supply.  But that’s it.  That’s all there were.  A bunch of cars that were either too big, too expensive, or too ugly for me to buy.  Comparatively, the Buick Enclave is stunning and the Cadillac CTS is at least as good as a Lexus ES.  But their “green” Chevys – they all require the customer to make too many compromises.  And that’s the real shame in all of this.  Even if I *want* to buy a GM, I can always get a better deal on something from somewhere else.

GM’s exhibits showed only incremental improvement in fuel economy and environmental stewardship.  It is good progress for them – I’ll give them credit on having a level of commitment.  They’re managers are very aware of what’s going on the market and politics and are clearly not in their own little gas-guzzling world as I speculated.  They definitely have good models out there.  But it seemed like too little progress.  Their biggest fuel economy announcements, by far, were the 2-Mode Hybrid Vue, the Plug-in Hybrid Vue, and the Cadillac Provoq.  But they are overshadowed by the Cadillac CTS Coupe and Corvette ZR1’s successes.  It’s hard for me to think that their real focus and interest lies solely in fuel economy and emissions concerns.

Although the CTS Coupe is a really great concept, I want it to get 40+ MPG (save me from having to go to dorky Prius hell!).  After speaking with a couple automotive engineers at GM, that suggestion is probably a harder feat than going to the moon at this point.  And maybe that’s the real punch line to all of this.  We want these auto companies to come up with something radical.  But we may ultimately be asking for too much.  At least for right now.

This was a great experience and I appreciate the GM folks for inviting me to the event.  In full disclosure, I accepted NO financial support for attending this show nor do we have any other financial relationship.  This is actually a bit unfortunate for me.  I’ve written so much about them over the last year that I’m sure they could pay me for something.