GM, Toyota, and Thomas Friedman

You win a Pulitzer for foreign affairs and you think that you know everything about everything. At least that's the impression you get from Thomas Friedman's column on automobiles. He starts out:

So I have a question: If I am rooting for General Motors to go bankrupt and be bought out by Toyota, does that make me a bad person?

It is not that I want any autoworker to lose his or her job, but I certainly would not put on a black tie if the entire management team at G.M. got sacked and was replaced by executives from Toyota. Indeed, I think the only hope for G.M.'s autoworkers, and maybe even our country, is with Toyota. Because let's face it, as Toyota goes, so goes America.

Why would this be a good thing?

Because Toyota has pioneered the very hybrid engine technology that can help rescue not only our economy from its oil addiction (how about 500 miles per gallon of gasoline?), but also our foreign policy from dependence on Middle Eastern oil autocrats.

500 miles per gallon? Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria proposed this a few months ago (another foreign affairs writer who thinks that this gives him special insights into automobiles. What Zakaria actually meant was using an 80%-20% alcohol/gas mixture so that cars are running mainly on alcohol. The problem here is that alcohol has zero net energy. What is brewed from corn does not burn. Just try lighting a beer or glass or ordinary wine. The alcohol content is too low. In order to increase it, you have to distill it two or more times. This burns up about as much energy as you get from the distilled alcohol. Since the process can be fueled by gas or coal it means a reduction in oil usage but it is not the same thing as 500 miles per gallon at all.

And Toyota is not working on this. What they have is a gas/electric hybrid, the Prius. Now, this is a neat piece of technology and it gets high mileage, something like 50+ MPG highway and 60+ city. The city mileage is accomplished partly because gas engines burn almost as much gas at idle as when moving while electric motors only use energy when moving. Every minute you sit at a stoplight you save energy (not counting the air conditioning and radio). Also, it recaptures some power when you brake.

But the Prius also gains mileage from being a small with poor performance. Any small, underpowered car will get better mileage than a big car with a powerful motor. Also, the Prius is expensive. Toyota offers nine car models. Only three are more expensive than the Prius. You are paying for dual engines. The most recent studies say that gas would have to cost $5/gallon in order for you to break even with a Prius.

It should also be pointed out that the Ford Escape hybrid has middle of the pack mileage and that Honda is now using hybrid technology more to boost the acceleration of its cars rather than the mileage.

Toyota sells 21 models of cars, vans, and trucks. Only one is hybrid.

Friedman goes on to suggest that Toyota should have home charging kits so that you could plug the car in overnight and get the first 20 miles of the day from your home's electricity instead of the car's gas motor. Plus he brings up the 80%/20% alcohol/gas mixture. This requires a special flex-fuel chip which has nothing to do with GM or Toyota. It would also require a major expansion of our electrical grid and generating capacity which Friedman seems to miss completely.

If GM were to scrap its entire line and switch over to hybrids tomorrow, would that save the company? Not unless it was able to drop the union contract that forces it to pay 100% medical costs for retirees. That is where the real problem is for GM.

In the meantime, Friedman's solution to oil independence is rather expensive. Figure up the additional cost of hybrid cars, new power plants, and a new electrical grid. None of that will come quickly or cheaply and would require government mandates.

And none of it will help GM's health benefit problem.