2003 Detroit Auto Show (NAIAS) – a change towards more sustainability

Visiting the Detroit show in earlier years, it was almost impossible to find out about carmakers intentions towards environmentally friendly and sustainable vehicles. If Americans wanted to buy these "green vehicles", hybrids, electrical or natural gas powered cars, they almost certainly had to choose between the products of one of the Japanese manufacturers.

This year, it is a different story. The American carmakers GM and Ford presented their efforts in form of Ford’s new Model U hydrogen powered combustion engine vehicle and GM's HyWire. Even though Ford's car is not a fuel cell vehicle and GM's HyWire was presented earlier at different motor shows, it sends out a signal to the auto industry and the American consumer.

And then there was Toyota again. After the successful start of its lease out project of fuel cell vehicles in December 2002 to organisations in Japan and the USA, the company unveiled its new fuel cell powered car, the FINE-S. The vehicle is part of a joint development programme between GM, Exxon Mobil and Toyota and therefore did not surprise the audience that is quite similar to GM’s HyWire.

Nevertheless, alternatively powered cars were in the forefront of the exhibition, not just in a small corner as in previous years, which is surprising since Detroit has always been known for the presentation of fuel consuming bhp-monsters.

GM's vice president, Bob Lutz even thinks it might be possible to sell up to one million hybrid vehicles per year if the American general public would take up the offers of car manufacturers. His counterpart at Ford, Gerhard Schmidt, vice president of Ford research and advanced engineering added, that hydrogen will be the fuel of the future.

Furthermore, Schmidt sees the hydrogen internal combustion engine (ICE) as a step in between conventional combustion engines and hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles.

But not every car manufacturer is joining the trend towards greener cars, especially considering the lower-volume sales pace of such vehicles. Toyota, which has a goal of selling 300,000 hybrids by mid-decade, sold 20,119 of the Prius compact in 2002, an increase over 2001's sales of 15,556. Honda does not break out figures for the Civic Hybrid, but sales of its Insight were down 50 percent, partly because of Honda's expanded hybrid selection.

For more information on developments in the car sector, read our light duty vehicle market survey.