The greening of the auto industry continues.
General Motors is touting the segment-leading fuel economy of its all-new 2015 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-size pickups.
Volvo next year will launch an all-new XC90 SUV with a range of 2.0-litre four-cylinder, Drive-E powertrains, again to save fuel and reduce emissions without sacrificing power and performance.
Mercedes-Benz plans to roll out, on average, a new plug-in hybrid every four months between now and 2017 – at least 10 – including the S400 Plug-in Hybrid arriving in Europe this month, says The Telegraph. Ford is about to launch an aluminum F-Series pickup that is 300 kilograms lighter than the truck it is replacing.
Indeed, to strip out weight and improve fuel economy, Toyota sees a shift from steel to aluminum in its future, just like Ford. Sources tell Automotive News that the 2016 Lexus RX 350 gets an aluminum hood and liftgate and the Camry will get an aluminum hood in 2018, for instance.
Car companies from Tokyo to Detroit to Gothenburg have heard the word on green technologies. And the word is arguably best spoken by California Governor Jerry Brown. The 76-year-old, four-term governor went public in the global fight against climate change at a United Nations summit in New York.
He made no apologies for plans to expand California's cap-and-trade program in a way that will increase the price of fuel. He also said California will meet its goal of reducing carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Various reports had him setting out plans to meet a new emissions goal for 2030 in California "that will be more ambitious, that will require more technology and will also require heightened political will."
What Brown is pushing through has implications for the automotive world. California is a huge market with an economy that is the world's eighth-largest. When California mandates electric vehicles, car makers build them. Brown says his goal is to see 1.5 million zero-emission cars on California's roads in the next decade. Most EV models will also be sold outside California.
When California tightens the screws on vehicle emissions, car makers find ways to improve catalytic converters. When California demands better fuel economy, the auto industry takes weight out of vehicles, downsizes power trains and introduces eight-, nine- and 10-speed transmissions and more.
California's efforts on emissions have in fact spurred the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt stricter Tier 3 emissions standards that take effect in 2017. In essence, the federal government is matching its standard to California's.
More like this is coming because Brown is anything but a climate-change denier. And he's not one to argue that the United States, Canada and the rest of the developed world should do nothing or little because developing countries such as India and China are responsible for more global emissions than the developed world.
Brown remains undeterred when it comes to fighting man-made climate change. Yes, carbon-based fuels have driven social and economic advances, he told the conference, but the "dark shadow" of carbon is casting a pall on the world and our future. He pointed to "the pollution; the smog; the health effects; the rising sea level; in California, the forest fires, which are now burning for more days than historically was ever imaginable."
Climate change, he said, is real, it's here "and we've got to put a price on carbon" to combat it. Hard words and California has the clout to act on them, not just talk.
The California market dictates many of the vehicle technologies heading into showrooms across the U.S. and Canada. And while the car business has not come out with a collective statement on climate change, its new products speak volumes about man-made global warming and what the
Jerry Browns of the world expect car companies to do to combat it.
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