By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

The idea of spending less on gas seems to be driving far more people into the green car ranks than the idea that you are doing something good for the planet and those who occupy it.

We can see this pretty clearly in the astonishing growth of small car sales in the U.S. – hardly anyone was buying them a few years ago and last month they accounted for a record 22.6 percent of the new car market, according to Edmunds.com's market analysts.

Meantime, large trucks' market share plunged to just 11 percent, down from a high three years ago of 19 percent.

Small used to mean cheap. Now it means fuel efficient (although not all small cars are particularly miserly with gas). And as compacts and subcompacts continue to capture market share, look for automakers to start piling high-margin luxury goodies into their small cars as they seek ways to replace the profits they used to book from truck sales.

Hybrids Rising Too

We can also see concern about fuel prices in the steady rise of hybrid sales – they accounted for a record 3.2 percent of the market in April, with Toyota's Prius the month's 10th best-selling model of any type.

That hybrids are increasing their market penetration even though they cost more than comparably equipped conventional versions of the same models (except the Toyota Prius, which has no conventional counterpart) is testimony to people's desire to pare their fuel bills.

Just a year or so ago, the Prius was the only hybrid with a reasonable chance of providing sufficient fuel savings to pay back the so-called hybrid premium – the price a hybrid purchaser pays to get a car or SUV with two powertrains and enough complex electronics to make a NASA engineer jealous.

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A fierce battle among Japanese automakers is likely to be staged during the Group of Eight summit in Japan this July, with carmakers using the session as a showcase for their fuel-efficient cars, including hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles.

Toyota,  Mitsubishi and other automakers will provide about 100 fuel-efficient cars to transport participants at the summit meeting, The Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, reports in Tuesday's edition.

Toyota will provide about 80 hybrid cars, including luxury Lexus models, minivans and compact cars for participants making short trips around the venue. The company also is planning to provide plug-in hybrid electric cars for participants' use.

Mitsubishi will be holding test rides of its iMIEV battery-powered city car. Mazda reportedly will make a hydrogen-fueled sports car available for use. Honda is considering providing hybrid and fuel-cell cars for participants' use.

Environmental problems will be one of the major topics at this year's summit. The G8 countries consist of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

GM's message is emblazoned on slide accompanying GM executive's speech chastizing hydrogen industry.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Crusty corporate vice chairman Bob Lutz usually is cast as General Motor's hitman when there's a hard-nosed message to be delivered. But the automaker this week is calling on soft-spoken strategist Larry Burns to blast the hydrogen industry for not working hard enough to realize what should be a common goal.

The world needs fuel-cell electric vehicles, but the hydrogen industry is not stepping up to do its part, Burns will tell hundreds of industry insiders in a speech at the National Hydrogen Association's annual conference here this morning.

"There does not appear to be a sense of urgency" by hydrogen suppliers to build the refining, delivery and refueling infrastructure now needed to support the fuel cell cars that automakers including GM are ready to start producing, he said in a pre-speech interview with Green Car Advisor.

"We need to build more of these cars, but why do it if there are no fuel stations out there?"

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Fuel-cell Highlander successfully logged 2,300 miles on Alcan Highway, but  even if Toyota built retail version, there's little hydrogen fuel available.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The conference is about early commercialization of hydrogen fueling and fuel-cell products and services, but the buzzwords still are "research" and "study," not "build" and "sell."

Granted, the National Hydrogen Association conference has just begun and there are, literally, scores of papers being delivered. Some do talk about things with real market potential – things like Plug Power's hydrogen fuel-cell electric fork lift and Air Products' on-site hydrogen fuel stations for commercial and government fleets. But most still deal with what could be, after a lot more research and development and testing gets done.

A hydrogen economy that relieves our dependency on foreign oil may be in our future, but it hasn't yet arrived.

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Lithium-ion battery packs being tested at Argonne National Laboratory.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Toyota, General Motors, Mitsubishi and Mercedes-Benz all say they'll have electric cars with lithium-ion batteries on the road at or near the end of the decade.

Because they can pack more power into a smaller and lighter package than the nickel-metal-hydride batteries that today's hybrids use, lithium-ion batteries are generally considered the only way to go as EV and hybrid technology pushes into the future.

But over at Honda Motor Co., chief Executive Takeo Fukui is suggesting that charging ahead slowly is the best way to go when assessing the battery portion of that technology.

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We don't write about it much here on the Green Car Advisor site, but Edmunds has a 2007 Honda Civic GX in its long-erm fleet and we do most of the driving -- it's not hot-rod enough for most of the crew.

One of the benefits is that it comes with a single occupancy carpool lane sticker, and with a 116-mile daily round trip commute on crowded Southern California freeways, that's worth a lot.

Another is that fuel is relatively cheap -- especially as we've just installed a Phill home CNG unit in our garage and can fill the tank with compressed natural gas while we sleep.

Won't bother you with all the details here -- you can jump over to the Civic GX long-term blog on Edmunds Inside Line for all the details -- but we've found that using the Phill has really boosted the car's perceived fuel economy. Because the home unit packs more CNG into a tank, nominal mileage climbed to 32.34 per gallon over the 1,395 miles that we've been using the Phill, up from 29.05 mpg for the prior 12,713 miles when we were using retail pumps.

We haven't received a home natural gas bill that includes the Phill useage yet, but the guys at Honda's alternative fuels unit tell us their figures show the stuff should run about $1.40 a gallon, and that includes CNG and the electricity to run the pump.  

As regular gasoline here in Southern California is about $3.61 a gallon, and CNG at the retail pumps was close to $3 last time we checked, that'll be quite a savings.

We'll keep you posted.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Honda Motor Co.'s new subcompact hybrid, scheduled to launch in 2009, should come to the U.S. with a cost premium of less than $2,000 according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

That's about half the premium Honda charges for its gas-electric Civic Hybrid to account for the cost of the hybrid electric system.

The new small car – Honda has refused to provide a more detailed description – will be smaller than the Civic but still could serve as a family vehicle, insiders say.

Honda isn't planning on a radical change in its hybrid system to accommodate the reduced cost. It will be able to lop $2,000 or more off the cost of the system because of the economies of scale the company intends to achieve by selling at least 200,000 of the new small hybrid worldwide each year.

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THIS....Chevrolet Volt typifies battery-electric cars GM's Lutz wants to promote.

Or THIS.....Honda FCX Clarity uses hydrogen fuel-cell electric drive system.

By Scott Doggett, Contributor

The schizophrenic nature of auto industry in an increasingly green market was perhaps never more evident than this past week, as major carmakers split on the future of fuel-cell vehicles.

Larry Burns, vice president of research and development for GM, kicked things off Monday on a positive note for fuel-cell fans, talking up the importance of company's Project Driveway. That's GM's just-initiated 30-month test program involving 100 Chevrolet Equinox Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicles being driven by consumers in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Ready for Prime Time

"We just coauthored a paper with Shell that makes a compelling case that the hydrogen infrastructure is real, it's viable, it can be done affordably and safely," Burns told reporters covering an alternative energy conference in New York.

"So the next step here as we learn from these hundred Equinox Fuel Cells will be getting into the thousands. We see that happening within the 2011-2012 timeframe. And then once we get to thousands we need to get to hundreds of thousands and millions. We think that within the next decade that is within our grasp."

So far, so good.

But only hours later, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz was reading from a different page.

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When General Motors Corp.'s chief of strategic planning called the company's fuel cell Equinox SUV "the new DNA of the automobile" during a press conference with Virgin Atlantic Airways this morning he wasn't committing hyperbole.

In his remarks, GM vice president Larry Burns was referring to a technology that, if perfected for mass production, would enable motor vehicles to be powered by electric drive systems without the bulk, weight and recharging issues that come with use of large storage battery systems.

A fuel cell replaces those batteries by producing electricity on board the vehicle by combining hydrogen and oxygen in an electro-chemical reaction.

Fuel Cells could well be the future of the auto -- GM and other automakers have staked billions of research dollars on that prospect.

But it can be a long way from DNA to consumers' driveways.

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Virgin Atlantic gets three of these GM Equinox fuel cell vehicles for use at  LAX .

Virgin Atlantic Airways and General Motors announced a deal that morning that gives the British air carrier a trio of GM's fuel-cell electric Chevrolet Equnox SUVs to use for select VIP passengers for the next 30  months.

But Virgin, which has been actively pursuing ways to plant a greener footprint,  won't have fuel cell Equinoxes at its beck and call everywhere it flies, just at Los Angeles International Airport -- at least for the first phase of the program.

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