By Robert E. Calem, Contributor

General Motors Corp. says it has achieved a new milestone in the development of an experimental fuel combustion technology called homogenous charge compression ignition, and can now operate an HCCI engine at much lower speeds than previously possible.

HCCI technology mimics a diesel engine, igniting a mixture of fuel and air by compressing it in the cylinder, but it works with gasoline like a traditional spark ignition engine.

And unlike either of those other engine technologies, HCCI burns the fuel at a low temperature and throughout the entire combustion chamber – yielding the power of a gasoline engine and the torque of a diesel with greater fuel economy and lower carbon dioxide emissions than either.

GM, which previously was unable to operate an experimental engine in HCCI mode at speeds below 15 miles per hour,  demonstrated operation in the fuel-saving mode at idle this week in a specially modified Saturn Aura test vehicle.

Demonstrations in Washington, D. C. and White Plains, N.Y., also marked the first time journalists were permitted to drive a vehicle with an HCCI engine on public streets.

The prototype engine operates in both HCCI and regular spark-ignition modes, but did not operate in HCCI mode at idle when initially demonstrated to the press last August at a GM test track.

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By Scott Doggett, Contributor

If a seven-man contingent representing the biggest automakers thought they could talk California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger into terminating his campaign to force them to meet California's stringent fuel-efficiency standards, they were sadly mistaken.
 
Following a private, 45-minute meeting Thursday  with executives from Toyota, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and BMW, the governor has released a statement that reads, in part:
 
“... I made it clear to the automakers that California will not back down in the fight to protect our own environment by regulating pollution that causes global warming. We will continue to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant our request for a waiver, and we will use legal remedies if they fail to do so.
 
“Hiding behind the federal government's proposed CAFE standards won't work, and it won't effectively reduce the pollution that causes global warming. In fact, I believe the federal government should adopt California's model; with 13 other states on board, we are heading in the right direction,” Schwarzenegger said.
 
Schwarzenegger referred to the EPA's denial of a waiver that would allow California to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles sold in the state – regulations that are more stringent than the federal government's.

 If California receives the waiver – and the three major presidential candidates have all said they support the request, which the Bush Administration sat on for two years before denying – at least 13 other states would adopt or are considering adopting California's tailpipe-emissions rules.
 
Calls placed to the Michigan and Sacramento offices of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which sent representatives to the meeting, went unanswered.
 
The following industry representatives attended the meeting: Troy Clarke, president of General Motors North America and chairman of the Alliance; James Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales, USA; James Press, vice chairman and president of Chrysler; Jim O’Donnell, president and chief operating officer, BMW North America; Ziad Ojakli, vice president of government and community relations, Ford Motor Company; David Geanacopoulos, vice president and general counsel, Volkswagen of America; and Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance.
 
Schwarzenegger's entire statement can be read at the governor's website. 

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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Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday that it plans to double by the end of next year the number of fuel-saving six-speed automatic transmissions it is putting in its vehicles.

The new front-wheel-drive 6-speed transmission offers 4 percent to 6 percent better fuel economy, improved acceleration and smoother shifting than four- and five-speed automatics, Ford said in a statement on its website.

The Dearborn-based automaker said the new transmissions will debut early next year in the 2009-model Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner crossover SUVs, their sibling '09 Mazda Tribute, and two unidentified vehicles.

Ford said it plans to use the advanced transmission, which will be made at its Sterling Heights, Mich., plant, in 98 percent of its North American vehicles by 2012.

Ford Vice President Barb Samardzich, head of the company's North American transmission operations, said the new transmissions are key to Ford's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions form its vehicles by 30 percent by 2020.

The announcement comes five months after Ford unveiled a direct-injection technology it calls EcoBoost that will enable the gasoline-powered cars and trucks that use it to deliver up to 20 percent better fuel economy with 15 percent fewer carbon-dioxide emissions than versions equipped with standard fuel-injected engines of similar output.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the governor's office, easily overlooked while overlooking and overhearing all.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last year told the Big 3 automakers to "Get off your butt" and meet the state's tailpipe emissions regulations, is scheduled to sit down with representatives from Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and Toyota at the state Capitol in Sacramento Thursday.

The meeting, at the automakers' request, comes just two weeks after 12 governors, led by Schwarzenegger, threatened legal action against the Bush administration for trying to prohibit states from setting automotive emissions limits.

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Audi reportedly has inked a deal to work with Japan's Sanyo on development of high performance batteries for a pilot hybrid project for the Volkswagen Group, Audi's owner.

The alliance could lead to Sanyo batteries and other electronic components being used in future Volkswagen group models, British on-line automotive journal just-auto.com suggests.

Volkswagen's own hybrid development program has been scaled down dramatically by chief executive Martin Winterkorn, who thinks the 2,000 euro ($3,092) additional cost to hybridize a vehicle is too steep.

At Audi, there are plans for a hybrid Touareg SUV and a hybrid Q7 crossover. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which initially reported  the Sanyo deal, said the partnership could lead to hybrid technologies being used in Audi's passenger cars as well.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Audi sees "great opportunities" in electric vehicles and will offer battery-electric automobiles with no exhaust emissions within ten years, its top executive told a German weekly.
 
Chairman Rupert Stadler, in an interview with Welt am Sonntag published Sunday, said he expects diesel and battery technology to be a dominate force the automotive market in five to ten years.

"By then we will offer cars without exhaust emissions," Stadler said.

Asked if Audi was trailing domestic rivals Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the development of  batteries to power electric vehicles,  Stadler replied that he wasn't worried, that Audi's research capabilities are larger than those of its competitors.

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It's starting to look as if corn-based ethanol's future is dimming, although corn futures – the kind traded in the commodities market  -- are still soaring.

Critics of using one of the world's basic food crops as a feedstock for fuel for cars and trucks have been scoring points in the debate over the past few months as prices of most grain-based and grain-fed foods climb. 

Many insist that using corn for ethanol – and diverting land once used for other crops in order to increase corn supplies – is a big factor in those food price increases.  the federal Department of Argiculture has estimated that corn ethanol and other biofuels are responsible for 20 percent of the food price surge.

On Monday, a group of 24 Republican senators – including GOP presidential candidate John McCain -- sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency asking that it alter rules that require a 400 percent increase in U.S. ethanol production  by 2022, to 36 billion gallons a year from just over 7 billion gallons last year.

The senators' letter says that the ramp-up should be reduced, or suspended, to put more corn back into the food chain, where it is used for animal feed, and to free up land now used for corn for increased production of cereal grains such as wheat.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also have said that government promotion of corn-based ethanol ought to be reexamined in light of soaring food price and sport shortages of critical grains.

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Hyundai Motor Co. says it can use existing technologies to boost fuel economy for its U.S. market cars and trucks by about 10% over the next few years as it moves to meet new federal gas mileage rules.

"There is really no home run [solution] out there," Timothy White, the company's senior U.S. powertrain manager, said in an interview with the trade publication Automotive News. The needed improvement will have to be made by applying dozens of individual technologies.

About half the needed fuel economy improvements in the company's fleet will come from power train improvements and half will come from using lightweight structural materials and energy-saving technologies -- such as LED lighting and electric power steering -- that reduce mileage-robbing parasitic drain on engine output, he said.

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It was only a matter of time before automakers started using subsidized gas prices as a sales tool – in fact, Jesse Toprak, Edmunds.com's senior industry analyst, suggested last week that the time is now.

Keeping Jesse honest, Chrysler today announced a plan that will let new car and truck buyers freeze the cost of regular gas, E85 and diesel at $2.99 a gallon for up to three years.

The company is calling the plan "Let's Refuel America," and says the offer kicks in Wednesday and expires June 2 (although, as we've all seen, incentive plans have a way of outliving their original expiration date if they're driving a lot of new traffic).

For a vehicle averaging 25 miles per gallon and traveling 12,000 miles a year, the guaranteed price freeze is worth $144 for every dime above $2.99 per gallon that the price of regular gas rises.

There's a lot of small print and red tape involved, and the gas price incentive has to be taken in lieu of most other incentives that Chrysler is offering at the time.

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