Let the Cruze lead the way in race to top fuel efficiency

Flash back to 1961: Fifty years ago last month, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy stood before a joint session of Congress and challenged America to greatness and innovation by daring the United States to land a man on the moon by the end of that decade. Sure enough, on July 20, 1969, Ohioan Neil Armstrong made that “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” on the lunar surface. America basked in its glorious achievement of what seemed impossible only eight years earlier.

Flash forward to 2011: President Barack Obama has challenged the U.S. auto industry — downsized but still an industrial behemoth in our local and national economy — to innovate, reinvent itself and meet the seemingly impossible feat of nearly doubling present-day fuel efficiency to 60 mpg over the next decade.

In the name of fuel economy, environmental protection and U.S. energy independence, America must heed Obama’s lofty call just as seriously as it did Kennedy’s mammoth mandate five decades ago.

The Detroit Three — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — today stand at a critical crossroad. They can accelerate their ongoing recovery, build market share and lead in global technological advancement, or they can idle out, allow aggressive foreign competitors to pass them up and ultimately stall at the same dead end of hardship and bankruptcy they arrived at just a few short years ago.

To its credit, General Motors has edged toward the challenge. Its hybrid (powered by electricity and gasoline) Volt already has reached the 60 mpg target in combined gasoline-powered and electric-powered driving. But practical limitations — constant recharging and prices that start around $40,000 — make the Volt and similar electric and hybrid vehicles impractical and unaffordable for the vast majority of American drivers.

Clearly, GM and other American automakers have not gone far enough. In fact, some of their philosophies are running in the completely wrong direction. Dan Akerson, CEO of GM, pooh-poohs the notion of super fuel-efficient American automobiles as too expensive, too impractical and too complex for the industry to handle. Instead, he proposes higher gas taxes, a misguided recommendation from the word go.

In an interview with The Detroit News earlier this month, Akerson elaborated: “You know what I’d rather have them do — this will make my Republican friends puke — as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just slap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas. People will start buying more Cruzes, and they will start buying less Suburbans.”

With all due respect to Mr. Akerson’s prominent promotion of the Mahoning-Valley-built Chevrolet Cruze, the thought of slapping an additional tax dollar to the price of each and every gallon of gasoline would sicken not only Republicans, but Americans of virtually all political stripes.

We shouldn’t be surprised though. Akerson’s lamentations about the impracticality of 60 mpg Cruzes have an all-too-familiar ring to them.

As Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, points out, even though the U.S. auto industry innovated its way from carburetors to fuel injectors, it has made the same declaration of ineptitude every time the government suggests a new standard. Faced with rules for seatbelt, airbag, or catalytic converter, car executives warned that the measures would put them out of business or pass on exorbitant costs to consumers. And every time their claims have been proven wrong, Lehner argues.

Self-evident benefits

Instead of remaining stuck in the mud over this newest proposed innovation, auto executives should seriously embrace the 60 mpg-standard as a “little-engine-that-could’’ goal it can achieve. The benefits would be self-evident: slashing in half the cost of gasoline to consumers, increasing profits for the Detroit Three, reducing carbon emissions and lessening reliance on our increasingly estranged foreign oil importers.

Toward that end, why not start with the innovative pride of Lordstown – the Cruze? It was, after all, the hottest selling compact car in the nation last month and continues to receive rave reviews. It already has a jump-start on the goal as its 2012 model features better fuel efficiency than its 2011 brand. The Cruze itself has been the portrait of innovation and the 5,000-member work force in Lordstown has been an important cog in giving birth to that innovation. That success has helped significantly to rescue GM from the throes of bankruptcy and bailouts and has re-energized the entire Mahoning Valley economy.

Let the Cruze lead the way in heeding the call of Obama. The Valley plant, the company, the local and global economy and all American drivers have little to lose and everything to gain. Just as this nation marshaled its collective intelligence, innovation and will to succeed in landing a man on the moon 42 years ago, America can once again rise above the naysayers to zoom toward a new and exciting era in automaking.