Many in the green car movement are cheering the announcement that Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, will retire at the end of 2009. Environmental Defense Fund automotive guru John DeCicco celebrates the news on HybridCars.com today, calling Lutz part of a “cohort of corporate leaders who rose to the top eerily disconnected from the parallel rise of environmental values in American culture.” But a speech last week by Hyundai North America’s CEO — billed as a wake-up call by the Detroit News — reinforces the impression that changing the industry’s environmental perspective will require a much broader shift in personnel.
Lutz earned the ire of the environmentally-inclined for two reasons. As product development chief he contributed to GM’s reliance on ever larger and less fuel-efficient SUVs trucks. And he made headlines with his contempt for the theory of climate change. Dallas-based D Magazine quoted a private conversation with journalists just one year ago in which Lutz called global warming a, “total crock of ****.”
Lutz added, according to D, that, “my opinion doesn’t matter.” But how could that be, with GM gearing up to woo environmentally-minded consumers with advanced vehicles such as the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt? Such comments reverberate louder still within the industry, signaling to junior engineers that an environment-be-damned ethic endures in Detroit’s board rooms.
Hyundai’s acting CEO John Krafcik provided a measure of the pervasiveness of Lutzian environmental skepticism in his keynote speech last week at the 2009 Chicago Auto Show. Krafcik called for the auto industry to embrace improved fuel economy in spite of misgivings about the reality of global warming:
There’s really no point in arguing about the veracity of climate change when you stop to consider the finite supply of oil, and the turmoil that our present consumption habit is fueling in the Middle East. It’s abundantly clear that improved fuel economy makes sense for our industry and for our country.
Krafcik said that it was “in this regard” that Hyundai pledged to achieve a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2015 — five years faster than the pace of improvements likely to be mandated by the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE standard.
The speech is hardly a rousing call to save the planet, but at least Hyundai’s leaders are seeking to inspire action. Along with Honda and Chrysler’s proactive preparations to meet the tougher California standards (now under consideration by Obama’s EPA), Hyundai’s goal suggests that a more progressive cohort of automotive leaders is possible.
Tom Stephens, GM’s powertrain chief and chair of its Energy & Environment Strategy Board, takes over from Lutz in April as vice chairman for global product development.
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This post was created for the Technology Review Potential Energy blog
Peter Fairley 
There should be no bailout for the car industry. GM should go down the tubes with Lutz if they can’t make it without a government bailout. And that goes for the rest of the greed driven industry (including Japan) and the greed driven consumers. Yes, the industry couldn’t have done it without them. Given the knowledge that the end of all world oil supplies was well known even a decade ago and that the US was importing way too much foreign oil, the car companies should have been building electric cars decades ago instead of destroying them. Car companies with at least half a brain should quickly rise from the ashes of the irresponsible and stupid given that opportunity.