Bernie Woodall

Henrik Fisker, the storied car designer who has shaped Aston Martins, Fords and BMWs, told the Reuters Autos Summit this week that he now wants a starring role in the green revolution.

But he also wants to make the world safe for sports cars for generations to come.

"Being a car enthusiast and loving cars, to be quite honest, I could not imagine a life without a beautiful, fast sports car," Fisker said. "I needed to do something to make sure that I could drive one of those nice cars, my children could drive one of those beautiful, fast cars."

So what was Fisker's inspiration? What was the epiphany when he realized that the world was ready for the upcoming Fisker Karma, a $90,000 plug-in hybrid with 50 miles of all-electric fun?

Leonardo DiCaprio...in a Prius.

"A couple of years ago it started, by people who were maybe a little ahead of their time. You saw some movie starts like Leonardo DiCaprio buying a Prius.

"He could have bought any car in the world, and I remember seeing that on television and thinking to myself, you know, when you've got a guy who could buy any Ferrari or Rolls Royce and he's buying a Prius, you know something is changing dramatically."

(Henrik Fisker photo by Rebecca Cook of Reuters; Leonardo DiCaprio photo by Mario Anzuoni of Reuters.)

When it comes to competition in the auto business, it's the unknown that keeps the top U.S. Honda executive, John Mendel, up at night.

Mendel, speaking to the Reuters Auto Summit in Detroit, said he is always concerned about the conventional competitors. But what he is really afraid of is a company that "changes the game."

"What keeps me up regarding new competition is someone significantly changing the game," Mendel said.

People mention an autoseller taking up dealers dropped by General Motors, Chrysler or Saturn.

"What if they didn't have a dealer network," Mendel said. "What if they used big-box retailers and contracted with Jiffy Lube to have your car fixed?

"That could be a really new metric, which suddenly changes the whole cost structure for distribution significantly," said the Honda executive.

That has been tried before, by Sears, in the 1950s, but was killed by the complex state franchise laws that protect dealership networks.

Would such an idea work if tried by the Walmarts or the Costcos of the world? Should the U.S. state franchise laws be changed to allow it?

Mendel was a featured guest at this year's Reuters Autos Summit, which runs through Thursday in Paris and Detroit.

Major automakers don't sell cars to American consumers; they sell to dealers. And the biggest U.S. dealership chain by a wide margin is Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based AutoNation, which sold over 440,000 new and used vehicles last year.

So when AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson talks, auto executives listen -- or so you would think.

In an interview with Reuters, Jackson said Detroit automakers had largely ignored his warnings over the past decade that the U.S. industry was headed for a crisis.

"I think I was usually able to reach an intellectual agreement on where the industry was headed. Where we disagreed was how much time we had to get there. On that, even I was wrong. Time was up," Jackson said.
 
Jackson thinks GM and Chrysler can be fixed. But he also thinks Washington should let either or both fail if their current turnaround effort backed by $60 billion in taxpayer funds falters.
 
Here are excerpts from the interview and Jackson's view of where GM, Chrysler, Ford and their rivals stand now in the marketplace:

Q: Are GM and Chrysler capable of change?

A:I think they had a near-death experience. When you really get down to the point where we either get this done or we won't exist anymore, then it happens. ...My sense is that absolutely Sergio (Marchionne) is providing leadership at Chrysler and (Fritz) Henderson at GM. It's under way, and it's going to happen.
Q: You're looking to buy Ford and GM dealerships. Why is that?

A: We always bet on the biggest, broadest brands. Now we'll take a look if the pricing and the opportunities are right. We love Chevy and we love Ford. Those are the brands that will succeed in the future. Those are the brands that are going to get the majority of the product and marketing dollars from those companies. They're also the broadest brands. You can sell everything from Chevy from a Corvette to an Aveo. It's unbelievable how well accepted and how approachable those brands are for the American consumer.

Q: Are you withholding judgment on Chrysler?
 
A: I think Chrysler has the biggest challenge of any of the companies that are out there. It's been through the biggest turmoil for the longest time. It's product pipeline is the most disrupted so let's wait and see. But with Ford you can see that they're clearly gaining momentum. The product development at GM was not nearly as disrupted as what happened at Chrysler, so they're in good shape. Chrysler has the most difficulty, so we'll take a wait-and-see there. Plus they don't have an anchor volume brand like a Chevy or a Ford. They have a great brand in Jeep. There's always a place for Jeep in the world. They have a good brand in Dodge but it can't compare to a Chevy or a Ford. Then you have Chrysler, which is probably a head-scratcher of a brand. It's a more complicated situation over there.
 
Q: Is the government's role finished in supporting the U.S. auto sector?

A: The catastrophic economic crisis that hit its peak with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and I say this as a Republican,  was so massive and catastrophic, the only entity that had the size and scale and skill to step in and save the day was the U.S. government. It needed to do everything or we were looking at the next Great Depression and industries like automotive would have been swept away. So, they did it. You can criticize this and you can criticize that but they saved the day. Now they have to gradually unwind it and you need to look at the lessons learned so that we never again face a systemic collapse of the American economy and free enterprise. We were on the brink of that.
 

Q: But the government's direct role is finished now?
 
A: I think so. Here's my view: The economy is going to gradually improve and if one of  these companies -- GM or Chrysler -- falters, they're going to let it go. At 10 million (unit sales) facing the Great Depression, we couldn't handle one of these companies going down and the domino effect it would have on the entire industry. But if two years from now one of these companies is faltering and the economy has recovered and sales rates are up to 12 or 13 million, then they should face the consequences of that.
    
Q: Popular opinion would seem to agree with that.
 
A: Well, I agree from a business point of view. I think Chrysler and GM understand that. They know that this is their one shot and I think that's understood by the boards and it's understood by management. That's why I'm so optimistic that change is going to happen.

(Writing and Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, Detroit Bureau Chief. Reuters photos by Rebecca Cook.)

“Think about it. If you are a member of the union right now, you’re spending all your time negotiating about health care. You need to be spending some time negotiating about wages, but you can’t do it," he said.

In fact, the UAW locked itself into a contract limiting wages and changes to health care, without the ability to negotiate with a threat of strike, until 2015. These stands were agreed to by the union at the prodding of the Obama administration, which demanded that union autoworkers accept lower wages -- as a condition to the bailout that saved Lordstown -- to match non-union workers at Toyota plants in Kentucky and Honda plants in Ohio.

Even so, Lordstown is something of a success story for both the UAW and GM, and Obama's remarks were punctuated with enthusiastic applause.  After winning deep concessions from the UAW in 2007, GM agreed to invest $500 million to retool the plant to make a new fuel-efficient small sedan, the Chevy Cruze.

Obama had nice things to say about the Cruze, which GM expects to get more than 40 miles-per-gallon in highway driving.

"I just sat in the car," Obama said of the Cruze. "I asked for the keys. They wouldn't give me the keys. I was going to take it for a little spin. But it was nice sitting in there. It was a roomy car."

Consumers will not get the keys to a new Cruze, either, until the middle of next year when it arrives in showrooms. In the meantime, Lordstown is stuck building the Cobalt, a budget-minded Chevy and vestige of the "old GM." 

Consumer Reports in its October edition branded the Cobalt as one of the five "cruddiest cheap cars" on the market.

(Writing by Kevin Krolicki. Reuters photo by Larry Downing.)

Once upon a time, when $1 million was big money, General Motors spent millions on an advertising campaign on three U.S. television networks featuring the sing-along slogan, "Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet."

Powered by the link between Chevrolet and other American loves, GM's share of U.S. auto sales was 35 percent in 1980. In 2009, GM's share of the American auto market is a mere 19 percent, as it struggles with a backlash from an unpopular federal bailout and bankruptcy.

Chevrolet is hardly as American as apple pie anymore, but Chevrolet and GM will soon launch an aggressive marketing campaign to change deep-set perceptions of American consumers that GM cars and truck are inferior to imports like Toyota and Honda. The campaign, which will feature new company chairman Ed Whitacre and the slogan, "May the best car win," will challenge notions of inferior products and will be waged on a myriad of television networks and print publications, but will also employ the Internet.

It will be an uphill battle. Perceptions are hard to change.

"This has been a problem for a long time for GM," said David Cole, who heads the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research. "It's always the case that perception lags reality -- no matter which direction you are heading in. The Japanese companies faced this for years."

In the early 1970s, the mention of a Japanese car including today's global sales leader Toyota and of the highly rated Honda , brought snickers from Americans. "Made in Japan," was a punchline for jokes by American comedians, which reinforced the perception of poor quality.

But within a couple of decades, helped by sharp increases in U.S. gasoline prices in 1973 and 1981, Japanese cars became known for quality and for producing models that got great gas mileage.

GM relinquished the leading global automaker mantle to Toyota last year, mostly because of the perception of poor quality autos developed over several decades. This notion was supporeted by surveys and road tests done by groups like Consumer Reports.

Recently, GM brands Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC Trucks have gotten improving marks from reviewers.

In June, J.D. Power and Associates said its surveys showed that Chevrolet and Ford had almost wiped out the gap with Toyota in new car quality. To back up its faith in its products, GM will next week introduce a 60-day money-back guarantee for its new cars and trucks. It is part of what GM vice chairman Bob Lutz called a "barrage" of advertisements.

Lutz said that while readers of auto publications may be aware of the narrowing quality gap, most American consumers will be much harder to convince that GM has caught up with the likes of Honda and Toyota.

"This is a big bet on the power of communication and effective advertising in changing public perception," GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said.

A web site set up in advance of the GM ad campaign underscores the hurdle it faces with consumers. The site -- www.thebestcarwins.com -- invites visitors to rank vehicle brands for fuel economy, safety and quality.

As of Thursday evening, leaders of the survey in the five categories were:

Fuel efficiency - Toyota

Safety - Volvo

Quality - Honda

Performance - BMW

Best car - BMW

    Nearly 500 years ago, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world. With wind and sails, the journey was certainly a green one.

    Now a Swiss engineer wants to match the feat -- with a catamaran called "Planet Solar," powered entirely on the sun's energy.

    It's a clean-tech adventure designed by Raphael Domjan to promote solar power, energy efficiency and sustainable mobility. Domjan calls it "the path towards a lasting world."

    "(I) want to show that we can change, that solutions exist and that it isn't too late," Domjan writes on his Web site. "Future generations are looking to us; our choices will mark the future of humanity."

    Domjan -- who has been an ambulance driver, mountain guide and rescue specialist -- will skipper the boat with Gerard d'Aboville, who was the first person to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

    Called "Planet Solar," the futuristic-looking no-sails catamaran is being built in Germany. Domjan and d'Aboville will launch the round-the-world attempt in 2011.

    Domjan told CNN that he hopes the $11.5 million project will prove that boats can travel at high speed without emitting any carbon dioxide.

    The boat's deck will be covered in 470 square meters of solar panels. Its skippers hope to average a speed of eight knots but can push the vessel to 14 knots (15 km/hour and 25 km/hour, respectively).

    The boat, in photos available online, appears to have two propellers at its stern for propulsion.

    To take advantage of the most sunlight possible, the tentative route is largely around the equator. In case of bad weather, batteries on board will be able to store solar energy to power the boat for three days, according to CNN.

    But if cloudy weather blocks the sun for longer, the boat will have trouble. Do you have any thoughts on a green back-up plan for the ambitious sailors?

    (Writing and reporting by Laura Isensee)

    Photo Credit: A 3-dimensional model of the futuristic-looking boat. Courtesy of PlanetSolar.com

   Solar power may bring us cleaner air and clearer skies. Nice, yes. But it's money -- not saving Mother Earth -- that will catapult solar energy past dirty coal-fueled power plants.

That's the theory of Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor. At a technology conference on Friday, Kurzweil said billions are being invested into solar power and new advances in the technology are driving down the cost of powering by the sun. 
    "As a result, the amount of solar energy is doubling every year two years," Kurzweil said. "But ultimately it will be very inexpensive. So what's motivating (its adoption) is economics.
    "It has the side effect that it's environmentally much friendlier," Kurzweil said at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California.
    The inventor is far from the first to predict the success of solar power. Some may give more weight to his words: Kurzweil has predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of wireless technology.
    He has his critics as well. Kurzweil, who wrote "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology," envisions a future where we can download memory and reverse-engineer the brain.
    (Reporting and writing by Laura Isensee)

      (Picture: Inventor Raymond Kurzweil speaks at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference in Pasadena, California July 24, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser)

It was a discussion that would have made George Bernard Shaw smile. The British Nobel Prize-winning writer said America and England were separated by their common language.

Such was evident recently during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. The panel focused on the effort to limit carbon dioxide emissions by trading carbon credits, commonly called a cap-and-trade scheme, and creating such a system in the United States.

That's the rub, said Elizabeth Kanna, a marketing professional who said that "scheme" is an awful choice because, for most Americans, it means something sinister.

"Most Americans don't understand carbon. It's a confusing subject," said Kanna. "You can't convince Americans it's a good idea by calling it a cap-and-trade 'scheme'. I know 'scheme's' a bad word. In other countries 'scheme' is not a bad word but you cannot create a global market using a word like 'scheme' that doesn't work everywhere."

To the British, scheme means a plan of action. Scheme is also used often for programs at the United Nations, where its meaning is neutral. But to Americans, it implies a plan of action in an underhanded way.

In fact, both definitions are correct. U.S. dictionary Merriam-Webster defines scheme as "a plan or program of action; especially: a crafty or secret one." However, it also gives another definition: "a systematic or organized configuration." The Oxford English Dictionary gives similar definitions, including "a secret or underhanded plan" and "a systematic plan"

"We have to come up with a better word," said Kanna, who lives in Sacramento, California. "Here's a story to illustrate my point. In January, I was in New York. In the cabs now, they have the news on flat screen.  On the bottom of the screen, it said, 'Madoff Ponzi Scheme.' It was a new assessment of the money lost. Scheme. At the same time, the cab driver has on the news and they said 'The cap-and-trade scheme was going forward in Washington.' "

While "scheme" may not evoke images of green fields and clear skies for some, the word is a better choice than what has been used in the past, said Robert Hahn of the American Enterprise Institute.

"We've come a long way from 'license to pollute,' " said Hahn, referring to the phrase common in the 1990s when the northeastern U.S. states formed a market to trade sulfur dioxide emissions in a successful effort to curb acid rain. (Nevermind that outside the United States, sulfur is spelled sulphur.)

"Carbon tax" is also a marketing non-starter, said Andrew Treusch of Environment Canada, the federal agency.

What do you think? Is this a serious concern? Should the use of scheme be capped? Scrapped?

Photo Credit: Reuters/Dan Riedlhuber (Petro-Canada's Edmonton Refinery and Distribution Centre glows at dusk in Edmonton February 15, 2009)

To keep the swine flu from spreading, California public school students are being told to practice what they have dubbed the "Dracula Sneeze."

California Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell said that last week teachers reminded students that if they have to sneeze, to put their mouths into the crook of one of their elbows.

"The students started calling that the Dracula Sneeze, and we picked up on that," O'Connell said on Monday.

As of Monday afternoon, no state public schools have been closed due to swine flu. A private school in the Sacramento, California area was closed on Monday when a teenager got sick, possibly of swine flu.

O'Connell said students can identify with the Dracula character and if that helps them practice better hygeiene, the Dracula Sneeze is what they'll call the maneuver.

The image many have of the fictional vampire Dracula is of one of his arms -- enclosed in a cape -- draped over his mouth.

In addition to the Dracula Sneeze, O'Connell said students are told to wash their hands often -- for at least 20 seconds each time -- and to say home if they are sick.

O'Connell said the biggest state school system in the United States is monitoring the progress of swine flu but has yet made any plans to shut any schools.

"Our schools are safe," O'Connell told Reuters. "To keep this in perspective, we have seven identifiable cases of swine flu in California limited to two counties, and we have 6.3 million students. We want to take every precaution. We are monitoring. We are watching."

Photo credit: Reuters/Centers for Disease Control/Handout. (An image depicts the ultrastructural details of a number of influenza virus particles.)

California utility PG&E is at the head of the class when it comes to smart meters in North America, having installed 2.3 million of them. It is on track to have nearly 10 million working by 2011, according to figures gathered by the utility and a survey of smart metering programs by the Energy Retail Association, of Britain.

Smart meters are in their infancy but their numbers are expanding rapidly in the United States and around the world. 

After PG&E, PECO in Pennsylvania has installed 2.2 million meters -- all of its power and natural gas customers.  Even at 2.3 million, PG&E and North American utilities lag behind Italy and it biggest utility, Enel, which installed 30 million smart meters nationwide in four years.

The digital meters allow for near real-time readings by customer and utility, allowing better informed decisions on cutting demand as well as getting a better handle on whether new power plants and lines are needed. Smart metering also offers the chance for customers to voluntarily set limits so that appliance turn off automatically if prices rise to high.

It will cost PG&E customers -- the cost is passed through to them -- about $2.2 billion to install the 5.3 million electricity and 4.8 million natural gas meters.