The U.S. government has pumped more than $100 billion into Detroit over the past year to keep automakers General Motors and Chrysler alive. But some of the sector’s remaining capitalists are having a hard time stomaching a $25 billion Department of Energy loan program intended to spark new developments in electric cars. 

Start-ups Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors have won about $1 billion in combined funding, while longtime players Ford and Nissan have received substantially larger loans from Washington to work on vehicle electrification — a technology the White House and many in the industry hope will reduce the United States’ dependence on imported oil and lower emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas. 

Funneling federal money to new entrants to the automaking world does not sit right with Tim Leuliette, chief executive of parts supplier Dura Automotive. 

“If there’s a real market for electric vehicles, the OEMs will do it,” Leuliette said, using industry jargon for automakers. “We don’t need to have people who have never built a car in their life take $1 billion of our tax money and say ‘I can do it too.’” 

Government funding muddles market signals, Leuliette argued at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit.

“When government writes a check, it says the smart money investors are hesitant to fund it,” Leuliette said. “When markets say it’s now wise enough … there’s more than enough money.” 

For his part, the founder of Fisker Automotive — which aims to build plug-in hybrid cars at a former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware — said government funding is a logical way to kick start a technology that private U.S. companies have been slow to focus on. 

“Do we just sit and wait for the Chinese and the Japanese or Europeans to develop this and then we join later? Or do we actually this time around, try to take the lead?” said Henrik Fisker, whose plug-in hybrids would be able to travel for short distances on just the electricity stored in their batteries, which can be charged off the electric grid. 

“This is a moment in time, we cannot let this pass. We already let the hybrid pass - Toyota in the consumer’s mind, invented the hybrid and owns the hybrid - the average consumer doesn’t know that GM has more hybrids than Toyota,” Fisker said. “If an American company comes first with a plug-in hybrid, and we will be followed closely by the Chevy Volt in another segment, I think that is where America then has a chance in the consumer’s mind to take the lead, and not only in the U.S., but worldwide.”

Ed Whitacre sneaks off to breakfast at a Detroit greasy spoon. Sergio Marchionne’s attention to detail extends to the condition of his factories’ bathrooms. And Bill Ford helped save his great-grandfather’s company by hocking the blue oval. 

These are just a few of the glimmers of top Detroit auto executives’ lives that you get when you sit down with Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers union. 

Marchionne, the chief executive of Italian automaker Fiat — which pulled Chrysler out of bankruptcy this year, seems to be “extremely respectful” of his workforce, Gettelfinger told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit on Tuesday. 

“I know he’s went out into the facilities and one of the things that he did was walk into the restroom to inspect it. Now you don’t normally see that happen,” Gettelfinger said. “But he truly believes in the power of the people, the value they add to the process.” 

General Motors chairman Whitacre is also a fan of unannounced factory visits, a detail Gettelfinger may have picked up at one of their morning meetings. 

“There’s a little dive up the street that we go up here and have breakfast sometimes,” Gettelfinger said. 

He also recalled a call that came from then-Ford CEO Bill Ford three years ago, when the automaker was preparing a major debt offer — a move that helped it to be the only U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy this year. 

“I remember him very well calling me to say, ‘In case you hear anything, we think now is the time to go out into the market and build up some debt.’ And the term he used was ‘hock the blue oval,’” Gettelfinger recalled. 

That move, while painful at the time, was likely a major reason the company did not have to turn to Washington for a bailout as rivals GM and Chrysler did, Gettelfinger said.

“Ford went out and did it the hard way,” Gettelfinger said. “And I think that has resonated with the buying public.”

After a year of unprecedented turmoil in the auto industry, BMW’s U.S. head smells blood in the water.

Changes in ownership at some of its historic European rivals may present the German luxury automaker with a chance to grab market share. 

But even as Jim O’Donnell saw weaknesses to exploit, he raised the worry that one of Detroit’s most storied car brands, Cadillac, could take out of the market of the company that calls its vehicles “the ultimate driving machine.” 

As Cadillac’s parent company, General Motors Corp, went through a bankruptcy that forced it to cut thousands of jobs and shed brands, BMW picked up Cadillac customers and dealers. But a slimmed down GM could present a renewed threat, said the president of BMW’s North American unit. 

“Going forward, I actually see Cadillac as one that could be potentially a serious rival,” O’Donnell told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. “Now that GM is only going to concentrate on four brands, if I was at GM, I would concentrate on Cadillac and really try and reestablish it. But if you look at the last year, and no wonder because of the turmoil in the marketplace, has been losing sales quicker than the market.”

Even as he sees a renewed threat from Detroit, O’Donnell said he thought European rivals could become more vulnerable. BMW sees a chance to snatch customers from Saab — which GM aims to sell to Swedish luxury car maker Koenigsegg — and Volvo — which Ford is negotiation to sell to Chinese automaker Geely. 

“Where are all the Saab customers going to go? And there’s a great deal of uncertainty over Volvo. Where are all the Volvo customers going to go? Even though they’ve done well these last three months, I still think as they come under the ownership of Geely, will they have the same believe in the brand? I don’t know,” O’Donnell said. “But we will try to exploit it.”

When General Motors rolled out its new “May the Best Car Win” ad campaign this fall, it turned its competitive fire on Toyota Motor Corp, rather than one of its Detroit competitors. 
Toyota, which last year displaced GM as the world’s largest carmarker, takes the ads — which compare the Chevy Malibu with the Toyota Camry — as something of a compliment. 
“When Ford names Toyota and not Chevrolet and when Chevrolet names Toyota and not Ford, that speaks to some consumers about our position in the market,” Toyota group vice president and general manager Bob Carter told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit. “So it’s not all bad.” 
But the Japanese automaker has no interest in getting drawn into an advertising tit-for-tat similar to Apple Inc’s “Get a Mac” ads, which compare a young, hip actor representing a Macintosh computer with a dowdy middle aged actor playing a PC run by Microsoft’s Windows operating system. 
“We think the most effective way to approach the market is to talk about our products and our brands,” Carter said.