With all the talk spiraling around these days about what GM is doing wrong, let’s focus on one thing they’re doing right: the Chevy Volt.  The plug-in electric, slash hybrid electric gas automobile is on the frontline of General Motors push into the realm of more energy efficient vehicles.

We all know the Volt will achieve much better energy and fuel economy than the SUVs that loom over Detroit’s recent past.  But exactly what kind of mileage will this new Chevrolet get.  The answer is not so simple.  The current rating method by the EPA for evaluating mileage standards in automobiles relies on on a 10.3 mile test track which is well within the initial 40 mile range the Volt’s plug-in battery can reach, making it an inaccurate measure of exactly what kind of efficiency a car that has the capability of switching between two systems - battery to gas - can get. However by any reasonable measure the new Volt should achieve a mileage rating popping up over 100 MPG, making it the most fuel efficient model available from a major producer on the American market.  Let’s just hope GM is around long enough to mass market the Chevy Volt.

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The Ford Motor Company is about to make an abrupt shift away from SUV production to focus on smaller, more fuel efficient cars. The move comes after nearly twenty years of the Detroit based automobile manufacturer staking its fortunes on putting Americans in Big gas-guzzling trucks and sports utility vehicles.

The automaker is expected to announce it will convert three of its North American production facilities from trucks to cars. Ford will also be ramping up the fuel efficiency of its vehicles in a reaction to what it sees as a permanent change in the factors American consumers will base their choice of vehicles on in an age of $100+ per barrel oil.

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“As GM goes, so goes the nation.” the old adage goes. So perhaps it’s not surprising that with the United States economy teetering on a precipice amidst record high oil prices, that Merrill Lynch analysts described a General Motors bankruptcy as “not impossible” yesterday. The Wall Street investment bank said that the American automaker could need to raise up $15 Billion in capital to stay solvent should the auto market continue to slump. In accompanying news GM’s share price slumped to a 54-year low on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday.

Honestly, I’m having a hard time feeling bad about this. GM is now experiencing what’s commonly known as a market correction. The company that for years pushed big, boxy, unconscionably low mileage SUVs onto the American market and stifled any sort of innovation whatsoever when it came to fuel efficiency in their cars is now getting the brunt of what analysts for years have been predicting; increased demand and declining supply in the oil market. Who could miss the GM of today? Gone is the ‘57 Chevy and the other dream cars of America’s postwar boom with their gorgeous tailfins and brilliant designs. In their place we’re given gas guzzler boxes with lower average mileage than even Chinese automakers produce.

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Wake up and smell the weak CAFE standards. A federal appeals court in San Francisco told the Bush administration on Thursday to stop blowing smoke up our collective tailpipe and get serious about reducing pollution from SUV’s, pickup trucks and vans.The administration’s proposed regulations uphold the double standard Detroit’s been banking on, calling for greater fuel efficiency from passenger cars than light trucks and giving SUV’s a total pass. Seriously. The standards, lame as they are, don’t even apply to trucks weighing more than 8,500 pounds, like, say, the Hummer H2.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets the standards, has never regulated Hummers and their carbon spewing cousins, claiming that more testing needs to be done first. The court rejected this excuse and ordered the NHTSA to develop fuel standards for these larger trucks or come up with a better reason not to. Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General Formerly Known as Governor Moonbeam, called the ruling “a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration and its failed energy policy,” adding that “the idea of raising vehicle efficiency 1 mile per gallon is pathetic and shocking.” But Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, warned that “any further changes to the program would only delay the progress that manufacturers have made toward increasing fleet-wide fuel economy.” In other words, requiring American automakers to manufacture more fuel-efficient cars will only delay the manufacture of more fuel-efficient cars. When it comes to combating climate change, these guys really know how to stall.