Publication date: 17-November-2003 
Source:The Detroit News

For some of this town's auto bosses, that's just fine because the sober assessments from mega-suppliers Delphi Corp. in Troy and Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH amount to a clash between technological reality and their corporate hype -- and technology is winning.

If you wonder why Detroit's automakers are muting talk of fuel cells and jumping on the gasoline-electric hybrid bandwagon in hopes of closing the gap with Toyota, this is it. Or why Volkswagen AG cut a bio-diesel fuel deal with agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland and Mercedes-Benz is pushing its diesel engines inside the United States again.

Fuel cells may, indeed, be the auto industry's Holy Grail, a squeaky clean powertrain that would give gearheads the power and torque they crave and environmentalists the total victory they demand. Remember, though, that no one has ever found the Holy Grail.

That's not to say affordable fuel-cell vehicles won't be a reality around here before the city of Detroit pays off its bonds on a new convention center. They probably will be, so long as prices, buyers and technology converge.

But the years between now and then are enough, the diligence of Toyota's hybrid vehicle program (under a 26-year veteran of General Motors Corp.) is impressive enough and the public-relations payoff is big enough to force the hybrid push in Detroit and the diesels-to-America campaign in Germany.

"The path appears to be that there will be a hybrid powertrain option in all high-volume vehicles" from Toyota and Lexus, says Dave Hermance, Toyota's executive engineer for environmental engineering. "It will take years to get there.

"We are early in the process. Having an early lead is an advantageous position to be in. But there's a fine line between being on the leading edge and the bleeding edge, as they say in the military."

Toyota is on both at the same time, winning the first stages of what promises to be a long race and, so far, losing money doing it. Hermance won't say how much Toyota is spending on its hybrid program or what its losses likely are, but you can bet the spending runs into billions of dollars (and they have more of those than anyone).

One lap around the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center is a reminder that the surest way to arouse automotive passions is with horsepower -- Ford's GT, Chrysler's ME Four Twelve, Ferrari's Scaglietti or Mercedes's SLR -- not hybrids. And, truth is, gasoline engines are cleaner and more efficient every year.

There's another truism about life in the post-Cold War, post-September 11 world: Global uncertainty, finite oil supplies and wider demand for environmental standards are making the search for legitimate alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines a corporate imperative for the world's leading automakers.

Toyota and Honda understood this shift, and acted on it sooner than GM, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, VW, BMW and Nissan.

It's still early in this new game. The contradiction of horsepower and hybrids, so evident at this year's Detroit show, isn't a contradiction at all. It's good business, and it's the future.