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The tragedy is that there is no greater symbol of Detroit’s malaise than this SUV on steroids. GM unveiled its first Hummer at just about the time it decided to pull the plug on its EVI, the sleek, all-electric car that was sold only in California and parts of the American Southwest. In doing so, the firm gave away its lead in automobile electronics and thus its chance to pioneer the hybrid-electric technology that would later give Toyota a decisive advantage in the marketplace. Seduced by the short-term profits that SUVs offered during the boom years of the 1990s, GM and its American rivals neglected to invest in more fuel efficient, environmentally friendly technologies. Worse than that, the Detroit firms actively lobbied for exemptions from fuel-economy standards and otherwise tried to manipulate government regulations to favor dirty, inefficient cars. The craze toward SUVs was made possible only because America’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) law had a loophole that allowed vehicles that could be classified as light trucks to meet lower standards. Obviously, most people bought SUVs to use them not as commercial trucks but as passenger vehicles and the loophole should have been closed-but Detroit’s lobbyists in Washington fought tooth and nail against that. 

Excerpted from Page 286-287  of ‘Zoom: The Global Race to fuel the car of the future’ by Iain Carson and V Vaitheeswaran