Another Benefit From the Auto Industry Bailout – GM May Have Turned a Little Green

Just One More Irritant to Conservatives

Of all of the policies that the conservatives hate about Mr. Obama, his rescue of the auto industry seems to be near the top of the list, just below the goal of getting affordable health care for everyone.  The reason is that the auto industry bailout belies the conservative charge that Mr. Obama is a commie, socialist government loving anti-American.  The auto industry bailout consisted of saving the industry and returning it to private ownership, a fact that contradicts what conservatives want the world to believe about the President.

The benefits of this policy have been enormous.  And now it turns out that the new GM may be just a little bit more friendly to environmental concerns than it used to be.  The evidence, a new Chevrolet Cruze diesel.

The Chevy Cruze, not the favorite car of conservatives

Despite several do-gooder attempts, from the EV1 electric car to the Volt plug-in hybrid, General Motors has not always been viewed as a particularly green automaker. . . .

G.M.’s Chevrolet Spark EV is the most efficient electric vehicle sold in America (though only in California and Oregon for the time being) with a federal gasoline-equivalent rating of 119 miles per gallon.

Now the Chevy Cruze, already among the highest-mileage compact sedans running on gasoline, raises its bar: with a rating of 46 m.p.g., the 2014 Cruze Turbo Diesel achieves the best highway mileage of any new nonhybrid car in America.

The Cruze also becomes the first Chevy diesel since the 1986 Chevette. Weighing the Cruze against that Chevette — the latter’s engine as pitiful as the car itself — shows how far the technology has come. It also illustrates how G.M. is building world-competitive small cars after decades of bumbling indifference.

The car is getting a good review in the New York Times, although there is this.

Like many diesels in the United States, which has far stricter regulations on smog-forming nitrogen oxides than Europe, the Chevy carries a small onboard tank of urea that’s injected into the exhaust stream to neutralize pollution.

VW wins that battle; its 4-cylinder diesels meet 50-state emissions rules with no need for a urea tank. Chevy owners must refill theirs every 10,000 to 15,000 miles.

And we will leave it to the imagination of viewers as to how one must fill the tank with urea.

So no, the Obama administration is not a socialist one, it has not produced government ownership of the auto industry.  In bailing out GM and Chrysler the government did the right thing, with a huge payoff.  As noted in the previous post, not only is Mr. Obama not anti-business, when history is ultimately objectively written the Obama administration will be judged to have been lax on regulation, particularly in the financial sector.

But for now everyone just enjoy the Chevy Cruze, just another stick in the eye of conservatives.