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...the main effects of the program (Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles) were to deflect pressure on Detroit to make cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles right away, and to prod Japanese manufacturers into speeding up their own efforts, which resulted in the Prius and other successful models- just like the EV1 program. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/business/22auto.html?ref=automobiles)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/GM-Precept2.jpgMatthew L Wald - New York Times - November 21, 2000

The GM Precept (http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/gmprecept.html) was part of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_a_New_Generation_of_Vehicles) with the Chrysler ESX3 and GM Precipt. Add to the EV1 and HiWire as green projects that never came to the showroom -- Ed.

As Congress looks skeptically at lending taxpayer money to the auto companies, specialists said that the last big effort to help Detroit, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, was not something to repeat.

Beginning in late 1993, the federal government contributed more than $1.25 billion to the program, an effort that began in late 1993 to make the automakers more competitive by assisting them in developing, by 2004, a prototype midsize sedan that would go 80 miles on a gallon of gas, with no loss of acceleration, size or carrying capacity.

“I don’t think the government got much out of that,” said Joan Claybrook (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/joan_claybrook/index.html?inline=nyt-per), a former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/) and the longtime president of Public Citizen (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/public_citizen/index.html?inline=nyt-org), a consumer advocacy organization. She said the technical gains were small and probably would have been made anyway... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/business/22auto.html?ref=automobiles

Hi All,

The gains made due to the PNGV was the Prius. Unfortunately, a US headquartered automotive company did not bring similar cars to market. Even the new Fusion hybrid due out this spring will be using a standard sized engine, rather than a reduced sized engine. Which is part of the hybrid concept. With all that HSD system in it, one should be able to legally hypermille it to great fuel economy, even though the EPA results are not stellar. Any Ford without an alternator is probably going to be 100 % more reliable than any other Ford I have owned/been responsible for maintaining!


So, Joan Claybrook is foolish in saying the gains were small and probably would have been made anyway. No US headquartered company actually put a PNGV car into production to date. That right there makes Joans comment ingnorant.

The problem was the gains were substatial, and so were the costs consequently. You do not get something for nothing. The managements played it safe probably because the marketing departments did not think they could sell enough. Even though the additional costs made economic sense for the customers, country and the world over the past 5 years - the period of interest for production of these cars. They did not trust their customers to have economic sense, beyond sticker shock. Even beyond fuel economy, there is benefit in not having to do brakes every 40K miles and extending oil changes to 5K miles - ask any taxi cab owner.

You can probably tell I do not like comments such as Joan's. From people who find fault in everything, and do nothing but that, and many times ignorantly so. She needs to start her own company to actually build/better/service something and see how well she does. Lets face it, there is a big difference between 25 mpg and 75 mpg - the achieved goal of the prototype PNGV cars.

Nah, the work product of the PNGV was taking Priuses apart to
reverse-engineer them after the Japanese had already way outstripped
us. Some nice papers out on the net, but nothing on the road.
.
_H*