As the first major international auto show of each year, the North American International Auto Show in Detroit is an annual barometer of what to expect in the coming 12 months and beyond. Based on the mood at this year’s show, the forecast is subdued optimism.
Or, as analyst Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Auutomotive Consultants put it, “In 2010, the auto industry had a heartbeat.”
That was a huge contrast to 2009, when doom and gloom prevailed. But it was far from the glory days of a decade ago, or even mid-decade. Booth space was down, some manufacturers, notably Chrysler, didn’t even hold a press conference, and the overall level of glitz and glamour was toned down just a little.
Ford was the clear star of the show, winning both the North American Car and Truck of the Year awards with its Fusion Hybrid and Transit Connect vehicles, respectively, then following up with the world debut of the 2011 Focus. If media response to the Focus is any indicator, it promises to be a huge success.
According to DesRosiers, “The new Ford Focus is remarkable because it heralds a long-due normalization of global engineering efforts, but its true significance lies in a very basic fact: It is probably the best compact ever released by an American car company.”
There were other introductions of significance as well, including the
Cadillac XTS Platinum concept (probably to be built in Oshawa),
Honda’s CR-Z Sport Hybrid Coupe, and the Hyundai Tucson.
But the theme of the show, if unofficially, was electric – as in electric vehicles of all types. Almost every manufacturer showed or announced some sort of electrified vehicle, be it a conventional hybrid, plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicle.
The industry has concluded, it seems, that the only way to satisfy forthcoming fuel-consumption/CO2 emission standards, which tighten from now through 2016, is with the aid of electric power.
It’s an idea DesRosiers dismisses as unrealistic, apart from hybrids. “It's crucial to remember that the NAIAS is as much a political convention as an auto industry conference or consumer trade show,” he says. “Plug-in mania was what the politicians wanted and it's what they got.”
But remember, he continues: “the technology for many of these
proposed vehicles is so brutally expensive as to radically limit their
market. They are largely curios… bearing little resemblance to anything remotely saleable in the United States.
“The barriers to technology going mainstream are real and they are serious – and they are a decade or more from being overcome.
Winning today's battle is the now-familiar gas-electric hybrid setup, first introduced by Toyota in the late-1990s and now adopted by all major manufacturers. The past decade's experience with this technology has been so successful that hybrids are now poised to go mainstream with serious volume across all segments in the market.”
DesRosiers predicts that a collision between hard science and
arbitrary political promises is set to occur in 2016, when it’s discovered that consumers simply won’t buy enough costly, eco-friendly vehicles to meet the mandatory fleet fuel-economy averages.
It will result in “our industry either paying massive fines, removing key products from the market or going cap-in-hand to Washington (and by extension Ottawa) to beg for extended timeframes,” he says.
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