It was reported yesterday that Americans are driving less, in large part due to the high price of gasoline. For the first time since 1981 the average American motorist is driving less. After 25 years of steady increases, the growth in total miles driven has leveled off in the last 18 months. This is in spite of the fact that there have been an additional 1 million drivers on the highways since 2005. While the population and workforce of the country has expanded by more than 1 percent, the total amount of driving has increased only 0.3 percent.

The interesting correlation between today and 1981 is that it was in that year that the price of gasoline reached its highest price when adjusted for inflation. The price reached an inflation adjusted price of $3.22 in 2007 dollars. That compares to the $3.11 national average price of yesterday. As regular readers of this column know, in January, I predicted record gasoline prices this year, so today’s high prices are no surprise. There is no doubt in my mind that between now and Labor Day, we will see prices continue to go up, mostly likely exceeding a $3.50 per gallon national average.

There are other reasons that Americans are driving less. The Federal Highway Administration says that 7 in 10 Americans now say they are combining trips and taking other steps to cut down on driving. In 2006 more people took public transportation than …

We are all more aware of global warming than we were years ago.  As a country we passed through the tipping point of awareness in the last year.  We have a better understanding of what it is that we each do to contribute to global warming, and a number of us have taken action to lessen those contributions as much as possible.  We now need to change some of the language we use in this area as it will help us to continue to change our thinking and perhaps our behavior. 

I have heard a number of relatively environmentally aware people speak about their cars with a MPG reference.  People speak about ‘doing their part’ by driving a car that is rated as a 30 mpg vehicle, or that they just bought a hybrid to help cut down on harmful emissions and to save on gasoline.  That is great, no question.  What is needed now is for those people, and all of us, to not rest on our laurels based upon what we have purchased, and move to how we use what we have purchased.

The question should be “What is your carbon footprint?” not what is the mpg rating of your car.  For example, let’s assume a green thinking consumer has just bought a car with a 30mpg rating, having shed her big SUV that only got 15 miles per gallon.  That’s great, but she should ask herself what her carbon footprint is before she wears even a scarf of self …

The news out of Detroit last week was that GM had given up the title of the world’s number one auto company to Toyota.  This was a development that had been expected, but when both companies reported first quarter sales last week, the numbers made it official.  Toyota sold 2.35 million cars and trucks, about 100,000 more than GM. These numbers were expected, as GM had made a decision last year to cut back on bulk sales to rental companies which have historically been included in the total sales numbers.

The reporting in the media was predictable.  Why did this happen?  What did GM do wrong?  How will Toyota take over the title of being number one without stoking nationalistic trade conversations?  Then of course there were all the interviews with executives and assembly workers who have worked for GM for decades, discussing this occurrence with sadness and frustration.

Let’s take a look at this changing of the guard at the top of the automotive world through another lens, the lens of history.  First, it must be pointed out that GM has been the number one auto company in the world since 1931.  That is impressive!  Seventy-six years as the number one company in its category.  Do you think Microsoft will have as long a time as the number one software company?  How long did Xerox stay at the top of the copier heap?  How long did monolithic IBM stay at the top of the computer world?  All things must pass.

In addition …

In my last post I wrote about GM and the presentation it made to some of us in the media about the new battery technology they are developing along with several other companies.  At the end of that post I highlighted the two distinct lines of challenging questions that have come up in response. 

I will quickly restate these two before moving on to address them.  The first challenge to GM about their commitment to creating a new battery technology for vehicles is to directly question how serious the GM commitment is.  How can the people who were identified as launching and then ‘killing’ the electric EV-1 be taken seriously?  The second challenge is to the commitment of GM to not come out with a true electric car until there is the ‘perfect’ battery technology to do so.  In other words, since it will take several years to perfect the lithium ion battery to meet all the necessary criteria for use, why not just come out with vehicles that use the current nickel-metal hydride technology so that ‘green’ cars can be put on the road much sooner.

To restate simply:  Are you guys for real, and why wait for perfect when good is available? 

Is GM for real?  All evidence points to a truly serious, committed company that has set as one of its core missions to reinvent the actual DNA of the automobile.  First, GM is being extremely open to the press, bloggers and the world at large about what they …