Most of the criticism leveled at Detroit during its inevitable demise centers around the big three’s reluctance to embrace fuel economy. After wasting an enormous amount of time and money on hydrogen fuel cells, GM tried to play catch-up with Toyota by unveiling the plug-in concept car The Volt. With the battery technology still not quite there, GM may vanish before the Volt or this god-awful PUMA thing actually hits the streets. But the underlying problem for GM or even Toyota is that hybrids or plug-in hybrids still rely on finite resources. The mining processes used to extract nickel and lithium are just as devastating as coal mining and just as geographically specific as oil deposits. Also, for the foreseeable future, Coal will be the main source of the electricity that a Volt or PUMA will plug into. Coal futures reflect this reality. Oh, by the way, wouldn’t your sandwich taste so much better with this spread over the bread?
