Lutz: Fuel Economy Needs Manhattan Project

On message in Kentucky, Lutz told reporters that the industry needed the kind of five-year focus that the country gave the atomic bomb. Maybe the space race would have been a better analogy—I suggested the same in my book on HUMMER from 2003—but Lutz has the right idea in that structural change in the auto-driven economy ain’t gonna happen until the government invests in ethanol and hydrogen infrastructures as a point of national security first, national interest second.

The whole idea of moving to an oil-reduced economy may have some interesting consequences. Would Brazil become the new Saudi Arabia – a regional power broker that tempers the Irans or the Venezuelas of its sphere? Or would it simply turn us all on to a new resource without conservation checks put into place?

Read the Journal article and tell us what you think – should the government spend $10 billion, $50 billion, or $100 billion to sweep in a new energy plan for drivers, or should it remain more hands-off to our energy future?

GM Exec Suggests 'Manhattan Project' For U.S. Energy Policy --Wall Street Journal