Green Gm

General Motors Going Green

When many companies started there was no one thinking about being energy efficient or worry about polluting the air. They were more worried about making money, selling a product and sustaining jobs for the employees. But now we are in the 2000s and people are worried about the environment and trying to find ways to conserve energy and go “green”. Going green means being more environmentally friendly.

One company that has never really been seen as a green company is General Motors (GM). GM was founded in 1908 and is based in Detroit, Michigan. GM is the producer of Chevrolet, Pontiac, GMC, Cadillac, and Hummer vehicles. Everyone knows about how big GM is and all the cars that they have produced and the big factories they have. Being green was never a big concern to them until recently when other automakers started to make strides toward hybrid cars and cars with better fuel efficiency. GM first started making strides by making there factories more green. Over the past five years they have reduced their energy use at North American facilities by 25%. They have managed to do this by capturing gas from landfills and by installing solar panels on the top of some facilities. They have also managed to cut water use at some facilities by trapping rainwater and using it for the restrooms for flushing toilets (General Motors Corporation, 2000). This is how they made their facilities greener but making their vehicles more environmentally friendly is done in a different way.

There are five different ways that GM is trying to become greener when it comes to making vehicles. They can make more efficient gasoline that can go more than 30 miles per gallon. GM has also started to produce vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol fuel. They also have moved into making hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles, and vehicles that run by a hydrogen fuel cell (GM General Motors).

GM has always been known to have vehicles that aren’t fuel efficient and even to this day they still make vehicles that average 15 miles per gallon or less but if they wanted to compete with Toyota and Honda who make Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) that average 20-25 miles per gallon then GM would have to make more fuel efficient vehicles. GM has started to make more vehicles that average over 30 miles per gallon. This makes it easier for them to compete and starts them on the track of being a greener company but this is only a start.

The next step that GM has made is with E85 ethanol/gasoline vehicles. This allows a vehicle to run on gasoline or E85 ethanol or a mixture of both. E85 burns cleaner and is better for the environment (GM). However E85 ethanol fuel is hard to find and many people with these vehicles don’t have a gas station locally that carry this fuel. So until E85 is carried by all gas stations most of these owners will have to just stick with regular gasoline (CondÐ"©Net, Inc. 2000) .

For the consumer that is looking to keep their gasoline powered vehicle but still be recognized as being environmentally friendly can purchase on of GM’s