Grab almost any car rag off the rack at your local newsstand, flip through the glossy pages and your thumb will start to stumble about midway through.

“What’s this?” You wonder.

Another insert for more subscriptions?

Nope . . .

It’s GM’s answer to their $39 billion loss.

“The Hybrid That Makes Sense” is sprawled across the top of their ten page--pull out and all--advert, like stars on a puppet general.

Scrawled on these pages are fantastically Photoshopped pics of lush green vegetation with a silver streak down a two lane road, snazzy charts and graphs and a sensational, hyped up piece flying the colors of increased efficiency, economy and performance.

Read the first paragraph and their hybrid sounds pretty good . . .

“With the 2008 Yukon Hybrid, no tradeoff is required between fuel economy, performance and capability . . . yet it returns unprecedented fuel economy--an estimated 40-percent improvement in city driving and overall improvement of 25 percent.*”

But lo and behold, there it is, like a pimple on a supermodel, that single little asterisk.

Follow it down to the bottom of the page and you see what the 40% improvement really is. Get this . . . “the hybrid that makes sense” gets 20 mpg in the city and 21 on the highway.

How could this be? How could GM make such a foolish hybrid? Sure, they claim '08 will bring the Volt test bed and '10 will see it in production, but I'll believe it when I see it.

One possible answer is that they’re completely oblivious to our current energy crisis. Maybe they’ve turned a blind eye to people like you and me who have been practically screaming about the reality of peak oil and our need to cut consumption for years. It certainly looks that way, considering the engine is a 6.0 liter, 332 horsepower V-8.

But I seriously doubt GM is unaware of all this doom and gloom talk, especially since they’ve been in the pockets of Big Oil since the beginning.

As a Mr. Jeff G. said in response to my last article , “Too many powerful people on an international level would have too much to lose beyond wealth . . . favors couldn’t be repaid, face would be lost, and the whole balance of things would teeter.”

Right-o, man! That certainly seems to be the case.

And you know what? That makes me pissed off, and you should be, too.

This whole while, people with good hearts have been scooping up gas-guzzlers because either . . .

A) They thought there was more than enough oil to go around.

or

B) They thought the hybrids and other alternative-fueled vehicles out there weren’t worth buying because they didn’t cut gas use all that much.

Well, the people in group B are only right in the case of the Big Three.

And the problem with people being tricked into thinking this way is that now we’re all going to have to foot the bill for GM’s shenanigans--the blood in the streets as people fight over gasoline, the rise in the cost of food, medical supplies, plastics, EVERYTHING (not to mention the millions that suffer from respiratory and cardiac ailments due to pollution) because GM and the others were more concerned with keeping their partners happy.

Think the sub-prime nightmare and the tanking dollar are bad? Just wait until oil is at $300 a barrel. That’s when the fun really begins. Load up the wagon and rack the shot gun, Sally, we’re goin’ to Mexico!

That’s the nature of the beast though, right? Politicians and businessmen lie, cheat and steal to keep the borderline crooks in the banks, Big Oil and other major companies happy.

Or is it?

Right now there are some serious competitors that a year or two ago looked like they’d never be able to get enough leverage to unseat the automotive kings from their throne. But now, with the mess we find our economy in and the absolutely miserable financial reports coming from Detroit, these small companies look like they have more than just a fighting chance.

Take, for instance, UQM Technologies.

Aside from getting deals with militarily funded hybrid manufacturer Armor Holdings , the Air Force and Phoenix Motorcars , a pair of Aussies have developed a new hybrid semi truck to blast through the land down under without a compromise in performance.

We’re all familiar with big rigs, but a lot of people don’t know how they work.

In most big rigs the eight wheels behind the cab are connected with a jack shaft. That means the first set of dualies are connected to the rear set--mind you, I’m just talking about the wheels on the cab, not the whole cab-trailer combo--with a drive shaft that powers all eight wheels.

What these inventors have done is eliminate that jack shaft so that the engine is not powering the rear set of wheels. To make up for this loss of traction they have placed two UQM electric motors on the differential that supply a combined total of 400 horsepower and 960 foot-pounds of torque.

Courtesy of Clifford Hall at Green Car Congress -- http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/11/concept-plug-in.html#more

But these motors aren’t just for extra umph.

You know when you’re cruising alongside a semi on a steep downhill grade and you here the WHACK of a downshift and the loud revving of the engine?

Well, that downshift is for engine braking and is essential to slowing those beasts down. The downside is the massive quantities of fuel consumed when that engine leaps up a couple thousand RPMs.

Having those UQM motors on the rear end cuts down engine braking considerably.

As I experienced firsthand in a Phoenix Motorcars sport utility truck test drive , these motors, when used as regenerative brakes, seriously pull in the ponies and help the largest of vehicles stop on a dime.

Photo: Phoenix SUT

With this boost of electric-only power and motor-assisted braking, the inventors predict a 25% decrease in fuel consumption. And the beautiful thing is, this technology can be applied to any existing semi.

This would fast track the introduction of hybrid vehicles onto our roads by utilizing the existing fleet . . . We expect the conversion unit to pay for itself in the first year of use by way of the reduced fuel consumption. We have secured a patent pending to entice investors so as to start producing this concept.

--Clifford Hall

Here’s how it would all play out . . .

The truck would leave with fully charged batteries and draw on them only for acceleration, hill climbing, downhill braking and slow travel through towns--cutting down noise considerably.

As you can see, with the cost of conversion paid for in the first year, and it being a technology that can be applied to any vehicle, these forward-thinking inventors have done more to solve our energy and environmental crisis than any of the pricks in the Big Three are doing . . .

Bottom line, keep an eye on companies like UQM for motors and Altairnano for the lithium ion batteries, because these are the companies that are making what we need.

To quote Mr. G. again, “ . . . you’re on your own to do this thing--don’t wait for GM!”

As always, keep your hopes in the future but your sense in the present,

Field Palmer