Alternative Energy

When you look around today it’s easy to think that the environmentally friendly bandwagon was always crowded with corporations and other types that were clamouring all over each other to prove that they were the only big business giant concerned about the future of the earth.

However, there were times when the major concern wasn’t what was wrong with the planet—there were times early on when even the big automakers were led to the water but barely persuaded to drink when it came to the reality that they were going to need to change their ways and adopt some form of the hybrid model if even only as an option.

Back in the 1990s the biggest automakers were resolutely focused on the gasoline engine and even when General Motors hired an engineer to come up with a plug-in hybrid version of one of its models, the prototype quickly disappeared into the corporate bowels. At the time, all the major automakers were more intent on fighting the new wave of clean air regulations that were looming on the horizon. It seems that even some of the European attempts at designing a hybrid were doomed to any early death at North American hands.

Volvo had been well along with a hybrid program in 1999, and they’d even been testing and making a fleet of the cars in Sweden when they were bought out by the Ford Motor Company and the project was scraped.