Toyota or Chevrolet...Which Buy is Patriotic?

Today I read that GM is offering a debit card to buyers of its gas-guzzler vehicles.  This deal is for California buyers only.  California has the highest gas prices in the nation, and GM hopes to generate some sales by offering monthly prepaid debit cards to reimburse eligible customers "the difference between $1.99 a gallon and the average price of premium gas in California."

"We think we're going to sell some cars with this, said Susan Docherty, GM's Western regional manager.  For a Hummer H2 driven 15,000 miles a year, a buyer would receive an estimated refund of $2270 over the 12 months.  Eligible vehicles in California include the Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon and Yukon XL, Chevy Suburban, all rated at 14/20 mpg.  Also included in the list are the Hummer H2 and H3, and the Cadillac SRX.  An EPA rating of 14 city means most people are probably getting around 11 or 12 mpg.

Meanwhile, Toyota is busily building as many of their Prius hybrids as they can, and losing money on every one.  The Prius EPA mileage is 60/50.  A friend who owns one is getting 45 in a mix of city/freeway driving.  That's a real-world number, not an idealized EPA number.  That is about four times the mileage of the GM SUV's listed above.

Is Toyota building all these high-mileage hybrids at a loss because they like giving money away?  Hardly.  Toyota is the most successful auto manufacturer in the world.  They didn't get there by building cars at a loss.

So what's going on here?  It's simple.  Toyota management takes a long view of their business.  They looked at the supply/demand situation for oil, and they correctly deduced that gasoline prices were going to go up…maybe not right away, but eventually.   They may have also seen that the U.S., which is their biggest market, was running a huge deficit on oil purchases, and that this could not continue for long.  So, they made a business decision that was not only helpful to the citizens of our country, but also good for the long-term prospects of their auto business.  That's called smart, maybe even visionary management.  They may lose money for awhile on Priuses, but meanwhile they are learning about building high-efficiency vehicles, and moving critical components down the cost/volume curve.  They plan to make a LOT of money on hybrid cars in the future, and I have no doubt that they will.

Meanwhile, what does our biggest auto manufacturer, one that dominated auto sales in this country for most of the twentieth century, do?  They continue to build huge, gas-guzzling dinosaurs, and now that Toyota's vision has proven to be correct, and gas prices have gone through the roof, they are trying to give money to people to encourage them to waste gas in their monstrosities.

A year from now, when the debit cards stop coming and gas is over four bucks a gallon, the buyers of those vehicles are going to be very sorry they let GM suck them in.  They will still have the payments on their monster, plus huge gas bills, and zero trade-in value.

Which company is doing things that are best for our nation?  Which company is more patriotic?  Which company should you buy a car from?

Which company deserves to go down the tubes?