globeandmail.com: 'Green' vehicle technology to get financing from Ontario

globeandmail.com: 'Green' vehicle technology to get financing from Ontario: "Developing new technologies that are environmentally friendly is expensive and risky for auto makers, as GM found out with the first electric car, which it developed for sale in the 1990s, but which turned out to be a bust.
Because of those risks, the U.S. government and the European Union have offered hundreds of millions of dollars to their auto industries to help develop green technologies. The U.S. Energy Department helps finance FreedomCAR, which is an attempt to build zero-emission cars and trucks that don't use petroleum.
The Canadian Auto Workers union has called for a mandatory 25-per-cent improvement in the fuel efficiency of vehicles by 2013.
The CAW has also suggested incentives for drivers to get older, more heavily polluting cars off the roads, a measure that Ottawa put in place in last week's federal budget.
But such a program needs to be more comprehensive, so that older vehicles aren't just junked, but the materials in them are recycled, CAW president Buzz Hargrove said.
And $36-million promised by Ottawa isn't nearly enough money, Mr. Hargrove said."