Automakers Rev Up "Eco" Positioning

Gasoline prices are still pushing an average of $3.50 a gallon across the United States, so they remain top of mind among American consumers who are buying new vehicles. That's why auto brands continue to find ways to create "Eco" positioning and even sub-brands for their vehicles and powertrains. Chevrolet is the latest, with its new Ecologic environmental labels that highlight environmental features of new vehicles.

Ford remains not only a pioneer but arguably the best practitioner of eco-positioning of its vehicles. The company has focused more on improving its traditional gasoline engines than developing and pushing new hybrids or EVs the last few years. And with a combinaton of techniques including turbocharging and direct injection, Ford has been able to boost the performance of a family of engines, both in fuel economy and power, to significant new levels, making a traditional four-cylinder powerplant perform like a six-cylinder and a six-cylinder like an eight-cylinder — while providing much better mileage.

Those are the EcoBoost engines that Ford keeps selling, keeps introducing on new models, and keeps talking about. The automaker just announced that it will offer EcoBoost engines on 11 models this year, up from seven in 2011, and triple production capacity for EcoBoost power trains.

And in January, 42 percent of F-150 pickups sold at retail were equipped with an EcoBoost six-cylinder engine, something that didn't even exist a year earlier. That's because Ford has managed to convince a tough crowd of pickup-truck buyers, many of whom rely for vocational reasons on the robustness of their trucks, that EcoBoost can give them all the power they want.

"That's the best-selling power train on our F-150," Ken Czubay, Ford's vice president of U.S. sales, noted in talking with reporters this week.

Naturally, Chevy would like a bigger piece of the "eco" action. It has introduced Eco versions of many of its vehicles, including an upcoming Eco version of its full-size Malibu sedan, but brand executives apparently believe that the significant fuel-economy improvements across their line have begun to be overshadowed by the EcoBoost sub-brand by Ford, which remains Chevy's chief brand competitor.

The Ecologic labels represent a more holistic attempt to communicate not only the mileage benefits of Chevy vehicles but also the broader "light footprint" that each vehicle has on the environment. They'll communicate vehicle-specific features related to manufacturing, fuel-saving features for the road, and environmental disposition such as recycling after the vehicle's life cycle. They'll begin appearing first on the rear driver-side window of the new Sonic subcompact next month and on 2013 Chevys later this year.

Some surveys and experts have indicated that American consumers have become numbed by a cacaphony of green claims by brand marketers across the spectrum of goods and services. But GM executives believe that Ecologic labels will rise above that.

"Customers want companies to be honest and transparent about their environmental efforts and sustainability goals, and rightly so," said Mark Reuss, GM's president of North America, in a press release. "Putting an Ecologic label on each Chevrolet is just one more way for us to share our environmental progress."