How 'Green' is Our Technology?

In the past century America has been one of the leading innovators in producing electricity controlled cars. These all have to some extent been considered failures for American automakers, largely in part on the notion that they are too high maintenance for the common driver. They have been failures not just for America, but also for much larger foreign makers, such as, Honda and Toyota. However, those two companies have succeeded more when it comes to the innovation of the Hybrid vehicle.
In 1999 Honda produced the first widely sold Hybrid vehicle, The Insight, to the marketplace. Perhaps feeling threatened by the notion of another ‘roadblock’ in American manufacturing, Ford gets to work on innovating a new brand of hybrid. And in 2004, five years after the production of the first global hybrid car, Ford introduces the Ford Escape Hybrid . This was also the first Hybrid SUV that was put into production by any American automaker, which only furthers the notion that America is concerned more with the size of vehicles (i.e. any Ford model, and GM as the big distributor of SUV’s) than they are about the quality and usefulness of such a vehicle.
So what took us so long to really get on board this alternative lifestyle of driving? Maybe, a realization came to American car executives that such a drastic change would ultimately be too risky. What if their designs were to fail and lose their companies millions, and if not billions of dollars? They would have to lay off workers or freeze their pay for a while. Not easing our cause is the fact we are currently in a recession and what used to be one of our most nationally profitable industries are now sinking into debt and layoffs. Green technology is the wave of the future, America may have tried the electric car, but now is the time to redefine what it means to get a certain mileage.