The article in Fast Company’s an interesting one, and Jonathan Goodwin’s work and theories do deserve more attention. No one — at least not here at GM — is saying that all options and all efforts to develop more efficient and cleaner engines don’t warrant closer looks.

But unfortunately, some people — both bloggers and traditional pundits — have taken this article about an entrepreneur who’s working on something, and extrapolated the incorrect conclusions that a) this single entrepreneur’s work discounts and disproves everything “Detroit” has said regarding fuel efficiency; and b) makes that single entrepreneur smarter than the collective leadership of an entire industry. That’s not just an ill-informed and wrong premise, it’s irresponsible. And it might reveal something about the biases of and willful blinders on those who are making those claims.

First of all, let’s be blunt. The idea that “Detroit,” acting as a lumbering monolith in conjunction with one another, is suppressing technology that would be to both the marketplace’s benefit AND manufacturers’ benefit, is misguided at best and willfully ignorant at worst. If the technology were so easy and so simple… do you really think that “Detroit” would suppress it and choose not to compete more strongly with companies like Toyota? Riiiiight… Because we want to keep losing market share, don’t we?

And — giving credit where it’s due: Toyota has made a number of smart moves in the past 20 years, and has earned its place in the marketplace right now. Does anyone really believe that if this technology was so simple and so easily available, that Toyota would not have adopted it and made it available in mass production? They’ve done a lot of other things right over the last couple of decades — don’t you think that they’d take every opportunity to once and for all drive a stake through the heart of their competition with such technology?

The fact that no automaker — not Japanese, not European, not American — has come out with mass production of the technologies that the conspiracy theorists insist is available and simple… well, that should tell you something. But I guess it’s easier for some to take the lazy way out, continuing to believe in and spread tired old conspiracy theories and urban legends than to do their homework and take anything beyond a sound bite approach to this issue.

Wherever this myth and bias comes from, it’s just not true. I won’t presume to speak for Ford or Chrysler, but at GM, we have been making great strides in developing multiple environmentally friendlier technologies — from increased gasoline efficiency in internal combustion engines, to various types of hybrids, through our work on vehicles like the Volt and with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles such as those in Project Driveway. It’s not just us saying so either: Time Magazine just did an article about the progress we’re making in green technology. We’re not going to rest on recent laurels, either; we’re spending billions of dollars to continue to make our products have less of an impact on the environment, and we’ll continue to invest in research to make these vehicles reality.

And despite what some folks out there seem to want to believe about us, we’re not stupid. We recognize market drivers and market reality. We also live on this planet just like everyone else does, and we want to do the right things by the planet too. The image of Detroit as Nero fiddling while the world warms may be an easy one to invoke, but that doesn’t make it accurate. Rather than looking at the holistic picture, and considering Jonathan Goodwin’s work in context as well as seeing some of the strides made by automakers lately to respond to the need for greener solutions, as well as continuing their focus on what we could do better, some choose the easy and lazy way out. But then I guess it’s easier to throw stones than to pick up phones, or do actual research before issuing their knee-jerk, reflexive condemnations of “Detroit.”

To be fair, maybe some of these folks want to tell a more accurate story (and by accurate, we don’t necessarily mean pro-GM; we just mean making sure people’s facts are right if or when they criticize); maybe we just haven’t done as good a job as we could have in talking directly to them (as opposed to talking at them or dismissing critics altogether). We’re going to work to rectify that in 2008.

In the meantime, we’re all interested in finding ways to make more efficient gas engines and practical engines that use little to no gasoline. Jonathan Goodwin’s work, along with work being done every day by GM’s engineers, shows promise. And despite the biases and apparent fond hopes of some, we’re going to keep pursuing these solutions, keep taking leadership, and we’re going to thrive in the coming decade. It’s the right thing to do, it’s a business imperative, and we intend to do it.

I am going to be at the L.A. Auto Show this week and am going to be quite a bit busier than normal, so I may not get to any comments right away. But I promise, I will be reading them and will respond as time permits.