Ford Vehicle

Ford plans to take aggressive steps to create “safer, more fuel-efficient, quality products,” declared the embattled automaker’s CEO, Alan Mulally, during his keynote address at this year’s Los Angeles auto show. Mulally’s environmentally-friendly speech underscored the green theme of the annual event, where virtually every automaker had a hybrid, fuel cell vehicle or high-mileage diesel to unveil - or to promise for the future.

While Ford has been the most aggressive of the Big Three in entering the hybrid market, it’s also taken hits for its less efficient big trucks, and failure to meet past targets, such as its 25-in-5 program, a promise to boost SUV mileage by 25 percent over five years. But Mulally insisted that the automaker is set to deliver.

Ford, said the former Boeing executive, “is committed to offering customers affordable, environmentally-friendly technologies in vehicles they really want.” That ranges from today’s hybrids to next-generation plug-in hybrids and futuristic hydrogen cars. In his speech, a subsequent question-and-answer session, and a company hand-out, Mulally outlined various steps Ford will take.

Among them, a goal is “to make all our vehicles flexible fuel vehicles,” which can use either gasoline biofuels or a mix of both. By 2012, half of all Ford products will be flexible fuel-capable. In the mid- to long-term, the automaker intends to trim from 250 to 750 pounds off the weight of its vehicles, a move that would directly yield sizable fuel savings.