Bill Ford (pictured LEFT), head of Ford Motor Co., gave a speech to company engineers, scientists and other employees in Detroit this morning about where the company is going in terms of innovation. It should come as no surprise that hybrids and alternative fuels are now top priorities for the struggling U.S. automaker (press release here).

This trend toward “green” products, as seen through similar announcements and speeches from GE, Toyota and other big corporate names, is encouraging from a cleantech perspective because it means a greater slice of corporate budgets will be going towards clean technologies.

Hybrid technology is already in Ford’s Escape and Mercury Mariner SUVs, but the company is now going full steam ahead with hybrids and flex-fuel vehicles.

Consider the following comments from Ford:

I’m proud today to announce a ten-fold increase in our commitment to hybrids. In fact, by 2010, more than half of our Ford, Lincoln and Mercury products will have hybrid capability. We’ll have the capacity to produce at least a quarter-million hybrids a year, and the ability to scale up as the market demands…

Our Carbon Offset program will pay for projects around the world that reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount that we emit in the production of our hybrid vehicles. That might mean a methane abatement project in Central America, a tree planting effort in Asia or a wind farm in California that would reduce the amount of CO2 that would normally occur had such projects not been in place…

I am also announcing a Flexible Fuel initiative based upon ethanol. Ford has historically been a leader in FFV’s going all the way back to the original Model T. Over the past quarter century, we’ve put more than one million ethanol capable vehicles on the road in the United States, Brazil and Europe. The recent energy bill in Washington has a provision to encourage the use of ethanol, which is a clean, renewable fuel.

That’s why I’m pleased to announce that we will offer four new vehicles for 2006 that run on a mixture of gasoline and ethanol: the F-150, Crown Victoria , Grand Marquis and Town Car. In all, we will produce approximately 280,000 Flexible Fuel Vehicles in 2006.

In addition, we are working with fuel providers to expand the infrastructure needed to provide ethanol. And we’re going to actively engage customers so they will understand that they have FFV options…

Longer term, people in Ford labs around the world are working hard to develop technologies that provide even more options, such as clean diesel, hydrogen internal combustion engines and fuel cells. It is simply too early to know whether one solution might render the others obsolete.

That’s why our strategy might be termed Aggressive Flexibility; let’s push hard on all of our best ideas to respond as markets and governments make known their preferences…

This, again, is all very encouraging. Good on Ford for seeing the writing on the wall and taking an aggressive new approach… It makes it more clear now why Sierra Club is more willing to give Ford the time of day.

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