The largest car producer in the world is no longer GM, but the more innovative Toyota. Should Detroit's skills be put to other uses?

President Obama's new Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner is promising strict conditions will be attached to the $17.4 billion bailout being arranged to keep GM and Chrysler from going under. The industry must emerge resilient enough to stand on its own feet, he stated in his nomination hearing before the US Senate Finance Committee.

We have to ask though, given the weak position of the US auto industry and the contribution to global warming made by the large cars beloved of Detroit , whether this energy and money could not be better spent.

Let the Big 3 dwindle into the Big 2 or the Big 1 - competition will remain from foreign comapnies that have already mastered the productionn of the small efficient vehicles needed for the future.

If public money is to be invested, invest it in retooling Detroits failing carmakers into world leaders in the public transportation and high speed trains that have to make up a substantial strand of the sustainanble national and urban transit solutions needed for Amercia's future.

It is a strategy in which, judging by the linked article, China has taken the lead.

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