Earlier this week, President Bush met with executives from Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrylser to discuss his goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years.

Not surprisingly, the auto manufacturers touted flex-fuel vehicles (vehicles that can run on either gasoline or E85 — a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline) as the key to our problems.

According to General Motors Corp. chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner, “There’s nothing that can be done which can reduce the curve of growth in imported oil and actually turn it down like using E85.”

The execs announces that “as a group, we’ve agreed to double our production by the year 2010, and then have 50 percent of our production E85-capable by the year 2012. ”

President Bush endorsed the move saying, “If you want to reduce gasoline usage, like I believe we need to do so for national security reasons, as well as for environmental concerns, the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice. And so I appreciate very much the fact that American automobile manufacturers recognize the reality of the world in which we live and are using new technologies to give the consumers different options.”

While Bush and the execs had a love-fest talking about flex-fuel vehicles, they did not talk about Bush’s proposal to increase the passenger fleet fuel economy 4% annually to about 34 miles per gallon by 2017. Wagoner said, “We didn’t talk about the 4%.”

All of this was in the same week that U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said, “I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn.”

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the meeting with the auto executives was so devoid of substance. As discussed previously on this blog, this discussion of flex fuel vehicles is largely smoke and mirrors to make people feel good but without solving any of the real fundamental problems. The auto execs get to “look good” by claiming to be green when they are doing very little to make any changes and it barely costs them anything; making a car use E85 costs around $100.

Any solution that is based on corn-based ethanol is really just a farse; mass production of corn-based ethanol is going to cause more problems than it is worth and probably doesn’t actually have any environmental merits.

It is possible that ethanol based on other forms of cellulose like grass could be part of the solution, but this isn’t technically possible yet. Investing in technology to create ethanol from these substances could be an important part of the solution.

But, the real solution is improved fuel efficiency. And President Bush and the execs chose to dodge this issue entirely.

All of this while Toyota is working on the next generation of the Prius which could get as much as 100 mpg.

And we wonder why the American auto manufacturers are hurting.