You may be perplexed by that “Live Green, Go Yellow” [1] slogan splashed across the TV ads General Motors [2] has been running throughout the Olympics. It's part of a new campaign [3] to boost the image of the auto giant, which lately has been battling sluggish sales and losing ground to companies with more efficient products [4], like Toyota [5]. Instead of placing its bets on efficiency, GM is focusing on developing flexible-fuel vehicles [6] that can burn both standard gasoline and biofuels such as ethanol [7].

Why yellow? Well, “In the world of ethanol, yellow is the new green, since today its main source is from corn,” explains GM's vice president of marketing. GM has pledged to put 400,000 new flex-fuel vehicles on the road this year, nearly double what it produced last year.

Just as the President framed ethanol as a boon to the economy [8] and a key weapon in the battle for energy independence in his State of the Union speech [9] last month, GM is touting it as the best oil-alternative on the horizon. “What if the answer to our dependence on oil was growing right in front of us?” say the ads. “What if we could lower greenhouse gas emissions with a fuel that grew back every year? What if a company had already built 1.5 million cars that could run on this fuel? What if we could live green by going yellow?”

But there's a hitch: The environmental community is still deeply divided over the questionable environmental benefits [10] of corn-based ethanol, given the preponderance of petroleum that is required to grow and harvest corn. Enviros hope that eventually cellulosic ethanol [11] produced from (non-yellow) substances such as woodchips and switchgrass [12] so, GM will have to change its somewhat misleading – albeit catchy – slogan.

Image credit: GMToday.com [13]