It’s hard to say whether the U.S. economy is in a recession, but it’s pretty clear that these are hard times for carmakers, Troy A. Clarke, president of General Motors North America, said Tuesday.

“I can tell you this: The first quarter of this year feels kind of tough in the auto industry,” said Clarke, addressing the Atlanta Press Club. “We have experienced about six quarters of contraction in the auto business.”

Clarke said he expects to see improvement in the auto market by the third or fourth quarter of this year.

GM is offering consumers several technologies to answer concerns about oil dependence and environmental impact, Clarke said.

“We have 2.5 million vehicles on the roads that will run on E85 ethanol,” Clarke said in a separate interview.

E85 is a fuel that blends 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. It has been praised for cutting oil consumption and burning cleaner than gasoline.

It also has been criticized for driving up food prices, because much of it in this country is made from corn, demand for which has risen as more E85 production comes online.

E85 has also been criticized for its lack of availability in most of the country. Clarke says GM wants to address that problem but needs help.

“We need community and government support. There are a number of states that have requirements for ethanol stations. We need more of that,” he said.

Other technologies that GM is offering include gas-electric hybrids and traditional-fuel vehicles that are showing improved gas mileage.

GM says it has the most vehicles that achieve 30 mpg or better on the highway — a group it dubs its “30 and up crowd.”

It is also developing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

“We think the right bet to make is not on any one of those, but on all of those,” Clarke said of GM’s multipronged strategy. “Because if we’ve learned anything, it’s that we can’t sell you what we want. We must sell you what you want.”

Clarke said the previously announced closure of the GM assembly plant in Doraville will occur at the end of September to allow for a couple of extra months of production of 2009 model year vehicles.

The plant produces minivans, an automotive category from which GM is retreating.

“Minivans as a segment of the market has been declining. We don’t have another product to be put in there [Doraville] at the moment. It’s just part of the business today,” he said.

Separately, an auto parts supplier’s strike is “not a huge issue for us,” despite having triggered shutdowns at many General Motors Corp. plants, GM Chief Executive Richard Wagoner said Tuesday in Washington.

Wagoner, speaking with reporters at a breakfast, said GM dealers have enough vehicles on their lots to continue making sales in a slowing market.

“We are losing some production for sure, but at least at this point, the impact on our retail sales has been negligible because of the [large] inventories and the rather weak market that we’re in,” he said.

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