General Motors, long inept at making cars with quality ratings that might persuade Americans to buy them, now finds itself too broke to install solar power.

But it has made a clever and commendable accommodation to its impoverishment. It has agreed to allow a solar-power company to install a system on the roof of one of its warehouses and then buy the power as it would from any other electric company.

In fact, the step may be so beneficial that GM now has similar plans for solar-power equipment installed on the roof of a second warehouse.

So sunhats off to GM! They may still not be clever enough to make a popular car, but at least they’ve found a way to make a popular choice about electric power.