thats just it..... there was no routine maintinence for the EV1. Washer fluid and tire rotation was all they needed. The motor was a high RPM brushless 3 phase AC motor, and the transaxle was a fixed ratio gearbox (no shifting, no clutches, no torque converter) Dealers were not a problem either. They used select saturn dealerships in southern california that were already in place although getting on a waiting list for the car was not easy. Take the speed governor off the car and it would do 180 MPH (governed to 78), and stock it was 0-60 in 7 seconds.

California was the government that passed the law requiring zero emission vehicles in the first place. It was only with the help of the federal administration that the automakers were able to have the law struck down at the courts. The real danger is that other states wanted to make their own laws to require zero emission vehicles. Instead we have hybrids that get 10% better MPG instead.

 

Yea I understand they should be low maintenance but in the real world everything breaks.
GM cannot have a few dealerships in california set up for them it would have to be nationwide.
I dont know how many cars it takes to run a profitable assembly line and dealer network completly differant from the rest of there cars but I doubt if the population of california could sustain it at any price.
California does come up with laws on emissions and other things but they were trying to come up with a way to tax automobiles by the mile because electric cars pays no road tax and they could not afford that.
Back in the 70's california passed a law that no diesel trucks could enter the LA basin but before september when the law went into effect they realized it would be a hundred mile round trip for a few million people to even buy a toothbrush an impossible law.
California was also a leading cause for us all to spend 6 to 8000.00 installing apu's on our trucks now it is illegal for us to crank them inside the california border makes sense huh.

 

I wouldn't mind so much if GM just decided that they didn't want to make electric cars, but why did they have to suppress the technology and forbid the cars that were already made from being sold? If it was not profitable why not sell and try to recover some of the losses?

Ford had its own electric car projects too and legally washed their hands of them without having to destroy all of them. The ranger conversion program was sold to a company in california that took on responsibility of the surviving electric rangers, and the th!nk compact urban car is now an independant company that moved to norway where they still build and sell them to this day.

Indeed electric cars are a growing trend almost everywhere but here in north america. Now we are playing catch up and in a bad way.

 

It is possible that it was cheaper to destroy a few hundred than to setup a dealer network to maintain them. Plus they have to by law to have available every part of that car for 10 years.

Just imagine you pay 50,000 for a car in california 3 months later you get a great job in liberal ks your still going to expect gm to repair your car. If they only had a few hundred or even thousand out on a pilot program it could get vert costly to allow them to remain on the street.

I'm not saying this is right but I can see some reasons for their thinking.
I personally don't think any of the large manufactures can afford to put electric cars on the market with there union contracts dealorship networks because of the niche buyers will not for years buy enough cars for it to be profitable.
It might work better for a small startup co to get them on the road with just a select few stores to sell and maintain them in a niche area where they think they will sell.
I personally dont think electric cars is the answer to take over anytime in the near future. I'm not against them they just wont work for everybody.

 

Thats basically what they did with the ford ranger. They signed it over to a small organization, and the other company took on responsibility for the surviving vehicles. This after GM took flak for their actions, ford's did try and crush the rangers too but reconsidered and opted to compromise. Electric cars can't solve all the problems, but I think they can address some of them. It would have been nice to at least have the choice. I would be just as pissed if they tried to make diesels illegal (or LPG for that matter).

OK, so lets do a tally.....

GM needs 4 billion
Ford needs 9 Billion
Chrysler needs 7 Billion

Today ford is talking about building electric cars in 2010 and putting emphases on new battery technology. Interesting card to play.....wonder what happened to the hydraulic hybrid F150? (the 60 MPG F150 LOL!)

As much as I hate to say it, there really may not be much choice. Access to credit is not optional for these companies. They treat it like we treat our visa card or bank account. Get cut off from that and bad things happen. What I don't get is why banks are not being pressured to start lending again after all the cash they got.

 

Those banks haven't gotten any money yet the govt is still trying to figure out where that money is.
I guess they are under some kind of pressure. my sister just refinanced her house because her finance co wanted to gave her fixed interest and lower they told her they had to make a certain amount of loans to qualify for bailout money.
I really believe they picked her because she was ahead on her payments though.

 

Find the money? Starting to get a headache.....is this where hedge funds come into play? Value and ownership is sold, divided up and resoled until no one really knows who owns what anymore?

 

Sadly I really don't care whether Ford, Dodge, Chevy makes it through cuz I don't want anything newer than an 02 Ford.

I guess thats why they are failing cuz our local dealer got 100 08 SD's when they first came out, they still have over 75 of them a year later. People are realizing that it saves money to buy a vehicles and drive it for 10 years before getting a new one. Around here anyway people are getting away from the "Trade it in" program to get a new truck every 2 years.

 

Well I've allways drove mine untill there wasn't anything left to drive.
The last new one I bought was a 79 f250 $6911.00 drive out including taxes and tags.
So you can see they are not depending on me but I dont think we as a country can afford for them to fail.
I do think they will have to do a major restructure including labor issues not knocking the union but seems like it is designed to fail eventually.
PS that 79 was the first I financed for 4 years and the last vehicle I had monthly payments on seemrd like I was never going to get it paid for.

 

Money lending became too profitable. The amount of money that was being made off of interest on loans and credit is one of the reasons why houses vehicles got so expensive over the years and why so many are now defaulting. People got into debt because it was easy to get the bigger house, car or hummer with such low payments. But the bubble burst, and here we are.

I'd like to blaime unions too, but thats only part of the problem and a fairly small one IMO. The unions have now realized that they can't blindly demand higher and higher wages without consequences. They are now doing the unthinkable and negotiating for a wage cut to keep factories running. In other words, they seem to be working with the companies instead of against them. Theres some good news.

 

I had some work done in florida last month at the INT dealer.
They had dropped their shop rates (unheard of)
They pulled a vacuum on my ac system replaced an oring on the dryer pulled a vacuum again and recharged the ac only charged me 1/2 hour labor (unheard of).
I was talking to the mechanic and he told me that they had agreed to tahe a pay cut to keep a job and to keep the co competetive.Great service and people.

 

I don't think ANYBODY should get a bail-out!
I have to run my home and buisness with an eye towards the future and what COULD happen. If I make STUPID decisions and buy too much inventory or borrow a bunch of money that I may or may not be able to pay back guess who's going to bail me out?
Well lets see.....there's........NO.............how about............NO.........CRAP I'M ON MY OWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I had went out and bought the house I WANTED instead of the house I knew I could pay for I might end up with some help from the people who DIDN'T, how is that fair?

I'm TIRED of paying for other people's mistakes simply because I DIDN'T make them. If the lenders and auto makers go down or get broken up I believe EVENTUALLY they will come back as stronger companies with out all of the fat and waste. I'd like to see the government do the same thing. Everything BIG in this country has gotten out of hand, Industry and Government. They think they can just keep playing along at the same game and we'll always bail them out.
Maybe we will?!



I believe the lenders and the automakers only have one legitimate grip in each case.

The lenders were forced by the gov't to make loans to individuals based on their "low income" or ethnicity. That situation sure as shootin' didn't help the growing problem of over-extension by borrowers.

The auto makers were forced to build vehicles that were either not profitable, or actually sold at a loss, because of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
They were essentially forced to make small, economy cars to be able to build and sell the trucks and SUVs that made them a profit.
We should have left the small cars to the manufacturers that did it well and left the big vehicles to the others who did them well. Then everyone could have found their niche, made money and been able to weather the storm now. That way the coimpanies that make vehicles that fall out of favor could either retool or die on the vine and the others could live on.
We need to remember that capitalism is just like nature, survival of the fittest. If you evolve flippers and the seas dry up you're going to die.

I hope the Unions are going to work with the manufacturers, there is no other way they can hope to survive. Lee Ioccoca worked for a dollar a year to get Chrysler back on its feet and the Unions worked WITH him to achieve it.

Ford mortgaged about everthing they had right before the fall-out so they now have about 38 Billion dollars to get through the storm. That should last them about 3 years so if they can't turn themselves around in three years getting charity from the Gov't (which is US) isn't going to help. We'll just be flushing more of OUR money down the toilet.

GM only has about a year's worth of capital left so they had better figure something out, FAST! Luckily they have European and Asian markets, especially China, to somewhat exploit. The Chinese are buying A LOT of Buicks, even now.

Chrysler has about 11 Billion dollars on hand and they are ONLY hemmoraging 2-3 Billion per year so they have some time left. One other thing they have going for them is they are building Mini-Vans for VW and the new Nissan Titan. That is good for them because the European and Asian car companies ARE being bailed-out by there gov'ts. That tilts the playing field in their favor which sucks for the US makers in general though.
I'm not sure if Cerebus, who ownes Chrysler, will pull assets from one company to use on another but they also OWN Remington Firearms, Bushmaster Firearms and Panther arms/DPMS. ALL of those companies are doing very well right now so they COULD keep Chrysler afloat for a while longer.

They all need to tighten their belts some more and MAKE their companies WORK with out welfare, or drown.
Granted it would/will be hard times for all of us but GIVING them more money to throw away will do nothing but drain our public coffers.

 

I look at the morgage bailout kinda like why do I work 7 days a week so somebody else doesn't have to.
It's only been 3 or 4 weeks since GM opened their first ever assemblyline plani in russia.
Now how can you be bankrupt and expanding at the same time that doesn't work around my house.

 

It doesn't work at anybody's house and it won't work in this instance either.

Well, back to work. I gotta pay for someones stupidity today.

 

First look at this, which is actually 2 trillion low as of right now with the 700 billion and the 800 billion bail out packages Bush has signed.

National Debt Clock