Posted on 08/17/2011 3:18:11 PM PDT by freespirited
President Obama told automakers Monday they should focus on making smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Another breathtaking show of arrogance from a Harvard Law-trained social activist? Call it a breathtaking show of ignorance.
“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” Obama said at a Minnesota town hall. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market.”
Automakers know their market just fine. It is Obama who needs a lesson.
In claiming to have “turned around” the U.S. auto industry, Obama apparently has no idea that the industry has come back on the back of SUVs. Thanks to cheap gas and the resurgence of small trucks — which make profit margins of up to $5,000 per vehicle — taxpayer-assisted GM and Chrysler are in the black again.
They would not be as healthy if they had ignored their customer needs and sold only Obamacars like the Fiat 500. Indeed, even Sergio Marchionne, the Fiat executive handpicked by Obama’s Auto Task Force to run Chrysler is a convert to Obama’s hated “SUVs and trucks.” Unblinkered by Obama’s green zealotry, Marchionne has learned the U.S. market and has beefed up not only Chrysler’s truck offerings — but Maserati’s and Alfa’s SUV lineups as well.
The president is remarkably stubborn in his ignorance.
“Today, automakers . . . refuse to make the transition to fuel-efficient production because they say it’s too expensive,” candidate Obama lectured the Detroit Economic Club in May, 2007. “But expensive is no longer an excuse for inaction.”
He has clearly learned nothing as president. As radical then as he is today, he still insists on forcing vehicles the market doesn’t want. Indeed, vehicles he himself doesn’t want. At the time he lectured automakers in 2007 on making smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Obama himself drove a gas-guzzling, hemi-powered Chrysler 300C – a car he quickly sold when he was found out.
Today, he patronizes automakers on fuel-efficiency from . . . a giant, diesel-powered bus.
Could it be because of the weak dollar and a lack of drilling?
I have a friend who’s a communist. He thinks forcing people to do things is great! Unless it’s people forcing him to do something. Then it’s terrible. I laugh at him.
Thanks to cheap gas?
“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,”
Uh, yes you can. What he means is that you can’t just produce the SUV’s and trucks, instead he wants to force increased production of the small cars. Those small cars have been inflated out of American affordability by federal regulations out the wazoo....so, in order to actually sell them, the automakers must sell them at a loss.
So, yes you only make money on the SUVs and trucks in order to be ABLE to offer the smaller cars at a loss.
On the balance I think it’s good advice. America has an excellent software industry, great airplane manufacturers but has lagged behind in automobile manufacturing.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that if China is projected to have in excess of 200 million automobiles by 2020 (we haven’t talked about India or other emerging economies yet!), then fuel efficiency needs to be taken very seriously.
The Japanese ate Detroit’s lunch in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s because they were quick to respond to the market’s demand for fuel efficient cars.
What’s also ridiculous is preaching against trucks and SUV’s in Minnesota. That states loaded with trucks and SUVs for good reason. Ever try to do farm work with a prius?
He is indeed a moron. He doesn’t seem to have in the most basic understanding of economics.
>’’ He doesn’t seem to have in the most basic understanding of economics’’< No, he doesn’t. Any ten year-old child knows that if something costs ten dollars and they have only two, they know they’re eight dollars short. To Barack Obama it means you’ve been cheated and somebody’s holding out on you.
“The President is remarkably stubborn in his ignorance.” Just say that he’s a lawyer....we all know how they are.
"Stalin was like God for us. We just believed he was an absolutely perfect individual, and he lived somewhere in the Kremlin, a light always in his window, and he was thinking about us, about each of us...For example, someone told me that Stalin could be the best surgeon. He could perform a brain operation better than anyone else, and I believed it."--Pavel Litvinov
Since we no longer make station wagons, how does a family load the kids, their assorted luggage and maybe some groceries into one of Obama's "green" cars? The answer is you can't, so that's why there's a market for SUVs.
0bama needs to leave the car business to people who know what they're talking about and stick to what he does best, teleprompter reading, bloviating , pontificating and generally screwing up the economy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.