Posted on 12/04/2008 4:09:22 AM PST by tobyhill
The buzzword out of Detroit these days seems to be "hybrid."
As the Big Three automaker CEOs return to Washington today -- arriving by hybrid vehicles instead of private jets -- they will try to sell Congress on turnaround plans focusing on an aggressive new line of fuel-efficient cars.
Lawmakers might buy the plans from Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, but it is going to be a lot harder to sell American drivers on the hybrid cars.
The key may be gas prices.
Maryann Keller, who runs an automotive consulting company, said that people lined up to buy more-efficient cars only after gas topped $4 a gallon.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
About 730 days late and billions of dollars short.
Could someone explain again why the other companies manufacturing cars in the US are doing fine? Toyota, Honda, Nissan and others, right?
Capitalism should not be about old, established companies being given a pass on basic management, and rewarded for failure. Let ‘em go down. The economy is going to be a bloodbath regardless.
No pain, no gain.
Filing chapter 11 is the only way to save the auto industry.
I keep asking the same question. Why is it the auto maker’s responsibility to solve our energy crisis.
We are the only country in the world that does not use it’s own resources.
Our men and women have to die in wars over oil and we still do nothing to extract our own oil and natural gas from the land and sea.
I am afraid you are right...The Unions have forced this situation and if we bail out the car industry the problem is still there in 3 to 4 years...The car industry will only survive if they can get out from underneath those crazy deals cut with the UAW. If not, and Chap 11 is filed, then the chips fall where they may.....Well, if the UAW fails to renegotiate prior to same they then did a disservice to their union brothers. There will be no depression if the car industry declares chap 11...except for the UAW and the towns where the majority of those UAW workers live. The rest of America will simply purchase foreign cars until a stronger more lien American car product can be produced and placed on the market. Again, in my book, bailing out this auto mess is a joke and only a band-aide to the real problem...the UAW.
Plenty of blame to go around in the auto industry.
However, it is, or would be, relatively easy to reform management, especially now. Its probably a good idea. But it isn’t enough.
Likely, it past time for some major restructuring at the big 3. Probably less models, less marques, maybe each manufucturer will focus on fewer segments. More automation might help too. But it won’t be enough.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a union (or unions) representing labor in the auto industry. It could be a good thing. However, the current union, is going to have to change radically, and the labor situation will also have to.
It goes way beyond salaries, although that’s a huge part of the problem. The barrier to automation, the inability to fire incompetent, drugged, dangerous, or unwilling workers, the classification of everyone who walks into the facility as an “auto worker” - these cannot be sustained.
It’s too bad there aren’t some visionaries in the UAW who could see the writing on the wall, and actually work towards making their collective employers profitable, with better-than-average salaries and benefits which went to well-trained, willing, and competent workers even if there ended up being far less of those workers when the dust cleared.
Do that, along with the reform of management and product, and the auto industry would be on a good footing. Do one or two without the other, and they’re just prolonging the inevitable.
Just MHO.
The auto inductry is all about economies of scale. There are heavy investments in product design and tooling that need to be recovered by sales. Once the investments are covered, the profits are enormous. It's called the breakeven point. Sales 30% below the breakeven point cause huge losses. The domestics have a high breakeven sales volume to meet. Combining ever decreasing market share (causes a legacy cost issue) along with not being able to make as large a profit on cars as Honda and Toyota hit but a sudden decrease in sales ---> bankruptcy. So, the causes? Management (vehicle design, lack of recognition of long term declining market share), UAW (costs per unit), Congress (credit debacle, high oil prices over the last two years).
I keep asking the same question. Why is it the auto maker’s responsibility to solve our energy crisis.
We are the only country in the world that does not use it’s own resources.
The answer to your question is the Democrat Politcal Party the ACLU and the Envirowackos.
The phony energy crises we have exists only for politics. We could have been energy independent decades ago.
They don't care if the moonshine fuel messes up your lawn mower. After all that is an illegals problem.
Everyone reading the above line knows exactly, in their mind's eye, what Maryann Keller--who runs an automotive consulting company--looks like, the kind of friends she has, the kind of neighborhood she lives in, and the kind of man she married to.
Hudson
Packard
Studebaker
American Motors
I am sure there are others.
We will always have a “crisis” of some sort when the gov’t gets involved in things.Trash the EPA,the fleet milage and crash test standards. Let the petroleum industry tap the resources available. Drill more, pump more
Break up the unions. They have served their useful purpose from the turn of the 20th century in protecting workers from evil owners. The foreign automakers do well here because they produce quality products and don’t have the legacy issues the US automakers and airlines all have with huge pensions, healthcare for life, paying people in a jobs bank NOT to work.
Let them fail and Chapter 11 and the bankruptcy courts will help to sort out the mess.
“We will always have a “crisis” of some sort when the gov’t gets involved in things.”
I must say I remain suspicious that both the runup in oil prices and the current financial meltdown were both planned by the influential with an 0bama kind of result in mind.
Yeah, tin-foil hat stuff, however the timing remains MIGHTY convenient.
On the upside, global warming is looking fairly indefensible these days - that’s good news!
Really? Which wars have we fought so that we can plunder another nations' oil reserves???
I read somewhere that Toyota won't produce them at their plants here in the U.S. because they aren't confident enough about the ability of their U.S. workers to meet the company's quality standards with a new, high-tech car model that hasn't stood the test of time.
So there's a good chance that the Big Three would end up either producing hybrids that don't work, or they'd have to outsource their production to places like Japan or Europe anyway.
You are 1000% right! That’s one thousand percent!
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