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AUTOMAKERS' CRISIS * USA - A solution ? ...
Detroit's Lesson in the Ways of Washington
Washington,DC,USA -The Washington Post, by Warren Brown -November 30, 2008: -- ... I have some suggestions:
Washington (and that includes President-elect Barack Obama) is pitifully ignorant when it comes to understanding what Detroit has done over the past 15 years to turn itself around. It does not understand that Detroit's quality is now commensurate with and, in some cases, better than that that of its foreign rivals. It has no inkling of how much Detroit has done in recent years to modernize its factories and jettison work-rule impediments. It has no idea that Detroit's factories are now among the world's most efficient; and, apparently, Washington has little knowledge and, as a result, little appreciation for the many concessions made by the UAW in recent contracts...
Here is what the Detroit executives should do on their return trip to Capitol Hill:
· Drive. Drive to Washington in your gas-electric, dual-mode hybrid, FlexFuel, prototype plug-in electric vehicles. Drive the many vehicles you have that get at least 30 miles per gallon. Chrysler should bring along some of its limited-use GEM electric models, which make better sense than gasoline-powered models on campuses and in other contained environments.
· Make a show of it. Remember, Washington takes Hollywood seriously. Forget about saving your biggest product "reveal" for the international auto shows. Those shows won't give you $25 billion. If you do this right, Washington will.
· Think Washington. If you are the leader of a poor country coming here for a handout, you can arrive in your personal aircraft. We would no more expect you to do otherwise than we would expect the president of our economically suffering nation to abandon Air Force One. But you guys are just American stuff makers. Stuff makers-turned-beggars don't get respect here. We expect them to humble themselves, to remain in the character of a supplicant. Drive...
* Car company lawmakers envision could be a money-losing operation
Washington,DC,USA -The Washington Post, by Steven Mufson -November 29, 2008: -- Many members of Congress believe they know what the car company of the future should look like... "A business model based on gas -- a gas-guzzling past -- is unacceptable," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week. "We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car"... But the car company Schumer and other lawmakers envision for the future could turn out to be a money-losing operation, not part of a "sustainable U.S. auto industry" that President-elect Barack Obama and most members of Congress say they want to create... That's because car manufacturers still haven't figured out how to produce hybrid and plug-in vehicles cheaply enough to make money on them. After a decade of relative success with its hybrid Prius, Toyota has sold about a million of the cars and is still widely believed by analysts to be losing money on each one sold. General Motors has touted plans for a plug-in hybrid vehicle called the Volt, but the costly battery will prevent it from turning a profit on the vehicle for several years, at least... U.S. automakers faced a barrage of demands last week that they provide evidence and assurance that they would use federal bailout money to transform their companies to produce automobiles of the future, using advanced technologies and featuring hybrid or plug-in vehicles. And in his "60 Minutes" interview on Nov. 16, Obama said that before backing a big loan package he wanted to be sure "that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere"...
Labels: automakers' crisis
posted by Unknown @ 4:05 AM
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