Comments on: GM Encouraged by 24.5% Sales Drop in August

By: Evelyn Black

Evelyn Black — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:18:25 +0000

Wow! Small world!

By: J.D. Seagraves

J.D. Seagraves — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:11:13 +0000

Hey, I live in MI, too (Saginaw). Although, sorry to say, I’m not a fan of Granholm! As for everything else, I agree with you.

By: Evelyn Black

Evelyn Black — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:07:29 +0000

Hi J.D.

I agree about the banks. I’m really upset about it, and I think whatever is done at this point will likely be nothing but another finger in the dike and down the line it will be another emergency. I live in MI, and I’m a big fan of Governor Granholm, who is pushing to make MI the place to locate all things innovative and new in the area of clean energy, renewable energy, and hybrid and alternative vehicles.

I’d like to see some other companies get a chance in regard to building cars. When Chrysler was bailed out, it helped for awhile, and now the company is on the ropes again all over again. I see it as a management problem–lack of vision, unwillingness to stay ahead of the curve, lack of innovation.

They say that, with regard to the banks, at this point something must be done or we will see something akin to the Great Depression–but I’m struck by how many people say, “Bring it on! At least the guys at the top will go down with us.” I think people are sick to death of banks, and I’m right there too. I think we’ll continue to see bail-outs, but it won’t work in the long run. We have to have something to offer the world instead of debt, inflated pieces of paper and bad cars. Until we do, we’re going to be hurting.

Thank you for your always welcome thoughts.

By: J.D. Seagraves

J.D. Seagraves — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:17:43 +0000

Let GM fail.

You know, when Lehman was on the ropes, all of the other banks came together and demanded that government do something.

What do you think Toyota or Honda are going to do if GM fails? They’ll rejoice! In a REAL business, you want your competitors to fail.

Banking, of course, is not a real business, but a government ponzi scheme in which firms fall like dominoes.

By: Evelyn Black

Evelyn Black — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:59:46 +0000

Thanks Darell, I agree. I wonder how long these bail-outs are going to go on? The budget deficit is at an all-time high even without Fannie & Freddie added in yet, and now we have the auto industry with their hands out, Lehman Brother’s buyers expecting help from the Fed (that can’t go on every time an investment bank goes belly up), and what next? The airlines? At some point aren’t we just throwing bad money at bad money? Thanks for posting your thoughts! As for trolls, I just can’t get used to them. It seems like an illness or something–like that movie “28 Days”–rabid web posters. I’m old, so to me, it’s just so bizarre. But I suspect you are right, best to ignore the lot of them. What a weird hobby that is though!

By: Darell

Darell — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:05:10 +0000

Best to just completely ignore “Kerry Bradshaw.” Just one more alias in a long list that is used for similar trolling. Quite sad.

It boggles my mind that the tax payers are being asked to help the auto makers build what we need at this point. We’ve known what was needed for quite some time. And the car makers could have done it if they’d wanted to. They DID do it when they had to. And every time, we let them off the hook, to continue working really, really hard on the H2 cars. :sigh:

By: Evelyn Black

Evelyn Black — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:10:28 +0000

Thank you Kerry and John. It always makes me sad when I see that people in this country are unable to disagree without hate-speech and name-calling. It shows what we are coming to here in the U.S. and it seems to me the press just encourages that kind of ugliness. I’ve always felt that if a person really has something to say, the thing they are saying will stand on its own without the ugly language and invective. If a person has nothing of real content to add though, I guess the ugly language is necessary to promote the illusion of content.

John, I don’t know about GM selling the battery technology to the oil companies, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Actually battery technology has improved quite a bit as evidenced by the Tesla. We could make the car, if there weren’t corporate interests actively opposing the car. No, it wouldn’t be a solution for everyone, but it would appeal to many. I commute three miles to work and walk everywhere else, so an electric car would be perfect for my needs.

I agree with Thomas Friedman that what we need to do now is to support hundreds of new ideas, as many as we can find, so that the two or three that will stick get a chance.

By: kerry bradshaw

kerry bradshaw — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:14:58 +0000

Boy oh boy, is Evelyn one EV-ignorant
soul, repeating that pack of silly lies
from perhaps the most fictitious
crockumentary since those produced by the
NAzis during the 1930’s. The EV-1 was hardly
“loved wildly by the masses” – they never
managed to have more than 3/4 of the paltry
1100 EV-1s under lease at any one time, despite
soliciting 5,000 GM customers who had responded
to their survey who indicated they might be interested
in an electric car. 50 of those folks were actualy
dumb enough to lease what a panel of auto experts
recently named as one of the worst cars ever built.
The idea that the automakers are deependent upon the
oil companies might have been Chris Paine’s dumbest
theory of all. A real gem. Perhaps he might explain
why Gm would ever pay attention to an oil company.
The oil companies depend upon the automakers, moron,
not the other way around. And how come Toyota and
Honda’s cancellation of their electric car programs
(Honda after a few months!) would eve lead anyone to
claim that GM killed anything. The elctric car was DOA.
Nobody needed to kill it. Nor did Roger Smith attempt to
show that an electric car “couldn’t be built.” They had
been build before WWI. Unfortunately, electric cars hadn’t advanced one iota during the 90 years since then – they still didn’t have a practical battery. The EV-1 battery pack weighed 1250 pounds (!!!), cost over $20,000, and leasted about 5 years, making battery costs about $4,000 per year, or 4 times the cost of gasoline in those days. The car had
a driving range (round trip) that couldn’t reach destinations a mere 45 miles away. Oh, yeah, that piece of crap was REAL popular. I was around during those days and NO ONE I knew had the slightest interest in driving a stupid battery-only
electric car. They made zero sense. Then a California chemist determined that the Honda Insight was actually much friendlier to the environment than the EV-1. Just a few of the thousands of facts that were covered up by Hanks, begley andPaine, the
Three Stooges of documentaries. They are pure liars.
I might add that putting 5 million electric cars on the road will reduce gasoline consumption aby 1% and emissions by a much smaller amount. Obama’s con that a million plug-ins by 2015 will accomplish anything is pure con. or ignorance. With
him it’s always a toss up as to why he tells so many lies.

By: John

John — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 04:09:20 +0000

The battery technology and the vehicle technology was sold to an oil comglomerate, for what I am thinking is a huge dollar amount. Contractually binded, GM had to destroy the technology. The battery technology and patents is owned by, I believe Texaco, until 2014. This is what killed the electric car, but if it were more profitable to GM to keep the electric car then the oil company was willing to pay out, then you would still see EV1’s on the road today.

One could speculate that GM went on this venture with the premeditated intention to sell the technology to the oil companies after proving that it would seriously effect the oil companies interest. What do you think?

By: Evelyn Black

Evelyn Black — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:15:20 +0000

Doug, I can’t argue with any of what you say. I’m losing no sleep over their predicament, but I do feel for the workers. It is corporate mismanagement plain and simple IMO and lots of it, for many, many years. Let’s hope something better happens for our kids. Thanks for your comments.