General motor crisis

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(sl7vk @ Oct 9 2006, 05:43 PM) [snapback]330242[/snapback]</div>

I'm sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to point out that Toyota produces a lot of gas guzzlers just like everyone else. My bad.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 9 2006, 09:49 PM) [snapback]330373[/snapback]</div>

No. Not at all. It is valid, but you seem to have a rather high "bitterness" factor vis-a-vis Toyota. The fact is simply that Honda's fleet is the most fuel effecient in the world. Second is Toyota. The big 3 are laggin way behind, and now they are paying the price...... As is Toyota on the smaller percentage of gas guzzlers as you put it..... that they produce.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Oct 9 2006, 05:16 PM) [snapback]330332[/snapback]</div>

Just a technicality for whatever is is worth. The EV1 was the ONLY "GM" branded vehilce that GM has ever put on the road. It was handled through Saturn dealerships, but was never under the Saturn label. GM only. Officially it was the GM EV1.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Jonnycat26 @ Oct 9 2006, 06:49 PM) [snapback]330373[/snapback]</div>

I guess it is just the WAY you say stuff... not as much what it is you're saying. If I can borrow from your avatar... it is sort of like petting a cat backwards. You're still petting, but the cat isn't loving it.

 

ALL car companies build what they can sell. As long as people buy the Ford Mountain of Metal and the Chevy Behemoth (and the Toyota Sequoia), they will be built. It worked great until recently. We (socirty in general) need to stop buying them!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Dupuy @ Oct 9 2006, 08:18 PM) [snapback]330416[/snapback]</div>

Well.... It has already started. You know people are moving to fuel sippers when Texas are sold out of Corollas and Civics. :lol:

 

Interesting to note that in the UK Toyota make what is reputedly the best most respected work-horse truck, the Hilux, and it's been that way over many years and generationsof the vehicle. I think it's got a different name in the US, maybe it's the Tundra?

Er, anyway.. right on everyone else on the thread!

If the world needs cheap hydrogen, then why don't Iceland and other places with limitless free geothermal power start producing it and shipping it around the world? I mean, it'd just be like Saudia Arabia with oil...? I remember reading somewhere that Iceland could generate enough electricity to power the entire world or some silly statistic like that.

Ok so you'd need a lot of tankers, since you'd probably need more volume of H2 than you do of crude oil... But perhaps we could solidify it or maybe convert it to its metalic allotrope.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(AlbertoC67 @ Oct 6 2006, 04:53 PM) [snapback]329153[/snapback]</div>

In addition to the factors mentioned above, a funny little secret about SUVs is that for more than two decades there has been a roughly 25% tariff imposed on light trucks imported into the US, providing a partially sheltered market for domestic manufacture of light trucks (including SUVs) as opposed to cars. Google "light truck chicken tax" to read the history there. So, domestic manufacturers face less intense competition from foreign vehicle production (and foreign labor) in the light truck/SUV segment than in the car segment.

A second factor not mentioned here is the CAFE (fuel economy) standards. The CAFE rules date to the 1970s oil shocks. Two things have happened. First, there isn't one CAFE standard, there are separate standards for cars and light trucks. So, as the anti-CAFE crowd argues, why build a gas-guzzling station wagon (under the car standard) when you can build an even-more-gas-guzzling SUV (under the loooser truck standard). If you want to appeal to the gas-guzzler buyer, and you worry about hitting the CAFE target, then do it with an SUV. When the standards were passed, SUVs hardly existed. Whether or not CAFE played any significant role in their growth is not clear, but it may have. Of course, the point of a regulatory fix like that is to force decisions that would not otherwise be made via market signals. So, to the extent that CAFE was effective, it should have had this effect.

But second, of late, whatever is left of the CAFE fuel economy standards has been turned into a joke by the rules regarding flexible fuel vehicles. Basically, the rules assume that if a car is built to burn ethanol, then you can count the (petroleum-based) gasoline mileage as if the car burned E85 half the time. So a 15 MPG guzzler, if it can burn E85, counts as roughly a 30 MPG vehicle for calculation of the CAFE standards. It doesn't matter that almost nobody actually burns E85. So the guess is that CAFE with the flex-fuel loophole simply ceases to be effective.

A third point is that you need to look at what's happening to Ford to see how this pro-SUV dynamic plays out. Ford has the equivalent of the HSD, and put it into an SUV. It's not selling well. Toyota put it into a super-economy car, and it is selling well. Which company made the mistake, and why? Where do you think the market is? All the marketing studies that I've seen summaries of, regarding car owners by type of vehicle, basically say that SUV owner, ON AVERAGE, don't much care about gas mileage or the environmental impact of their choice of vehicle. So Ford effectively wasted the engineering on a market that will be marginal at best. I can't even guess why they did that.

My fourth point, and what I worry about the most, is why US manufacturers appear to have made such bad decisions, and appear incapable of serving the market for fuel-efficient vehicles. I mean, why does it take a foreign company (again! think VW Beetle) to show that you can sell fuel-efficient cars in the US. All the comments re gas prices, Amercan's tastes, other than those regarding cost of manufacture, would apply equally to Toyota as to GM. I'm afraid it's systemic -- that the hair-trigger reflexes of the US stock market force attention to current quarter profits, and obviously a lot of top-level compensation is tied to stock price. So, at some level, you have to speculate and fear that the pervasiveness of seemingly short-sighted managment decisionmaking might occur because the markets and typical compensation schemes demand that. GM and Ford decisionmaking reflect their economic environment. A manager suggesting sacrificing current profit to invest in future market share would be displaced by a manager suggesting the reverse -- as long as the present discounted value of the future decline in market share doesn't register with investors who are determining the stock price.

Around here, all you have to do is observe who's driving what to get really worried about the future of US auto companies. My guess is that the typical middle-aged Toyota SUV buyer was probably once a younger Corolla driver. But in Northern Virginia, I'd say under 20% of younger drivers are in American-badged cars. Gives me the feeling that we still have a domestic car industy because old people buy US cars. That Detroit in general is heading where Oldsmobile has already gone.

My final comment (and apology to Pinto Girl here), returing to the 1970s oil shocks, is some early US efforts at small cars were just the pits, and that has left its market on popular culture and American attitudes. American manufacturers' reputations never recovered from the post-1973 scramble to produce smaller cars in response to the oil shocks. From GM in particular, the Chevy Vega (aluminum engine that wouldn't last 50K miles) and the Chevy Chevette (pr. shove-it), were examples of what not to do. Combined with the mandate for catalytic converters starting in 1974, I'd have to say that 1974 represents the absolute all-time nadir of American automotive manufacturing. It was pretty much into the 1990s before American small cars became vehicles you might care to buy. And the echoes of the oil shock cars continue to produce a lot of negative popular culture regarding small American-built cars. Even today, you will see movies use these cars as iconographic symbols of shoddy workmanship (e.g., the 2003 Looney Tunes Back in Action used an AMC Gremlin for comic effect. Certainly no kids in the audience would recognize it, but a lot their parents recognized it and at some level understood it) So, in addition to the issues of profit and loss, gas price, and others, I'd say that the American phyche was scarred by mid-1970s small cars and has never fully recovered.

 

Alberto,

Your english did just fine. You got your points across very well. It makes no difference what country we live in. We need to get rolling on this or our children and their children will pay the consequences. We may get by (barely) but we are not rich, as Alberto says, after 40 years of economic improvement. We must stop thinking that bigger is better. It is not. We must conserve and use our heads to improve things. I am ashamed that the United States of America is one of the two countries who have not approved the kyoto protocols. I am ashamed that we use so much energy compared to other countries. I am ashamed that our government only uses fear to control us. Hydrogen is not the answer until we have a free source of energy to obtain hydrogen. Too bad our government here in America does not understand this. Does our government know something we dont? Is fusion on the horizon?

Those are my 2 pennies worth of comments. Thanks to the others for theirs.

Cheers and good luck to us all.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Dupuy @ Oct 9 2006, 10:18 PM) [snapback]330416[/snapback]</div>

I agree 110%. It's actually very reassuring to know that the solution lies with us as individuals. Empowering, too

But...

Because of the time necessary to bring a new model to market, it's important that automotive manufacturers 'lead' the market, rather than follow trends.

After all, even the newest car is at least two or three years old, if you include time for gestation.

I think that success in the auto industry is more about settling on a rational long term philosophy -- a mission statement, if you will -- instead of following the fashion of the moment. And that, really, is what GM has failed to do.

It's also about seeing governmental regulation as a challenge, not an impediment. It's really a joke how the American industry fights against economy and pollution standards at every turn...and has a long history of doing so.

The idea that environmental sustainability and big business are mutually exclusive is, I think, rubbish. Change won't happen overnight, to be sure. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep, right?

 

Well said Alberto. however, remember that, in regards to the people here, you're most likely "preaching to the choir". While there are some here who got the Prius for other reasons, many (maybe even most) i believe got it for the reduced emissions and reduced oil consumption. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps to send a signal to those in power that we want something better for the world.

Unfortunately, there's only so much we can do. For my part, i take every chance i get to impress upon "people of power" the need for stricter regulations. I also try to make the "smart" choice when making purchases (such as buying the Prius and getting what clean energy i can). Unfortunately there just isn't much else the average consumer can do. If i could, i'd build a cold fusion power plant in my garage and power the rest of the block and then some. Unfortunately, i'm forced to get my power over the lines, and my options are limited.

All that being said, i think the situation is getting better. Every year, it seems, there are more options for obtaining clean energy to power your home. Additionally, new companies come out every year to try to combat this problem. One great example i know about is http://www.hydrogenllc.net, which aims to use hydrogen fuel stacks to provide power in industrial situations where hydrogen is an unwanted byproduct of the production of production of chlorine, industrial gases, coke, synthesis gas from coal, and ammonia.

So in conclusion, keep pushing for better solutions to our energy needs. Eventually we'll be off our dependance on oil and coal, and that will be a glorious day. on the flip side of the same coin, don't get too frustrated, as there are companies out there doing what they can, and consumers doing what they can in their purchases.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Oct 10 2006, 02:49 PM) [snapback]330755[/snapback]</div>

I don't want to take this too far afield, but I've been in the process of reviewing all of my family's direct and indirect energy consumption, in so far as possible. I found one simple, painless, healthful change that will, I believe, save as much fossil fuel annually as if we were to stop driving a car competely: eat grass-fed beef instead of grocery-store grain-fed beef.

Disclaimer: yes, a vegeterian or vegan diet would be better, in about as many ways as you'd care to name. Please don't flame me because I eat meat. I was looking for changes that required no effort or sacrifice (on my part) first.

I thought I might share this information because a) it was a total suprise to me and b) it costs almost nothing to make the change.

First, for us, gasoline is the least of our worries, accounting for about 12% of our total energy use. We don't drive much, and we drive a Prius. We use maybe 250 to 300 gallons of gasoline annually.

Second, the amount of fossil fuel embodied in our food was a suprise. Assuming available data on US typical diet is correct, and that our diet is near typical (though we try hard not to be), the energy required to produce our food accounted for over three times as much fossil fuel consumption as our driving. I'll go through the math below for those interested.

Third, most of that fossil fuel consumption is due to grain-fed animal protein. Grain-fed beef, for example, uses more than an order-of-magnitude more fossil fuel input than the average of all vegetable calories, at least insofaras as I read the data. That's largely because it takes, as they say, 10 pound of grain to make a pound of beef. So, animal products account for the minority of food calories but the majority of fossil fuel calories embodied in the average US diet. Estimates for grass-fed (pasture) beef, by contrast, make it maybe one-fourth as fossil-fuel intensive as grain-fed beef.

Fourth, a guy who sells at our local farmer's market here in Vienna will sell us a side of grass-fed (pasture) beef at a seemingly reasonble price. We've tried his products and we like them a lot. We've contracted to buy a side of beef this fall, which we'll stow in our (efficient, chest) freezer.

The bottom line is that, if I've done the math right, and if the underlying data are correct, then this simple change -- eat grass fed beef from a local farmer intead of grocery-store grain fed beef -- will reduce our net fossil fuel consumption by the equivalent of about 300 gallons of gasoline. And will cost me essentially nothing, near as I can figure. Moreover, the grain-fed product is leaner and is supposed to have a more healthful mix of fatty acids. Not to mention that the animals actually get to walk around, as opposed to much of the life-cycle of grain-fed beef. And so on.

Here's the arithmetic.

The rough conversion is that it takes 10 Kcal of fossil fuel to produce every edible dietary Kcal (aka calorie), on average, for the US diet. That's based on a smattering of web-based sites, some of which appear to reference fairly serious and thoughtful research. Others of which do not. A gallon of gas is about 31,000 Kcal of energy. The average American eats 2750 cal/day (per USDA statistics). Do the math, and a year of food production for the average American accounts for fossil fuel equivalent to roughly 325 gallons of gasoline. I figured, for my family of four, roughly the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gasoline-equivalentwas used to produce our food.

I would not stake my life on the 10 fossil fuel (K)calories per food (K)calorie, but I've seen at least two independent estimates in that range. It seems about right.

In my modeling of the savings, I assumed that beef accounted for 17% of our total food calories (maybe high, but it will after we buy a side of beef, and other animal sources are only modestly less fuel-inefficient), that grain-fed beef uses about 30 fossil-fuel calories per edible calorie, and that grass-fed beef uses about 7.5 fossil-fuel calories per edible calorie. Those statistics for beef appear to be in the range of credibility, with Industry-sponsored sources giving (unsurprisingly) a much lower, but much less credible, figure.

The result, under these assumptions, is that this one change is worth about the same as 300 gallons of gasoline, in fossil fuel savings. And is better for us (though again, not as good as a vegetarian diet would be.) We live fairly frugally, and this one change dwarfs all the other energy savigns changes I have been considering.