One Word for New Auto Industry Business Plan: Green
Congress should not go easy on GM if it does approve a bailout, but Congress has shown no sign of going easy on the auto giant. The idea of setting auto executives scurrying to produce a business plan is nothing short of brilliant. I've got suggestions for what such a plan should include. But first and foremost, it should be focused on one word and one word alone: green.
No more SUVs and gas guzzlers. Even in the truck division, GM could make its heavy-duty vehicles much more fuel efficient and price them so that they could only be purchased by commercial ventures. Private citizens who want to drive guzzlers should be priced out of the market and should instead be forced into low-mileage cars. GM got into this mess because instead of leading the consumer market in the right (read that: green) direction, it catered to America's sick addiction to gas guzzlers. Now's the time to lead, not cave in.
Dan Beuke of BusinessWeek writes:
End of discussion about higher mileage rules. For years, honest efforts to boost fuel efficiency were snuffed out in Washington by Detroit and its fellow travelers in Congress. Enough. I say we build right into bailout legislation a 40-mpg average for cars by 2020. That's up from 27.5 today, and a big step up from the 35 mpg goal that Detroit is supposed to achieve. I don't care how they get there: Build cars that burn corn cobs—or For Sale signs, for that matter. Just get there.
America cannot afford to have GM go under any more than it can afford to lose Citicorp and AIG and all the rest. And the market seemed to understand that on the day before Thanksgiving, when GM stock was up by about a third in midday trading on hints that Congress was closer to acceding to GM's come hither pleas. I know there's no such thing as fairness when it comes to business and money, but what's sauce for Citicorp ought to be sauce for GM, too.
Tags: General Motors | environment | car manufacturers
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Reader Comments
Green Plan, etc
I'm all for having higher gas mileage vehicles, especially SUVs, we'd love to have such a thing.
In our small animal veterinary house call practice, we'd love to have an SUV that gets 30+ MPG, our current 2004 Ford Expedition with 116,000 miles gets at best 16 MPG. Why do we have such a vehicle? To carry the supplies, drugs and equipment we need to do the job, not to mention the occasional large dog that needs to be transported. Some weeks, we drive 1000 mles per week, its a nice comfortable vehicle that does what we need. Some people and businesses need such vehicles and always will.
Why should these be priced that only "commercial enterprises" could afford them? Such a scheme would only cause these businesses to raise prices to compensate - a hidden tax. Also, any SUV owner (business or not) already pays more in gas taxes and likely personal property tax not to mention sales tax on the initial purchase. $4.00+ gas cost $120.00 or more for a fill-up, yesterday was $1.59 per gallon a nice reprieve not likely to last.
When a replacement is needed (hopefully two or more years from now) we'll survey the available SUVs and hopefully be able to choose from a reliable very fuel efficient SUV type vehicle which the market will hopefully be (still) demanding.
Amen!
There was no way that Americans could afford $4.00 gallon gas & $400K homes without something serious happening, like it did this past September. Step into reality, we put ourselves where we are today. And still, people just can't understand that NOW is the time to do something to stop the bleeding.
Erbe suggests a great point and one I thought of as well. It won't hurt anyone for us to get a car that averages 40 mpg. That's what GM should have done long ago - but profits get in the way of what's best for the country. Politics and politicians (with considerable stake in the petroleum industry) have not demanded that GM do something about gas mileage. The Asians and Germans can manage to do it - why, what would give them incentive to produce a car with high MPG? Wow, it shouldn't be any surprise - the price of gasoline.
Even if you don't agree with the term "green" for the myriad of reasons spouted here, think about your wallet. I scratched my head every time I paid $40 for gas that was only $20 for the same car two years ago. Double in two years? Should I have expected to pay $60 to fill up that same car in two more years? That's preposterous and fiscally insane! My pay won't double in two years, it didn't from two years ago. Should the petroleum industry make a profit - of course they should. Although, you should wonder how and why, instead of saying "WOW" when it's announced that a certain company it made $40 billion in 2007!
Erbe is right - if GM wants a federal bailout, Congress is in a position to expect/demand cars that get 40MPG. I don't agree that gas guzzlers should be banned to private citizens - let them buy them if that's what they want. Status, prestige, or whatever the motivation won't allow them to drive fiscally/environmentally smart cars. But these guzzlers should require a separate piece of paper to be signed when picking up their new vehicle - "NO BAILOUT ALLOWED".
But then like a good friend told me once, "You can't argue with stupid."
DON'T CONFUSE RELIGIOUS ZEALOTS WITH FACTS
There have been alternating periods of cooling and warming on Earth, with the Pleistocene Ice Age starting 110,000 years ago and giving way, 14,700 years ago, to the Bolling warm period for 800 years. This in turn gave way to the Older Dryas cooling for 300 years, then the Allerod warming for 700 years, and so on, until the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Since 1850, we have lived through the "Modern Warming", one of the most stable climate periods in history. Many astronomers and climatologists predict we are headed for a new cooling period.
Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal . there are fundamentalist organizations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet, Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless using guilt and urging penance." It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.
The debate on Global Warming would indeed be over if the religious hysteria in support of it were made to subside.
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