Last week, General Motors emerged from bankruptcy after just 40 days. GM CEO Fritz Henderson announced that GM would "make the customer the center of everything" and commit itself to "building more of the gorgeous, high-quality fuel-efficient cars, trucks and crossovers that consumers want and getting them into the market faster than ever before."
This might be the closest thing to an admission of guilt we've seen from a GM executive. For too long, GM, its lobbyists, and republicans in Congress have placed the blame for GM's decline on the economy, unions, and the cost of healthcare, arguing that if GM could simply break its union contracts and reduce its healthcare commitments, they'd be able to bounce back when consumers started spending again. Remember that it was just a few months ago in November 2008 that Rick Wagoner, former CEO of GM, told Congress:
What exposes us to failure now is not our product lineup, or our business plan, or our employees' ability to work hard, or our long-term strategy. What exposes us to failure now is the global financial crisis, which has severely restricted credit availability, and reduced industry sales to the lowest per-capita level since World War II.
While many factors contributed to GM's bankruptcy, perhaps most devastating was the decision by GM leadership to put all its eggs in the basket of giant, gas-guzzling SUVs, which marked a step backward in innovation and fuel-efficiency, but a step forward for short-term, unsustainable profits (sub-prime, anyone?). Instead of embracing the inevitable future of the auto industry, GM decided to be the #1 producer of dinosaurs. Nowhere is this thinking more apparent than in GM's fatal decision to stop production of its revolutionary all-electric car, the EV1, a murder mystery solved in Chris Paine's excellent, essential 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?
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those resources the lithium and the rare earth metals are mined in China and Bolivia has a huge source of Lithium as well.
The electric vehicle fantasy is just that a fantasy. producing a limited run of vehicles that will not be subjected to geopolitical maneuvering and cars that have the necessary mileage are stumbling blocks.o we have plugs at every parking meter. it takes six or more hours to recharge the batteries for a forty mile ride. If you have plugs on the street how do you keep them safe for children frayed wires and puddles. Electrocution is a terrible thing.
Perhaps it is time that Americans reinvent the transportation modalities we organize our society around.
Sorry, but that film did nothing for me. The discontinuation of the EV1 was a business decision. A dumb one, but a business decision. If it had more parts in common with other GM vehicles, maybe things would have been different.