Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Should we feel sorry for the car companies?

As the car companies stand with hat in hand looking for our tax dollars could they have stopped this problem before it even got started? If they would have only listened to their customers! Case in point the removal of the EV1 out of the market place in 2000 and 2001. Now lets take a trip if you will back to 1999. The EV1 is the electric car that GM first came out with, but the concept was carried over to Toyota,Honda. Now do you remember a mass advertising campaign for the electric vehicles? I don't! Why Not? Now I would like to take this one step further how does big oil figure into this question? In a time of being green why did this concept not take off? As you can see I think there is more questions then there is answers.

Big oil is a force to be reckoned with, on many fronts. We have been so dependent on fossil fuels that they think they rule the roost. Kind of the neighborhood bully if you will. Now Mr. Green is coming in, and telling the big oil bully that they are not necessarily the only act in the neighborhood. So muscles are flexed, but the rest of the neighborhood still follow old thought patterns and Mr. Oil wins once again. Everybody liked their way of life, and lets face it people do not like leaving their comfort zone. This is starting to sound like a real bad "B" rated movie.

Now lets fast forward 8 years to 2009, and Mr. Green comes back with more friends, and the neighborhood is tired of being held hostage to old thought processes. So they start pointing out facts of what happened in 2000 and 2001. They start asking questions what happened to those cars and SUV's? Why did they not stay in the market place? What happened to some of that technology that was used back then? We are now seeing it be the saving grace in today's green cars? Why not then? Now that the car companies are one month away from closing their doors they have realized that Mr. Green might not be a bad date to take to the party after all.

GM has figured out that the millions of dollars that was spent on R and D to create these green cars should have been saved in order to take us into today's market place. So I guess is better to show up fashionably late to the ball, rather then not show up at all. People want the technology now just as much as they wanted it then. So where does this the oil companies now? I think in my humble opinion they have over stayed their welcome. People of today want more then your gas guzzling, oil burning 4 wheeled modes of transportation.

So before your electricity goes to $11.00 a watt go buy your green vehicle. Enjoy cleaner air!

Until next time...Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.

Cheers
From the Big Ape :0)

1 comment:

JimL said...

We should not only NOT feel sorry for the car companies...we should punish them even more. A lot of people don't realize what the car companies, oil companies, and even rubber companies did at the turn of the 20th (1900) century. To make their products more profittable. They bought out many railroad lines and streetcars that were profittable and ripped up the tracks to lay the framework for the automobile/suburb society. Now we are more dependent on big oil than ever and it's because of our greed a hundred years ago.