Auto Industry

[Uncle Mxy]

If you want to sell a car here, you still have to meet the same standards whether you're VW or Toyota or GM. Where is the innovation shortcut for the foreign companies? The Germans may not care about safety but they still have to clear the same bar.

And historically, they did so by following the Big Three's lead. Many safety standards don't necessarily make a lot of sense from even a compassionate beancounter angle (if such an oxymoron exists), if you consider fatalities and injuries. Once you get much past seatbelts and airbags, the automakers are compelled to spend a fortune for every life saved, while other aspects of vehicle driving that have more bang-for-the-buck were largely put aside for a long time.

I don't see where this is a bad thing. Lighter, more fuel-efficient cars with lower emissions are a net positive. Again, the foreign cars have to clear the same bar in those areas. The argument that these are special handicaps for the american companies seems weak to me.

First off, are you really safer in vehicles made from weaker materials (for those components not meant to be flexible)? It's not a net-positive if you're dead. It's taken the airline industry a long time to really embrace composites rather than titanium and steel, and they have less collision potential.

Right after "Unsafe At Any Speed", most foreign automakers' innovations particular to our market was knockoff work from us. The Big Three spent the money financing the restraint and crash systems, and everyone gained. (It's harder to patent and protect a design evaluation process than a widget.). It was one of the things that enabled foreign companies to even enter our market in a serious way. .

I can see this being argued from the standpoint of labor and tariffs/trade. Outside of that... not so much.

In the 1990s, our government's "big deal" investment in fuel economy was a total of $1 billion for PNGV over 8 years. By contrast, the Japanese spent more than that every year on their automakers for equivalent fuel economy and emissions control work, and that's -aside- from the hybrid. I don't necessarily think that it's good long-term business for our government to "own" auto companies, but the Big Three have been shunned throughout this generation, relative to the "what's good for GM is good for the country" days.

Oh, and I don't want Paulsen's job, just his money.

[geerussell]

First off, are you really safer in vehicles made from weaker materials (for those components not meant to be flexible)? It's not a net-positive if you're dead. It's taken the airline industry a long time to really embrace composites rather than titanium and steel, and they have less collision potential.

Overall safety isn't measured in terms of weaker or stronger materials but in the context of design and safety features for the whole vehicle. In that sense, yes, it's a net positive if the safety bottom line remains the same (or improves) and lighter weight makes them more efficient.

Maybe your car is more likely to be totaled but you're not necessarily more likely to get dead in today's vehicles.

[DennyMcLain]

Ecowarriors in L.A. bitch at the automakers for their smog, but they're the ones expanding at 30% per generation in a desert with no end in sight (and no water, for that matter).

Saw an rx350 Hybrid today on Ventura Blvd. (in the beautiful San Fernando Valley) with a WOOD AND LEATHER steering wheel. Also a dude in a Prius with some insane sound system, cranked to 11.

I keep bitching about Desalination plants. Prolly never gonna happen. When the Colorado finally dries up, we'll simply ambush a weakened Michigan and take the Great Lakes.

Illinois will attack with the Cubs, and they'll put up a good fight..... for a short while.

Wisconsin will attack with cheese. But, since California cheese is better, they will fail.

By default, Ohio sucks at everything. So there is no fear.

Most of NY's power base is in the southeast of the state. By the time they realize what's happening Arnie will have "pleased" Hillary several times over. Since she's never been boned by a real man, she'll turn against her constituents and fight for us.

Our only concern is Minnesota, birthplace of MoTown. Out govt will have to bribe MoTown with $$$$$ to work with us. Because MoTown Owns, once he is paid in full Minnesota will not be a problem.

And there you have it. By this time in 2011 I'll be sipping Brita- filtered Lake Superior aqua. Delicious!

[Uncle Mxy]

Overall safety isn't measured in terms of weaker or stronger materials but in the context of design and safety features for the whole vehicle. In that sense, yes, it's a net positive if the safety bottom line remains the same (or improves) and lighter weight makes them more efficient.

Consider measuring safety in terms of life and limb lost due to safety factors as a function of miles for the particular class of vehicle.

By such measurement standards, the automakers really haven't improved much since the big steel boxes of the 1970s. Most improvements in safety have correlated to changes in enforcement laws (seat belts, alcohol) than anything. (Non-uniform state laws make this easy to spot.) "Features" that aren't seatbelts and airbags (and maybe ESC too, but a lot of the instability results from lack of weight or sucky weight distribution) don't amount to big leaps, but burn tons of cash to implement per life saved.

The cars COULD have improved in safety a fair bit. But a lot of safety R&D was simply to compensate for unsafe materials changes made in the name of "efficiency", and disproportionately shouldered by the Big Three to the benefit of foreign car companies. Still, we lean on domestic automakers and the Big Three in particular for ever-improved "safety", even as the we want it light, even as the last "really big" domestic safety defect came from a Japanese tire company not warrantied by the automaker, even as aggregate road safety hasn't changed much. Meanwhile, other governments subsidize and protect their automakers and don't turn them into a proxy for Big Oil.

If you want to make today's designs safer, replace a lot of the composite materials with steel and do modern design verification. Few people really do that -- roll bars are largely an after-market thing. In fact, the prevailing safety mythology by insurance companies and the law is that slower is safer, despite counterexamples like the Autobahn. Automakers add to the myths occasionally by selling safety "features" that don't amount to much (ABS, which has nearly killed me as often as it's saved me -- gotta love faulty brake sensors). It's tough to have a reasonable conversation on the matter.

And it's kinda moot, seeing as how the Big Three CEOs fucked up in their testimonies to Congress. <sigh> Didn't anyone check out Lee Iacocca's accounts of testifying before Congress on such matters? <groan>

[BubblesTheLion]

It's amazing how fucking obedient the people in this county are to the corporate media.
30 Billions is an outrage , 5 Trillion goes without notice or is called necessary.

When there is no more room in Arkansas, the stupid will walk the earth

It's called a paper tiger!

[Glenn]

It does seem odd that they pushed that $700B for Wall Street through lickity split, but when the auto companies ask for $25B to help working class people keep their jobs/homes, they suddenly find their religion.

Lindsey Graham says he's got BMW to worry about in his home state. "How can I go to BMW and tell them that I'm helping their competitors?"

HELLO?

These southern legislators have a lot of foreign interests that they are looking out for.

[Uncle Mxy]

It's amazing how fucking obedient the people in this county are to the corporate media.
30 Billions is an outrage , 5 Trillion goes without notice or is called necessary.

When there is no more room in Arkansas, the stupid will walk the earth

It's called a paper tiger!

The Big Three have been demonized for a generation, over big oil issues. Now they're getting demonized over something new and topical -- the Wall Street bailouts that don't seem to have had much of an impact. (Of course, it may be the case that they saved us from a lot worse -- this ISN'T 15 or 20% unemployment after all, but it's too early to say.)

Some of this is just stupidity on the part of the automakers. Some of it involves the automakers being forced to be relatively nice to their employees due to unions (the Democratic stronghold that Democrats like to piss on, and they wonder how those infamous Reagan Democrats emerged...).

Fundamentally, though, Big Oil is just bigger than Big Auto, and has its own league of nations in a way that most businesses would drool over. They won the hearts and minds of folks with Carter's defeat (Anderson's too ), and we never held anyone's feet or our feet to the fire to shake our dependence on them -- except the automakers. We just did a ton of things to try and keep prices cheap to fuel bad habits, until Bush fucked that up by pissing in their turf and pissing the dollar away. Now it's a shitty situation.

[Glenn]

Whew, I though Mxy was about to thrash me.

I'm still not in the clear, yet.

[Tahoe]

Anyone know what the pay scale looks like for an auto worker these days?

I tend to agree with the peeps who say it's just a temporary bailout. The Auto industry has been declining for decades and this won't fix anything.

[Uncle Mxy]

It does seem odd that they pushed that $700B for Wall Street through lickity split, but when the auto companies ask for $25B to help working class people keep their jobs/homes, they suddenly find their religion.

Lindsey Graham says he's got BMW to worry about in his home state. "How can I go to BMW and tell them that I'm helping their competitors?"

HELLO?

These southern legislators have a lot of foreign interests that they are looking out for.

Lindsey Graham also has a brand new Chrysler plant in Ladson, SC.