Quote:
Originally Posted by shines
Conspiracy between GM and the federal government? Of course not! The feds only owned 61% of the company. LOL!
Whats more is that 16% was given to the UAW, which is little more than a money laundering operation for one of our political parties.
Of course there's collusion between GM and the government. To believe otherwise is idiocy.
Electric cars will do nothing to reduce dependence on fossil fuels so long as we continue to deny construction of nuclear power plants. We're simply relocating the fossil fuel consumption.
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You must have a completely different understanding of the word collusion than I do. LOL
col·lu·sion
[kuh-loo-zhuhn] Show IPA
noun
1. a secret agreement, especially for fraudulent or treacherous purposes; conspiracy: Some of his employees were acting in collusion to rob him.
2. Law . a secret understanding between two or more persons to gain something illegally, to defraud another of his or her rights, or to appear as adversaries though in agreement: collusion of husband and wife to obtain a divorce.
Did the government review the future product portfolio? For sure. And from what we heard, you would probably be shocked at the changes (very few that they were) that resulted. In most cases the government "asked" GM why they weren't pursuing certain products that had historically been hugely profitable. So all we saw were adds back into the portfolio.
Government had some larger plans, we heard internal rumors of a forced merger with Chrysler as part of the overall cash infusion. But those were only rumored.
I'm sure there were discussions that were never discussed or leaked outside the highest levels, but I'm pretty sure they weren't what you think they were. My opinion, but we never saw anything along the lines of what you think happened.
So although you've called me an idiot, I can assure you I'm not.
And you shouldn't worry about fossil fuels. Coal is also a fossil fuel and we have more coal than all the rest of the worlds oil combined. I think we're set.
For some, sounds like you, the issue is dependance on oil. For others, it's emissions. The Volt helps in both cases and until battery technology develops at least another generation or two or three, batteries won't meet all of our transportation needs, they'll only supplement.
But the larger problem isn't the lack of nuclear power plants, it's simply that there are 100 or so million cars still on the road that don't meet modern emissions standards or get resonable fuel economy. The average age of the U.S. automobile is over 10 years old now. Simply take them off the road after 3 years (Japan makes it very expensive to keep a 3 year or older car on the road for example) and see how much improvement there would be.
You could switch every new car to a Volt or Leaf and you'd be years from making a huge dent.