GM is doing very well abroad. The plan was very likely to endure a crisis in the US in order to finally get rid of the union legacy and force Us workers "to be competitive."

I ordered the DVD "Who Killed the Electric Car" today having seen clips on YouTube and GoogleVideo. GM is not stupid. They are a Corporation in the service of Greed and the Greedy. I do not feel sorry for them and really wish if there were a way to kill a corporation, we could begin with them.

It's not just GM. As a book editor, I tried to find an author to write a book about hybrid vehicles--how they work, who makes them, which one you should buy and why. Well the editor in chief, who seemed to think that clippings from the Wall Street Journal were the last word on everything under the sun found an article that documented that at the high-and-rising price of $2.50 for a gallon of gasoline, the fuel savings for a Toyota Prius didn't break even over the life of the car--presumed to be something like five years.

This was unpersuasive to someone who drives a beater Volvo, and who speculated that gas prices might go to the astronomical heights of $3 or maybe $3.50 a gallon. I never did that book. It probably would have sold well.

People from Ralph Nader to Michael Moore and beyond have documented GM's blockheaded, reactionary, anti-union-even-if-it-hurts-us, unimaginative management. I mean really, their cars are about the unsexiest things on the road. For as long as I can remember, the quality of the cars they built was just simply inferior to imports or even their domestic competitors for the most part. As they lost market share and pegged their hopes to trucks, their foreign business, finance, everything and anything but the manufacture and sale of automobiles, they found MBA solutions to MBA-created problems. Renegotiate with Unions. Underfund pensions. Pay lobbyists for beneficial legislation (but not universal healthcare--that would be Marxist!) Unsophisticated marketing. Rely on conservative buddies for good press. They are to business what George Bush is to government.

This announcement is just icing on the cake. What a brain wave! Maybe they'll bring back the EV-1! No, wait, here's a better idea: they can just license the technology from Honda and Toyota. What a bunch of idiots.

According to some dude on NPR's Marketplace, GM was treading water all these years, using SUV sales to barely keep itself afloat. This supposedly explains why they didn't invest in smaller cars. Although the greed thing is what I'd put my money on.

I lived in the Detroit Metro area for a few years in the 1980's and my sense was that the auto manufacturing business was extremely "clubby." Perhaps insular is a better term. They catagorically reject new ideas, sometimes even successful ones. For example, the Fiero and PT Cruiser were quite successful in their days, but they spawned few copies.

Hybrid technology, especially if coupled with a high efficiency flexible fuel (diesel) engine, would be the most logical next step in auto power plants. Gas powered Honda and Toyota hybrids already get 20% better fuel efficiency. And diesel engines can get an additional 10-15%. A switch to diesel would hedge bets on when Americans will have to begin using vegetable oil instead of petroleum as fuel. And hybrid drive technology is at the heart of the fuel-cell drive train.

But by hyping fuel cell technology Detroit is implicitly saying it will do nothing to incrementally improve existing drive train technology. If Detroit were serious, I doubt that cost-effective commercial implementation of a fuel cell system could be done in two decades; but I don't think they are remotely serious. If they were, they would be embracing hybrid drive train technology in order to be good at this when they make the leap to fuel cells. But they are not doing this. It's a lot more consistent with their past behavior to expect that they whole thing is a smoke screen to deflect criticism that they are doing absolutely nothing to improve fuel efficiency.

Detroit has been systematically killing good ideas since Tucker. One day they will get their comeuppance.