Hybrids could prove costly to the U.S.

has anyone send any comments to the author?

 

Amen to that!!! I stopped shopping at Wally-World over a year ago and have been campaigning to get everyone I know to do the same... I had finally read one too many books and seen one too many documantaries about the evils of Sprawl-Mart to shop there with a clean conscience. The only thing that is doing this nation more harm than the pseudo-conservative agenda is the Wal-Mart agenda... Everywhere I look around here they are building more and more supercenters... a second super-center is about to open in Findlay, We are getting a super center Here in Bowling Green, 3 more super centers are being built in the Toledo area, and a supercenter in Port Clinton.... GRRRRR!!!!! :angry: :angry: :angry:

 

Maybe malorn's real name is Ray Windecker?

 

Poll answer: Maybe this guy?

 

...There must be a balance between ecological and economic requirements". Ray Windecker.

"Either - Or" thinking can get one into trouble. We can have both a strong economy and ecology. Eco comes from the Greek, meaning "house". The two are related. The solution is for the US to build a quality hybrid, Yes?

 

Yeah, whatever. Basically he's saying that any car that is built overseas adds to our deficit. No duh. So did my '96 Ford Escort that was built in Mexico count? Once again this hybrid detractor does the same thing that all the rest do. Complain, complain, complain, but he was very short on coming up with real solutions, wasn't he.

When Ray "Most Republican Looking Dude on the Planet" Windecker develops a vehicle that is great for the environment AND reduces our dependence on foreign oil, AND is top notch quality, AND is reasonable priced, I'll buy him a drink. Until then, he's just a loser with an axe to grind.

Peace,
Cosmo

 

I wish the responses here weren't so gloom and doom. I rather like the United States and would like to see it use the resources it has now to create a good future with high paying jobs and technological innovation and to avert the impending oil crises. That's why I made the kind of suggestion I did earlier in this thread - using a fuel tax to fund R&D (not auto industry, oil industry giveaways) will create the right economic incentives to save oil and will have engineers, designers, and workers here leapfrogging the competition.

It is not impossible for the United States to have a competitive advantage in industry - to maintain our standard of living we just have to do it with high skill, highly differentiated products and services. Consider the case of IBM. In the early 1990's, faced with unimproved technology and as a high price provider of products that lots of other people could produce, IBM was hemmoraging jobs and cash. A bold restructuring was undertaken in which Big Blue decided to stop making items where profits were low, and concentrate on performing high end consulting and business services, and making best of breed hardware and software that not just any Johnny-come-lately could match. This even led to the 2004 sale of the barely profitable PC division to Lenovo. In 2005, IBM had higher sales and higher profits than ever before.

It certainly will take money and will and effort - a Moon Landing project for the 2000's type of effort - but to do what we are doing now (nothing really) will only make the predictions of gloom self-fulfilling.

In any case, if you'd like to participate in developing this kind of strategy and giving it visibility in the political arena, check out Energize America: A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security. If you choose not to contribute to or support that project, please consider taking some other action to make crisis into opportunity.

 

They're not tax and spend - that would smack of fiscal responsiblity - they're "BORROW AND SPEND REPUBLICANS"

wrt this article - i can't believe the website's editors let this go out. Not citing sources for absurd figures, then vomiting up a bunch of nonsense to support a political perspective.

utter filth.

 

Well, the guy on the left can't be our president because he's obviously a welch longbowman showing the French that he still has his middle finger after the battle of Agincourt.

Tony, who's the sod on the right? Exxon executive?

 

That would be the author of the article, Ray Windecker.

 

gee.. that was a lame article. thanks for posting it though. it's good to see what people are writing.

the thing is, this is america. We keep pretty close track of our economy. If everything is failing misserably we usually create new working fields to compensate. I dought a prius is going to be the end of the U.S. economy. Cars costing less to operate is normal. We expect them to cost less... and less.. and less... but since the prius makes a jump in the field, it's gonna collapse the economy.....

and i thought i was bored.

 

You make a good point but I don't think that's what people are upset about.
The issue is the author, blaming the Prius for our trade deficit, and that giving people $3000 to the first 60,000 vehicles will ruin the U.S. economy in 5-15 years and the global economy in 30-100 years. Apparently starting the endless Iraq war doesn't factor into the equation, failing to raise the CAFE, or importing the Toyota Highlander, Honda Ridgeliner, Subaru Tribeca, Nissans, BMWs, VWs, etc. Some old crank with a dislike for hybrids is blaming them for all our problems, adding some numbers to make it sound legitimate and somebody else published this nonsense.

nerfer

 

another one of these, eh? can be summed up by saying:

buy american! buy gas guzzlers! or else we'll all be living on the streets!

 

I think a more realistic concern is that when cars get much better mileage, regardless of where they are made, people will drive more, thus negating some of the fuel savings.

Doctors started seeing a similar phenomenon when all sorts of diet and light food products came out. Some folks thought they could just stuff themselves without consequence because they were eating diet foods.

We are seeing this now with comments like, "hey my hybrid isn't getting great gas mileage" (under my lead foot and 80 mph driving).

 

It's amazing the uproar that happens when the "General Public" takes advantage of the free market. Where was this argument when Detroit started outsourcing all of its parts manufacturing overseas? Weren't these same type of people calling it the greatest thing for the US automotive industry and the US in general?

I think his short bio says it all.

"Ray Windecker has 60 years experience in corporate automotive marketing and journalism."

His thinking just shows what has been wrong with the US automotive industry for the last several decades.

 

Well said, we are ALL going to die individually, and we, collectively, are also going to die. How are you going to LIVE is the question. I, for one, refuse to accept that I am doomed. Die yes, doomed no.

 

jef.

I would normally be right up there with you on the "how stock price is analyzed" soapbox, but I think if you compare Toyota's (or Honda's) stock price vs. say GM's price historically over the past 10 years, you can see that GM's "short term" planning has screwed over the company (while it may have payed handsomely for it's execs). Investors have moved their money to a company that is less concerned about short-term benefits.

IE, you're right, but using GM vs. TOYOTA is a bad example

 

I didn't mean to imply that GM was successful at keeping their stock price up, just that they tried