Product is there, but no ones looking.

Al Gore does a graphic comparison in the Extra Features section of An Inconvenient Truth. The US (GM, Ford) lag w-a-y behind other manufacturers for efficiency (mpg). According to Gore, the US cannot sell US vehicles in the growing China market because US vehicles do not meet efficiency standards.

Detroit claims it cannot meet California and Chinese standards for fuel efficiency, while Japan and Germany are already there. This makes Ford-GM claims hollow and people are seeing through the marketing. The Northeast States with California and Oregon have a current case before the US Supreme Court. The combination of air quality and fuel efficiency concerns should make this obvious to Detroit, but Detroit has been at the easy feed trough for too long and does not care to look up.

The Saturn Vue and coming PHEVs will help to drive emissions down and fuel economy up. PZEV product is there and sales are strong. Ford-GM need to stop the marketing hyperbole (the current phase is come in to have your tires checked) and get firmly on the air quality - fuel efficiency effort.

Just as many realtors have told me that "no one cares about energy efficiency", it is the same with vehicles. People are making good personal long-term choices - to European and Japanese vehicles.

 

You should reread the chart on the article you posted.

Nobody here likes Toyota just because they are Japanese. Nobody here dislikes Ford or GM just because they're American.

I can't speak for anyone else on the Board, but I like Toyota because they make damn good cars (as your chart shows). Compared to Toyota, Ford and GM make really bad cars (as your chart shows) which is why I dislike them. If Chevy made a car that was as reliable as your average Toyota and got the mileage of the Prius, I would seriously consider it. But they don't, which is why I drive what I drive today.

Yes, Buick and Cadillac may make more reliable cars, but they also get horrible gas mileage. Plus (reminding you this is just my opinion) they're really ugly. Unlike my Prius.

 

Dr. Edwards Deming pitched his management philosophy to American automakers and was laughed out of their offices. After WW II he took the philosophy to the Japanese auto and tech sectors. Now Japan is light-years ahead of us in auto manufacturing and all other tech sectors except nuclear.

Ford finally sought Deming's help in 1981. The next year the Taurus-Sable line was born, Ford's most profitable line ever. But their winning streak did not last because they reverted from their newfound quality philosophy back to the primitive quantity philosophy to satisfy their short-term greed fix. Even today as the Big 3 are rapidly being phased out they still refuse to incorporate even Deming's most basic principles. Currently, Ford makes more money on parts and service than new car sales... and that's by design.

http://www.deming.org/

GM has the same mindset. They were on the right path when they invented the Saturn line, but before the end of the first year of production they quickly converted from their newfound quality philosophy to a mass quantity philosophy. "Turn out the cars as fast as possible. Screw quality." That's the GM mind set. Remember the plywood floors in the Chevette? Remember the plague of problems with the Fiero? The Fiero was so bad the dealers refused to sell them because they were bogging down their repair shops. Did GM fix the Fiero problem? No. Instead of fixing the problem they closed Fiero plants and laid off workers so the market would not be so heavily flooded with Fieros. They continued making the crap car, just in a smaller, more manageable quantity. For years people died from repeatedly being catapulted out of the Lumina on collision because of faulty seatbelt harness. For years GM refused to acknowledge the defect and fix the problem. That's the GM mindset.

Lee Iacoca turned Chrysler around quickly. Finally, a quality American car. On his first day as the new CEO the workers rolled his new car straight off the line. He refused it and demanded another car still being manufactured in the line. They tried to talk him out of taking a car off the line at random. He knew the handpicked car given to him had special attention. He wanted to see what the average Joe was going to get in the other car coming down the line. It was loaded with defects. Lee didn't last very long in that job. Seems the shareholders wanted their quick-fix profits they were accustomed to being generated from rapid, quantity production and sale of parts and service. Quality was just not providing that fast enough for them.

Yes, one can get 100K or even 150K on an American car but it requires frequent, expensive repairs to do that. Americans once thought that was the norm. "Oh, a car is a very complex device and requires lots of repair over time," they would say. Wrong!!! Japanese build cars to last with minimal repair. American cars, by design, are built to self-destruct in three years unless you pay enough money in repair equal to or more than the cost of a new Japanese car.

The Big 3 relied too long on the notion that we believed it was anti-American to buy foreign cars. Well, the people who believed that are either to old to drive, or died in a rollover or from being thrown from a Lumina. Its too late for the Big 3 now. They are spiraling down the drain. Their only hope is a presidential bail out, which will likely occur a few months before the next election. Its not anti-American to buy a Japanese car. Its anti-American to bend over, grab your ankles, and get screwed by the Big 3.

 

I wanted a hybrid. There were only two to choose from. Both Japanese: Honda and Toyota. Why? Because while Toyota and Honda were putting money into engineering cars that would meet the efficiency standards of the future, GM was putting money into lobbying corrupt lawmakers into lowering those standards.

Four years later, I want an EV. GM had a darn good EV back when I was out of the country, but instead of letting customers buy it, they only leased it, and when the leases were up they took them all back and crushed them. Right now there is no freeway-capable EV you can buy today, but several companies are working on it, and others (including GM) are claiming to be working on it. If the Chevy Volt is the first to hit the dealerships, I will buy one. If a Japanese company is first I'll buy that. Unless I break down and buy one of the high-priced, low-volume, long-waiting-list EVs instead, such as the Tesla or the Tango.

Also, Porkfriedrice, please note that in today's global economy, there is no such thing as an American-made or a Japanese-made car. Both American and Japanese car companies source their parts globally, based on criteria such as price and quality, and assemble their cars globally, based on local wages and the politics of international trade. A car assembled in America has parts from all over the world, and an American name-plate car is as likely to have been assembled overseas as at home. But where the Japanese companies are willing to pay more for quality parts and quality-control in the assembly of cars, accepting a lower profit margin in order to capture market share, and willing to provide the smaller, more-efficient cars that I and many people want, the American companies cut costs to the minimum in order to increase profit margins, and spend the savings on advertising to convince people to buy their inferior cars, and they concentrate on the huge gas-guzzlers that offer more profit per unit. It's a whole different business philosophy.

I want a high-quality car that's efficient and less-polluting, and I'll buy it from whoever sells it. Right now that's only Toyota and Honda, and I judge the Prius to have the edge over the HCH, so for me it's Toyota. GM has the technology to get my business. It just chooses not to build the car I want.

And that's the bottom line: GM has chosen not to build the car I want.

 

As a general reference do not just use one report for making a blanket claim. See
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/ty...rison-index.htm
which depicts a very different story from the one JD Powers show. Basically there are a few GM or FOrd models above average, but the majority of the models listed above average are Toyota or Honda.

The problem with both reports are that they are based on surveys. Thus record people's perception of quality rather than true quality. The problem with using people's perception is that it is based on their expectation. If you expect lower quality you are less likely to make a fuss about it. SImple example is that I owned an expensive BMW and had issuess with a few rattles in the interior (had it fixed, etc), something that wouldn't even bother me in the Prius or economy car as an example. Teh funny part is most folsk that drove with me didn't even notice it and when I pointed them towards ti they said it is nothign and I shouldn't worry about it. Expectation and perception does not exquate true scientific fact.

A more accurate way would be to actually record service statistics for every single vehicle. Even if you just use the ones going through the dealers. but I doubt we will get honest stats from the manufacturers and dealers.

WHat I like about the Consumer reports statistics is that they add weight to serious components like driveline, rather than just reporting total number of faults.

Bottomline is that when GM and Ford are consistently ranked high on these surveys things will change. They also need to make sure their product meets the market demand, currently GM offers no small or midsize sedan I would even consider. At least Ford brought out the Fusion, which looks interesting and I'm sure time will tell how well it does. This was a market they had captured with the Taurus many years agao, but never invested in it again.

Hopefully GM and Ford learn their lesson, in that you can't abondon the volume market. People tend to build brand loyalty to what they are familiar with. Both GM and Ford abandonned the midsize truck market and I believe they will pay the price int he full size market a few years down the line. Go look at a Ranger and S10, then compare it to a Tacoma and Frontier. You will see who invested int heir product and who didn't.

 

No the product isn't there.

I looked.

I went to the Saturn dealership in Nov. 2004 when I started looking for a car. I went there first because I owned a 1996 Saturn SC2 coupe. They didn't carry a coupe anymore. The closest thing they had was an Ion, which I test drove. I didn't like it. It was too big. To me it was a "grandmother" car. Reminded me of something my 70 year old parents would buy. Everything else was bigger or an SUV. They didn't have anything I wanted to buy.

So I went on the internet to see what else was out there.

I wanted high gas mileage. I found...hybrids. I had my choice. Toyota Prius or Honda Insight or Civic.

I found low emissions.

If found a car that comfortably seated five instead of four and had more trunk space than my old Saturn. (That trunk was a joke.)

The highest mpg and lowest emissions was the Insight or the Prius. The Insight seated two. The Prius...five.

So I bought a 2005 Prius in April of 2005.

I also got a car with the most fabulous transmission I've ever driven. I can't believe how solid the door closes compared to my Saturn. And I'm looking forward to avoiding some of the annoying routine maintenance I had to do on my Saturn. Like replacing the engine clips every few years.

And I got a hatchback. That was the clincher. I used to have hatchbacks. I love them. I don't understand why I can't get an American car with a hatchback. (I can't understand why I can't get an American hybrid that's NOT an SUV.)

No. GM did not have the product I was looking for. Toyota did. So that's what I bought.

GM needs to learn to build the product the public wants, not convince the public that it wants what GM is willing to build.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bulldog @ Feb 11 2007, 05:09 PM) [snapback]388648[/snapback]</div>

Excellent point! There's a big difference between a broken cruise-control stalk and a transmission that won't go into reverse. You can hardly count both equally as simply "one fault."

 

Consumer Reports data for American autos is not reliable. Although American autos are consistently rated below Japanese cars those data are not the whole picture. The average American auto buyer does not read, and likely has never heard of, Consumer Reports. Therefore, they do not participate in CR's surveys. If they did the American auto ratings would be much worse than they are.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 09:53 AM) [snapback]388444[/snapback]</div>

I am not sure people here hate GM. I used to very much be a GM person, but the fact of the matter is they are behind the times due to their complacency. In the US, we have a (relatively) free market economy. One thing about free market economies is that they, without government intervention, do not foster mediocraty. The whole point is to eliminate market inefficiencies and GM is just that, inefficient, in a manner of speaking.

Nationalism is utter nonsense, and I refuse to buy an inferior product because it is manufactured by an American company. Besides, GM buys most of its parts overseas and has now outsourced a large chunk of their manufacturing to Mexico.

I am curious as to why an 8th grader holds such a die-hard allegiance to a particular automaker. No offense, but you can't even drive yet. I am not trying to dissuade you from debating others, as I have been a bit argumentative since I was a kid too. Just curious about your allegiance to GM.

 

Not sure why you point to me as bias?? Maybe read your own posts again. You discard CR, but keep quoting JD Powers when it serves your purpose. That smacks of bias. Go through model by model basis (reason why I like CR as an example) adn also the types of issues reported. CR does it in detial, while I found JD Powers does not. That is much more meaningful for a purchasing decision than propganda material send out. As I stated previously both are based on surveys, thus you need to take all that data with a grain of salt. You can't hold one up to preach, while disregarding the other. What you are doing is only showing your bias and ultimately your ignorance in this space. A true scientific study is based on hard facts, not the collection of opinions and then only using what suites your purpose.

I was looking forward to a well thought out argument backed by facts. Unfortunately your posts are long on opinion and very short on facts. You will not be able to convince anybody by this method, you are only exposing your own bias.

Go through the CR data in detail, then go through all the JD Power data in detail. Then come back and tell me again if GM and Ford are in the same quality league as Toyota and Honda.

Go to the CR link and read how they derive their info, then find out how exactly JDP derive their info. That is why one guy on thsi board is trying to capture data in a better way (truedelta). Both of them are less than ideal, but better than nothing. However quote all their info and not just reports that suite you. At least CR actually buys a lot of the cars and tests them, does JDP?

Here is the latest JDP report, drill down to the segments.
http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/rele....asp?ID=2006133

Until you can come back with more fact and less opinion this conversation serves no further purpose to me. I hear enough opinions on a daily basis.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 12 2007, 12:12 AM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

I willingly admit Buicks and Caddys are fine cars, quality-wise. If I had a few billion dollars, I'd buy the Rolls Royce company just so I could market a model as being "the Cadillac of Rolls Royces". I also admit they get such horrible gas mileage that one has to be an idiot to even consider buying one. What do I think of Nissan, etc.? I think they suck, which is why I don't drive one.

I want quality AND good gas mileage. My two choices are Toyota and Honda.

In another thread, I explained I used to drive a Geo Metro. Damn fine car, great gas mileage. When that one died, I immediately went to my Metro dealer to get another one. By this time they were taken over by GM. Still, it looked the same and had the same name, but I took it for a test drive and it was HORRIBLE. EVERYTHING was replaced by cheap plastic, including the engine. Which is why I got a Toyota Echo instead.

If GM made a car with good quality and great MPG, I'd buy it in a second. But they don't so I don't.

 

This is also a long post. Too long apparently for the parser to handle the multiple quotes, so I'll break it into parts.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 11:12 PM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

I'm not going to hold that against you. You've apparently given this more thought than a lot of adults who've bought and sold multiple cars. Altho you must admit you're coming at it with your own bias.

However, you haven't lived thru the 80's, when the Big-3 suffered greatly because of the high price of oil ('79 oil embargo). That's when the Japanese car makers exploded on the scene, before that they were bit players in the marketplace, but they had the small thrifty cars that Americans suddenly wanted, and Detroit did not. We didn't hold Japanese cars in high esteem then (I think that's when the term 'econobox' was invented), but we bought their cars because it was the right kind of car for the time. Detroit learned their lesson the hard way (bailout of Chrysler comes to mind). Now it looks like they've forgotten it entirely, and are repeating that lesson. It's not up to the American people to overlook their lack of foresight. The age of SUVs is rapidly coming to an end, for a couple reasons, and they need to come to grips on that.

Also, you need to remember your audience here at PriusChat. We want an efficient vehicle that is practical, well-priced and reliable. That trumps brand loyalty for many of us, probably most of us. This is the first Toyota I've owned. I've always been a bit of a Ford fan, but they don't have the kind of vehicle I want. I'm not even a big fan of the Prius shape, but the rest of the car is so much what I want, I was willing to overlook that. I've waited decades for a car that got better than 40 mpg (without diesel). My 1987 Nissan Sentra approached that.

That may be true, altho I'm not sure where you got the 83% figure from. (And I got a little confused as to the point of the outsourcing sentences). All I know is if I want to buy a car with good mileage, I might look at the Pontiac Vibe, but that's a twin of the Toyota Matrix, so who get's the money there? The Chevy Aveo is simply a rebranded Daewoo built in S.Korea. Maybe a big American vehicle is more likely to be all-American? Well, the Ford Explorer is built on a Mazda platform with a Mazda Duratec engine. So just looking at vehicles by brand name is not a guarantee of who made it, where it was made, or where the wages and profits go. It's better to look at it model by model.

Are you saying the Japanese do not reinvest in our country? Every Japanese company has American factories (the Camry is being made on an extra line in the Subaru factory in Kentucky, because Toyota's American manufacturing plants are maxed out). Many foreign car companies have design studios in California (which is where the Prius had some initial design work done). Toyota is expanding their engineering base in Detroit, hiring workers being laid off by the Big-3.

Yes. those are nice cars. Still not ones I would buy for myself however. The Malibu was supposed to have a hybrid option starting in 2007, but I haven't heard anything official on this lately, so it doesn't look like that's happening. GM's hybrid option only adds 25% to the fuel efficiency anyway, not approx. 75% like Toyota can do.

Holy smokes! Did they say that? What about the billion+ dollars they spent on hydrogen fuel-cell technology? What kind of money-making prospects did that bring in for them? I lost my shirt in the fuel-cell stocks (figuratively, I only invested money I could afford to lose), because I thought no way would big car companies spend that much money on fuel-cell technology if it was really over a decade away like so many people were saying. Well, it turns out the outside experts were right, and GM and Ford were wrong. I still don't know why they did it.

Dig deeper, this has happened to all car companies. Think of how hard Ford tried to blame their SUV roll-over problem on Goodyear (they had a case there, but SUVs are prone to roll-overs, and they could have admitted at least partial complicitly rather than being drug by their noses into it).

Well, this is a whole 'nother thread, but I'll give it a paragraph: The Earth does have normal cooling and heating, but we're knocking it up a couple degrees. CO2 levels have increased 50%, higher than they've been in the last 1/2 million years, and we've done it in the blink of an eye, geologically speaking. We're still in the normal temperature range, but it's been going up and natural events won't stop it. You have the most to lose, since you'll be living in it longer than most of us. The "global cooling" was something that the media briefly played around with (Time magazine, etc.) due to a short-term trend, not the serious science journals. Global warming was a serious concern even then. Soylent Green was made in the 70's and is based on a future affected by global warming, just as an easy reference to the point that the idea was around even then.
Not sure what you mean that humans cause 1/20th of air pollution. Do you mean global-warming gases? Otherwise it's much higher than that. We also raise the cows that give off methane (which largely could be collected from the manure piles and used as a fuel for electricity production, if we wanted to - some ethanol plants are doing just that). But also we cut down tropical forests (carbon sinks) to raise cattle, and in the states we raise cattle on feedlots where we have to truck in (using petroleum) corn to feed them which is raised using petroleum-based herbicides and fertilizers. So we're definitely responsible for the cow's emissions and then some. Okay, that's two paragraphs.

For an added reason for efficiency, beyond the above GWG concerns and health effects such as increased asthma rates, you might want to read up on peak oil. You will be living that as well at some point in your adult life, guaranteed (unless a sizable fraction dies from a pandemic first, or global warming convinces the world to impose very strict limits on fossil fuel usage).


Part II of reply.

Yes, we are waiting for the Volt. We've been waiting a long time for some good news to come from Chevy, and we'll buy it if they make it practical, economical and reliable. (Yes, some may not buy it just because it comes from GM, but those people are very limited in number, certainly not the average American consumer).
Why is it unfair to use the Prius as an example??
That's the whole point! GM or another American company could have made something like that much sooner had they put the effort into it. Clinton had a program that he enrolled the American companies in, called the Partnership for Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV). The goal was to produce a vehicle capable of 80 mpg, could hold a family of four, and could be economically produced. Our U.S. government put millions of tax dollars into this research. Toyota got worried, tried to enter this program but was denied, so they went ahead and made their own hybrid, as did Honda. Bush came into office, disbanded PNGV in favor of his fuel-cell pie-in-the-sky program that will never produce an economically-viable vehicle, and the Big-3 tried to forget everything they learned about high-mpg cars.

That hits close to home. I worked at Zenith for a number of years. They sued several overseas (Japanese and Korean) companies for illegally dumping TV sets at below-cost to gain market share. Eventually the remains of the company was bought by the South Korean conglomerate LG (Lucky Goldstar, to the old-timers here), and there's a very small R&D center still existing in the far north suburbs of Chicago. But Zenith also made plenty of mistakes and went thru a succession of CEOs who tried various tactics to turn things around. They almost made their niche in cable set-top boxes, owned something like 80% of the U.S. market at one point, then abandoned it because they thought digital was next and they had to be ready. Turned out they came in too soon and the market (and the product) wasn't ready yet. They have other stories like that. But what's the point? The point is, some companies acted illegally, and Zenith made several costly mistakes. I don't think the foreign car companies are acting illegally by selling well-made cars at a good price that still brings them a profit. That's just called capitalism.

But they did. They were both bigger than Toyota, they had government funding much of the R&D. And as mentioned above, GM spent over a billion dollars chasing a fool's dream with the hydrogen fuel-cell. Toyota now makes a profit on their hybrids, otherwise they wouldn't be so eager to expand it to all their product lines, as they have stated is their goal. I don't think they're in it for the good of mankind.

Completely agree. But you've been trying hard to disprove just that, IMO. I know there's no love lost from the Chinese regarding Japan, I hope that's not your motivation.

You've definitely got a point there. But remember the U.S. bailed out Chrysler from bankruptcy, and that took a lot of dollars. We've done some R&D projects to help our companies, but like our other industries, they're supposed to compete on the basis of capitalism. Not rely on some misguided approach of patriotism.

Bottom line - in the absence of a good American car with the qualities I want, I choose to send my money (at least partly) to Japan instead of OPEC.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 12 2007, 12:12 AM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

When I bought my SC2 coupe Saturn was an autonomous department, independent of GM.

When I went to shop for a car in 2004 it had been assimilated and was being run by GM. You may call it modeled on Opel/Vauxhall and also call it successful. I'm telling you that as a customer they had nothing I was interested in. And I didn't care for the design, size or function of any of the cars nor the quality of the Ion I test drove.

BTW you'll make a great Republican when you grow up.

 

I think you need to work on your own bias and your own research skills. Try using the Big 6.

Consumer Reports.

"Consumer Reports® and ConsumerReports.org® are published by Consumers Union, an expert, independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves. To achieve this mission, we test, inform, and protect. To maintain our independence and impartiality, CU accepts no outside advertising, no free test samples, and has no agenda other than the interests of consumers. CU supports itself through the sale of our information products and services, individual contributions, and a few noncommercial grants. Consumers Union is governed by a board of 18 directors, who are elected by CU members and meet three times a year. CU's President, James Guest, oversees a staff of more than 450.

How we test

Our National Testing and Research Center, in Yonkers, N.Y., is the largest nonprofit educational and consumer product testing center in the world. We buy all the products we use as test samples. We receive no special treatment. We accept no free samples. If a manufacturer sends us a free product, we return it.

More than 100 testing experts work in seven major technical departments--appliances, auto test, baby & child, electronics, foods, health & family, and recreation & home improvement, while more than 25 research experts work in three departments--product acquisition, product information, and statistics & quality management. In addition, we have more than 150 anonymous shoppers throughout the country. We test cars and trucks at our fully equipped auto-test facility in East Haddam, Conn. We also survey our millions of readers to bring you information on the reliability of hundreds of auto models and of major products such as appliances and electronic gear. Reader-survey data also help us rate insurance and other consumer services.

How we inform

Consumer Reports magazine alone has about 4 million subscribers. We reach millions more consumers through ConsumerReports.org, our CR Money Adviser newsletter, our health newsletter and Web site www.consumerreportsonhealth.org , radio programs, television programs, auto price services, and New Car Buying Kit. For more information, see Our products.

How we protect

Your safety is a priority. Our research and testing uncovered dangers that led to the Flammable Fabrics Act, the Child Protection and Toy Safety Act, and many product recalls, government standards, and regulations. Check Recalls on this site to learn of hazardous consumer products. All product safety-related reports are free to all site visitors.

Consumers Union operates three Advocacy offices--in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, and San Francisco--that work on consumers' behalf on such issues as health care, food safety, financial services, and product safety. They testify before Federal and state legislative and regulatory bodies, petition government agencies, and file lawsuits on behalf of consumers. The Consumer Policy Institute, at CU's Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters, conducts research and education projects on issues of importance to consumers such as biotechnology, food safety and labeling, recycling, and sustainable consumption. For more information, see ConsumersUnion.org and in Spanish, PoderdelConsumidor.org ."

J. D. Powers

J. D. Power works off consumer surveys. It's a marketing company.

"Established in 1968, J.D. Power and Associates is a global marketing information firm that conducts independent and unbiased surveys of customer satisfaction, product quality and buyer behavior. Today, the firm’s services include industry-wide syndicated studies; proprietary (commissioned) tracking studies; media studies; forecasting; and training services, as well as business operations analyses, and consultancies on customer satisfaction trends. On April 1, 2005, J.D. Power and Associates became a business unit of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
J.D. Power and Associates is best known for its work in the automotive industry. However, in recent years, the firm has expanded to serve a number of other industries including telecommunications, travel and hotels, marine, utilities, healthcare, homebuilder, consumer electronics and financial services.

The firm has also expanded internationally, bringing the language of customer satisfaction to consumers and businesses in India, Japan, Taiwan, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France.

J.D. Power and Associates includes more than 750 professional analysts, statisticians, economists, consultants, experts in demographics and consumer behavior, and administrative support personnel. Headquartered in Westlake Village, California, a suburb north of Los Angeles, the firm has five U.S. offices and international locations serving Canada, the United Kingdom/Europe and the Asia Pacific region. J.D. Power III is the founder and Stephen C. Goodall is the president"

I'll take Consumer Reports over J. D. Powers any day.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 12 2007, 02:36 AM) [snapback]388786[/snapback]</div>

In California the Prius hybrid system is warranteed for 10 years or 150,000 miles.

There is a cab in Canada that has over 250,000 miles on it.

Are you this sloppy with your homework?

 

Dang! I was hoping the original post was the first sign that Danny reinstated the [you] code.
No such luck. My SPE handle really is the third word.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 11:36 PM) [snapback]388786[/snapback]</div>

We promise not to mention the GM Volt as some type of testimony toward GM's engineering prowess until GM actually starts mass production. Until then, the GM Volt is nothing more than vaporware.

GM shot ahead of the curve with the EV1 . . . then they just shot the EV1s.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 09:12 PM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

Every product ever produced is more expensive to make at the beginning than its purchase price. Let's say you invest $10,000 to design a toaster, and your first production run of 100 toasters sells for $25 each. You lose money. But you haven't really "lost" money. You've invested in R&D, which will pay off if your toaster is a commercial success. You took a risk that people will like your new design.

Toyota invested a lot of money in R&D to develop its hybrid design, so that "at first" it appeared to a non-economist to "lose" money. In fact, it took a risk. Now it's making a nice profit on the Prius, even though the sticker price has not increased more than inflation.

And, by the way, this was not a "little know[n] fact." If you'd been here on Prius Chat in 2004 you'd have seen long threads discussing the question at great length.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 09:12 PM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

And yet they have the money to throw away on a dead-end technology like hydrogen fuel cells. Note that fuel cells do nothing to solve the energy crisis, because hydrogen is just a carrier of energy, not a source. If you have electricity to make hydrogen, you can run cars directly from electricity, and you don't need hydrogen or expensive fuel cells; if you have hydrogen, you can burn it in a heat engine (internal or external combustion) and you don't need fuel cells.

Fuel cells themselves are outrageously expensive. GM is promoting them precisely to forestall realistic technologies.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 09:12 PM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

Very convenient: Just like fuel cells, GM announces a car that cannot be built. Companies like Tesla and Tango are building EVs now, but because of their small size and small capitalization, they can only make small quantities and therefore can only enter the high-performance specialty market. GM, with its economy of scale, could mass-produce the Volt now if it wanted to. It would have around a 250-mile range on a 5-hour charge, or a 200-mile range on a 2-hour charge and would cost more than an econobox, but the market is there, since this range would satisfy many families as their city car.

But GM does not want to sell an EV, what GM really wants to do is announce to the world that EV technology is not ready yet. "We have the car, and we'll sell it as soon as the technology is available." But that's a lie. The technology is here today.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(porkfriedrice @ Feb 11 2007, 09:12 PM) [snapback]388745[/snapback]</div>

Not sure what you mean by this.

Elsewhere in your post you ask why Americans won't consider American cars. But this is because your horizon is limited by your age. My first car was American-made and it was junk from the day I drove it off the lot, and the service was lousy, and it took forever to get parts for it. It often left me stranded in rural North Dakota (where I lived at the time) and repair times were so long that I was without transportation for long periods. You see, like you, I favored American companies when I was young. But the American companies let me down. They claim to have changed. Wife-beaters make the same claim. A man who hits his wife once will hit her again. The American companies have abused their customers, and you cannot blame those customers if we mistrust their claims to have changed.

My second car was Japanese, and it never once left me stranded. When things needed replacement on regular maintenance schedule, the repairs were done quickly as parts were quickly available.

Once burned, twice shy.

But I repeat what I said earlier: I'm looking forward, and I want an EV. First one to the gate gets my business. GM has the technology to build that car, and I will buy a GM if they are first with the car I want. I'm not prejudiced against them. I'm just angry they won't build the car I want. In 2004 I wanted a hybrid and there was no American hybrid. Just three hybrids were on the market, from two companies, both Japanese. GM could have built a hybrid. GM did and does have the money for R&D. They chose not to, and they still choose not to.