http://www.eptrail.com/pages/02friday_m/fri06comm.html

This is a good but rarely asked question. The average profit margin for most oil companies is < 10%. That is low for any industry, and unusually low for an industry as risky as oil. US oil companies were loosing massive amounts of money just 10 years ago. The industries current profits still haven’t made up for those losses. It is the size of the oil industry that allows people to criticise the oil industry’s profits. The oil industry is one of the largest industries if not the largest in the US. An exxon profit of 29 billion doesn’t look so sweet when compaired with an investment of 236 billion. But, if you have a political agenda, 29 billion is all you mention.
exxon’s most recent sec filing can be found here:
http://www.secinfo.com/d1197.u4n.htm#1stPage

Still, I support a heavy tax on oil companies, and tarrifs on cisco, then using that money to fund the technologies like the volt that have the potential to get us off of oil. Yes, I know it would ultimately be paid for at the pump. However, the people would never support a direct tax at the pump. Fortunately, they are too dumb to understand a tax on oil companies amounts to the same thing. I support this tax because we need to move hard, really hard, to get off of oil.

Well like it or not, the Volt, if implemented, will have profound geopolitical implicatons. For a long time I wanted to focus on the technical details and felt that the political comments were clutter. Now I guess that I am one of the worst offenders!

I have come to believe that it is productive for the cause of the Volt for us to put forward as strongly as possible its potential to change the oil centered international game. Never mind that probably less than one in 10 of the cars I saw on the freeway this morning were made by US companies. God send that the Volt will be a leader in changing that sorry equation too

73 MetrologyFirst:

I could not agree more. Hey, if they could do it for Toyota and Honda they ought to be able to do it for GM. If we don’t figure out how to protect our jobs and our people’s standard of living, we are in grave danger of becoming a second world nation within the lifetimes of our grandchildren.

And yes, that does have everything to do with the Volt.
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“The amount of the credit is a $2,000 base plus $400 for each kilowatt hour of traction battery pack capacity in excess of 2.5 kWh, with a cap of $7,500 for passenger vehicles of up to 10,000 pounds. A GEM (gasoline-ethanol-methanol) flex-fuel plug-in or a plug-in vehicle warranted by its manufacturer to run on biodiesel receives an extra $150.”

Proposed by Cantwell(D), Hatch(R), and Obama(D) in a bipartisan effort. Yes, that Obama. Would’ve given the Volt $7650 in tax credit. Obviously ended up on the Congressional cutting room floor. Not too dissimilar to what has just been passed by the House except that the new incarnation gives more up front for ANY PHEV whereas the older Senate version made more of it earnable with higher battery capacity.

One suspects that the next President will sign a tax credit for PHEV and EREVs into law long before the Volt is out. And in case you think that I am assuming an Obama victory please this from McCain – http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/news/Speeches/13bc1d97-4ca5-49dd-9805-1297872571ed.htm

“I’ll work to promote real partnerships between utilities and automakers to accelerate the deployment of plug-in hybrids.

With some of the savings from cutting subsidies for industries that can stand on their own, we can establish a national challenge to improve the cost, range, size, and weight of electric batteries for automobiles.”

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I find myself agreeing with you. There was a comment that if the government gave a tax deduction, then the “evil” GM would just raise prices by the same amount. On second thought, the point that competition with other car companies will prevent this makes huge sense. I just get so tired of seeing every technical advance or breakthrough met with unbounded pessimism. This is not a space for politics, but one for encouraging ourselves and GM on to success in the electromotive automobile business.

Thanks again MetrologyFirst.

Andy

My concern is how the purpose of being a great resource for Volt has become overrun with clutter … What kind of impression does this make when someone does a search on Volt and discovers this website? … The answer is they get turned off and leave, never to return. Some websites ban volatile topics (like politics) for this very reason. Sorry, but that’s the reality of the situation.

I totally agree with you … I first discovered this site early last fall, and have been checking it daily since December. In the past month or so there seems to be a lot more volatility in the discussions. I suggest that Lyle limits potentially contentious issues to one blog posting a week. That way, the other six postings can focus on technical discussions, news, advancements, etc. regarding the one thing that we can all agree on – that we want to see the Chevy Volt in production!