It would just be too sad to lose my Volt at this stage.

My opinion is that help with auto financing will happen, just as it will with aircraft, and soon, because it is the only part of the situation in each case that is fairly cleanly authorized under the $700B bailout program passed by congress. Whether it will happen through GMAC or some other banking mechanism I have no idea, but it seems to be what the federal reserve intends, and what they intend usually happens, insofar as US banking is concerned. (As you know, there is a saying in US finance “never fight the fed”.) In fact, it seems to be the case that it is not hard to get an auto financed today, for a person who has a good credit history.

Whether anything happens to help GM beyond that is the big question mark in my mind. It is my impression that it will, because it is favored by Obama, it seems, but just what or how much remains unclear (to me at least )

Statik could probably cost out bailing out leasing and funding for Boeing but it seems the 630 Billion (after exec pay) won’t be enough for Boeing and GM et al financing.

I hope so too, but my heart tells me Statik will be proved right. I just hope the Volt makes it through C11. It seems to me this site will be more important than Lyle ever imagined in his most wild dreams.

It may be that the attention being given to banks and lending help remedy the Boeing problems by make the financing more readily available. I think that’s the intention, at least, and it may work.

I’m going to hope so, at least

Thank you for the additional data and comments.

Accepting statik’s numbers, which to me seem realistic, we have a kind of a guideline. If the feds commit $75B to GM, that gives the company a couple of years of life. From the viewpoint here, we get to see some Volts, so that’s good. As Tom H said, that’s not long enough for the Volt or other E-REVs to have much of an effect financially, though once EREV cars are real it may change people’s outlook about them (assuming they like what they see).

What 2 years might do, possibly, is to extend GM’s lifetime long enough that they can restructure internally, get into a more favorable financing time period for auto sales, and with good luck have a very good sales year during 2010. Maybe by then the prospects for E-REV look good enough that somebody (not me) would like to make a further investment in GM, or they will have a better environment to sell off parts of the company. Of course, with bad luck, by 2010 they are just back in the same place they are now, after $75B of taxpayer $ has gone down the tubes.