I wish I could agree with you, but I don’t.

If GM had attempted to leap frog Toyota 10 years ago, when Toyota was first rolling out Priuses, it would be a viable business model today. Unfortunately, what took place at GM is typical of what takes place at many large bureaucratic institutions: an awful lot of red tape, the usual dose of 20/20 hindsight, and slow or no responsiveness or vision leading forward.

I find your claim that a company like Tesla would use off-the-shelf components without pushing the technological envelope very interesting: are we to assume, therefore, that Tesla is building BEVs with 100, 200, and 300 mile ranges with off-the-shelf components? If so, that harms your case, rather than strengthening it. In this case, GM should have been able to do the same — and didn’t.

With regard to the hundreds of thousands of people who still have their high priced, unproductive positions thanks to the government bailout, please consider the hundreds of millions of productive taxpayers who will be paying interest (and/or inflation) on those handouts for years if not decades to come. You cannot make an unproductive organization competitive by throwing money at it. Instead, what is needed is a fundamental market correction, and if the goal is to have those hundreds of thousands of people earning their salaries and contributing, the market correction needs to be allowed to occur.

Finally, you did not address my point that in a true market correction, Voltec and other technology (if viable) would be purchased by someone better prepared and equipped to bring it to market. GM’s plan to make 10,000 units per year and lose money on Generation 1 is indicative of a lack of confidence, along with other issues I have already pointed to. Again, if GM were a game-changing corporation, it wouldn’t have dug itself into this mess.

While I disagree that it is productive or beneficial for the taxpayer to try to dig it back out again, I hope that I am wrong, at least regarding the worst of probable consequences.

Respectfully,

Dr. Ibringdoh

Everyone here was warned this was coming. 30% of the USA have vowed to not buy cars from GM/Chrysler while the government owns them.
With Hyundai and Ford surging against Toyota and Honda, GM looks doomed. Insiders at Chrysler already knew they were doomed and had no plans past 2012 at the point when they should have been designing for 2014, but our lousy politicians put them on life support anyway.
I feel bad for GM. They should have said no to government money and looked for outside financing or a buyout. After seeing Penske step forward to save Saturn, he might have bought most of GM too. Maybe he still will, but by then it might be too late.