a paradigm shift ....warning..not skate related (at first glance!)

[skategeezer]

Imagine being in Detroit in 1960 something...
"there's no market for these small rustbuckets"

then fast forward to the 70's...
"we will continue down our proven path"

then to the 80's and 90's
"customers want BIG...we will continue to give them BIG!

and now....this announcement



General Motors boss Rick Wagoner insists the US company will not give up its position as the world's top automaker without a fight.

Speaking ahead of this weekend's press opening of the North American International Auto Show, the GM chairman and chief executive said he was well aware of the seemingly unstoppable threat posed by Japan's Toyota.

"I like being number one, and I think our people take pride in it. So it's not something we're going to sit back and let somebody else pass us," Wagoner told reporters on Friday.
"We're going to have to fight for every sale and do it in way that is consistent with building the enterprise," he said.
"If as a result of that we get passed, it won't be a happy day for me. But I've lost basketball games before, and as a result of that you get ready, you learn and go back and play the next day," said Wagoner, who played college basketball at North Carolina's Duke University in the early 1970s.

"We're going to fight to keep the position, and if we lose, we're going to fight to get it back."
Last month, Toyota said it planned to make 9.42 million vehicles worldwide this year. That would exceed the 9.18 million GM expected to have made in 2006. This year, GM's production looks likely to fall with the company, like its Detroit rival Ford, laying off thousands of workers and shuttering plants.

[EBasil]

Michael, you just don't get it, do you? Imports are ruining our sport and aren't core. Toyota killed the K-Car, and true North American Patriots will never forgive them...

[dkj]

That new Camaro looks boss.
-

[Mile_High_Mark]

That new Camaro looks boss.
-

Indeed. Although having worked indirectly with the US auto industry, I can't say I'd be willing to throw my ducats their way.

[dkj]

Indeed. Although having worked indirectly with the US auto industry, I can't say I'd be willing to throw my ducats their way.

Wait'll you drive their cars, it gets even worse! 8)
-

[Skinart]

The same attitude all but killed Moog and did kill Arp in the 80's. They stopped innovating and
Roland, Korg and Yamaha etc, just took over with exciting offerings like the M1 and the DX7,
and a bunch of other stuff in-between.

[HerBDerb]

Eh, doesn't bother me. I highly dislike a good 95% of modern cars anyway.

[wefunk]

[Xgecko]

Well the big problem in the USA is that oil company politics force the auto industry to stay with gas while the rest of the world builds diesel. My personal car/suv is a Liberty CRD and at the moment I'm rocking an A4 AvantiTDI (rental) down in Cadiz but until the US gets in line with the rest of the world and drives diesel their auto industry is gonna continue to crash. DC is the only one that seems to be stable and that do to MB and Detroit Diesel.

[EBasil]

[chicagolongboards]

I thought that the diesel fuel sold in the USA isn't as clean as it is in Europe, and that was why the cars running on it here aren't as clean as their European counterparts.

[wefunk]

[wefunk]

[Xgecko]

[dkj]

But another reason is that soo many of the independent refinery's were bought up and closed down by US big oil in the last decade that there are fewer plants doing the job and a bigger demand for the fuel. E85 is also huge money maker for the oil companies because it promotes worse mileage than gas. So people will burn more and therefore buy more. Fuel efficiency isn't in their best interest anyway but when the government mandates an inferior fuel well they just rake in the money.

The switchover to low-sulfur diesel is finally happening. The problem isn't so much the oil companies as it is the trucking industry. Older diesel truck engines actually depend on the high sulfur content for valve lubrication and injector lubrication. The newer engines emmision systems get clogged on the old fuel. As a result both fuels are required to be available during the truck engine switchover. The new fuel is starting to show up at truck stops even as we speak. I've got to think the logistics of all this will be a nightmare but we eventually will be seeing as many diesel passenger cars here as in Europe.

Ethanol is a scam. It pollutes less because it weighs less. You simply don't burn as much hydrocarbon because there isn't as much in a gallon of alcohol as there are in a gallon of gasoline. The laws of physics aren't repealed by ethanol. Your fuel mileage goes down so you end up creating the same amount of CO2 per mile.

The same goes for what the morons on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) call "zero" emission cars. In fact, a battery powered electric car currently will produce a significant amount of detrimental emmisions. Follow your extension cord back and you get a 30% loss of efficiency over the power grid from the generator which is more often than not burning natural gas, oil, or coal.

I do agree with the director of Greenpeace that electrics are the answer to auto pollution though: As long as they are hooked up to a nuclear power plant.
-

[worldridr768]

theres a sick electric sports car that this guy created called the Tesla. look it up on google. It's a very very very nice looking car. but i believe that its 80 grand just to reserve one.

[SpookTheHamster]

Electric cars and hybrid cars aren't the solution.

Sure, they might not use as much petrol (none in the case of full electric) but all those batteries have to come from somewhere, and they have to go somewhere as well when the car is scrapped. They're full of unfriendly chemicals that need to be removed, and they take a lot of extra material to manufacture.

Then there's the argument that they simply move the burning of fossil fuels to the power stations, this is true, but the power stations are much more efficient than an ICE will ever be.

[oldnbroken]

I love Austin Texas but people here pretend none of this is going on at all.
Every woman who has kids drives a Chevy Suburban, Expedition, Armada, Hummer super giant gas powered wagon to do 150 miles worth of errands every day.
The bubba's drive dual axle, 4 door extended cab, extended bed pick up trucks with really loud diesels and pipes that stick up past the cab and spew clouds of black smoke like a tractor trailer.
The high tech company employee population seems to own a Boxter, Audi A6, Lexus, Infinity, Ferrari, Hot Rod Mustang, Mercedes convertable, and expensive Harley Davidson or BMW motorcycles.
The hippies (my kids) and students are in the 30 year old beaters with no emissions controls.
Gas is relatively cheap compared to other places (but still expensive) so that doesn't seem to be a deterrant.
So we are certainly not doing our part to help the problem here in Texas but we don't seem to give a rat's as.s.

Also, recycling here is a complete joke and again we don't seem to care.
My garbage men take the recycling bin and dump it into the garbage truck 50% of the time.
I think the company contracted to collect garbage is understaffed so they don't send out the recycling truck half the time.
But that is a different rant for another thread.

Otherwise, I love it here !!

[dkj]

but the power stations are much more efficient than an ICE will ever be.

Well, some power stations are ICE. Gas turbines (jets) are a type of internal combustion engine.

Unfortunately power stations pollute a lot, in fact coal and oil fired plants generally produce more carcinogens per amount of power produced than do modern automobiles. On a bad smog day in Los Angeles, a Honda Civic emits less nitrogen oxides at the tailpipe than it pulls through the intake.


As for the 20% efficiency ratio, Last year MIT engineers developed a turbocharged, very high compression (30:1), four stroke automobile engine that achieves a thermal efficiency of 40% on gasoline. It has an auxiliary tank of ethanol and very sophisticated computer controls which directly inject a small amount of ethanol into the combustion chamber whenever the system detects incipient detonation (the long-standing bugaboo of ultra-high compression gasoline engines.) Overall gasoline to ethanol consumption ratio is about 20 to 1.

Nuclear generated electric cars are however, inevitable. The oil is running out and there just won't be enough of it no matter how efficiently we can burn it. Pebble bed reactors are totally safe and can be easily situated wherever there is a current generating plant. Nuclear power can also provide a cheap and unlimited source of hydrogen for fuel cells.
-

[SpookTheHamster]

Well, some power stations are ICE. Gas turbines (jets) are a type of internal combustion engine.

But does your car run at it's most efficient RPM constantly?

As for nuclear power, it's amazing apart from the small problem of spent fuel.