Car sales plummet

[Kgal]

When I consider that the '96 Buick LeSabre we owned would get 30- 31 mpg on long road trips loaded down with luggage, Wife, kid & 2 dogs, the Smart car doesn't look all that great in comparison.

Exactly!!!! The US congress passed laws 30 or more years ago to try to legislate the american auto industry in to making more effecient automobiles. It was well known we were heading for total dependence upon oil that we did not and DO NOT have in this country.
As ususal - tho - congress had no balls - and would not stand up to the corporatations and greed that control each and every one of us. The auto makers cried and cried that it would cost them too much money in capital to build new plants and introduce new ideas. Oh - they played at it. Good lord we've had teasers about electric cars and effecient engines for the whole time. But what do we see? What do they produce instead????

Gas guzzling SUVs the size of small tractor trailers with one driver.... Makes me so mad - for a million reasons....

And then the Bush administration passed a tax incentive to encourage small business owners to buy them!!!

Sigh.

Thanks for the rant soapbox.

Shai Gar is right. There would be no loss of jobs if management would just open up their blankety blank pockets and let the employees go creative. Researchers, supervisors, and the lowest broom pusher could collaborate to bring the American auto industry back from the edge.

They won't tho - they're too damn greedy. And the American congress allows it because they get PAID to do so...

Ok - I'll shut up.

 

[~jet]

Gas guzzling SUVs the size of small tractor trailers with one driver.... Makes me so mad - for a million reasons....

AGREE. In terms of congress, it's not so much no-balls but that our election system requires giant sums of money to be 'recognizable' by the public (the single largest factor in just about any/every study done on the subject.) thanks to corporate media. In other words, the [nearly] only way a person can win these days is to sell out. I think the figure is roughly this. Your average senator has to earn $30,000 a day for their entire term to afford their next election campaign. That's a ton of pressure, and when all the money is going out of the middle class, all that pressure is going to come, instead, from the people who HAVE money... i.e., corps.

I don't know that there is any solution except for the public to simply abandon the current economy in favor of a more localized new economy in which the major international corps have no place. Maybe it costs more to buy local; but that also means the money/labor is staying in your neighborhood which increases your odds at getting that job and earning that much in which case you can afford to buy local.

*hugs the soap box*

Seriously, though... i care about this because I don't think we'll survive otherwise.

 

[Bird]

A contributing factor to the decline in car sales is concerns with safety issues with a lot of car brands as of late.

 

[MindYourHead]

Vehicles also last much longer than they did 25 years ago.
They don't rust as badly and are far more reliable.
It is not uncommon to see cars with 200,000-300,000 miles on them and still running strong. Mine has 204,000 and is perfectly fine.
It doesn't make economic sense to trade in a 3-5 year old car that is most likely paid for, in for a new one with payments these days.

I'm a car guy. I love the sound of a big high compression V8. The smell of high octane leaded premium gas.
I am all for Hybrid technology though. It's coming along.
I'd like them to do more with developing vehicles that use Hydrogen fuel cells since the batteries used in hybrids today aren't very green themselves.
And a car that gets plugged into the power grid is just polluting in an indirect way.

 

[~jet]

And a car that gets plugged into the power grid is just polluting in an indirect way.

True, just not nearly as much... an electric burning coal is still putting less emissions into the air than a car burning gas (by most studies to date, anyways, of which there are dozens.) And not all electricity comes from coal. I grew up in places where electricity was dominated by wind and hydro electric and you had to go out of your way to find even a natural gas plant (which, guys, IS still a fossil fuel, dammit... doesn't matter if it's 'clean' or not, it's still releasing megatons of carbon that was previously sequestered from the equation that raised us (and everything we live with and rely on) as a specie.)

You may be interested to hear that Porsche has approved production of a hybrid v8 that's supposed to wrangle about 70mpg while being badass.

 

[Zero Angel]

Agreed. However power that is mass-produced from a central location is probably far more effective and less polluting than introducing that power on-demand by burning gasoline. A nuclear power plant probably has the highest power to pollution ratio compared to coal -- and even coal probably produces less emissions (per mile) compared to gasoline and is probably cheaper (per mile) than gas, even after distribution costs are factored in.

Think of how much gas you would need to feed into a gas-generator to power your household, and you have an idea of what I am talking about (both in cost and pollution). The cost of gasoline is simply exorbitant