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Thread: Trump says GM shift to electric vehicles is 'not going to work'

  1. #1

    Trump says GM shift to electric vehicles is 'not going to work'

    President Donald Trump on Thursday said General Motors Co's <GM.N> decision to shift much of its focus to electric vehicles will not succeed, and he asserted a new trade deal will make it harder for the company to move work to other countries.GM last year said it planned to launch 20 new electric vehicles by 2023 as it faces rising regulatory requirements for zero-emission vehicles in China and elsewhere.
    The largest U.S. automaker has come under enormous criticism in Washington after it announced on Nov. 26 plans to close four plants in the United States and cut up to 15,000 jobs in North America.
    Trump questioned GM CEO Mary Barra's business strategy in an interview with Fox News.
    "They've changed the whole model of General Motors. They've gone to all-electric. All-electric is not going to work ... It's wonderful to have it as a percentage of your cars, but going into this model that she's doing I think is a mistake," Trump said.

    More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump...--finance.html
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  3. #2
    Trump is right , nobody wants that junk .
    Do something Danke

  4. #3
    Um GM has not gone "all electric". It may be a future goal for them, but they have not gone all electric yet. But either way, should the government tell a company what they should or should not produce? He declared he is in charge of of Ohio so I guess he can. https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4...ounced-layoffs

    "It doesn’t really matter because Ohio is under my leadership from a national standpoint," Trump said in an interview with Fox News. "Ohio’s going to replace those jobs like in two minutes."
    Is GM "all electric"? From March:

    https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/...ra-speech.html

    While we are growing our electric fleet, we are also pushing the boundaries of engineering to improve fuel efficiency throughout our vehicle portfolio.

    For example, we know truck buyers are very passionate about their pickups. Our all-new, full-size Chevrolet and GMC pickups that go on sale this year are larger yet lighter than those they replace because our mixed materials strategy trims 450 pounds while retaining the body structure customers value.

    In addition to the weight reduction, we will boost their efficiency through improved aerodynamics and industry-first engine management technology.

    But make no mistake, even as we deliver the best-ever fuel economy in the vehicles our customers love to drive today, we continue to make progress toward a future with zero emissions.

  5. #4
    Hey trump, how about cancelling those CAFE updates for 2025 then? That's what the root cause is ya tool.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    But either way, should the government tell a company what they should or should not produce?
    What?

    Seriously...what the $#@! kind of disinformation is this?

    There is nothing, I repeat nothing, on a modern car, outside of, perhaps, the stereo system, that does not have to comply with, or is part of system to achieve compliance with, government mandates, edicts, fatwas, orders, directives, laws and codes.

    Seats, tires, engines, drivetrains, glass, windows, roofs, bumpers, suspension, brakes, materials...all have regulations and mandates set by Uncle Sucker.

    Every car and light truck today is a product of trying to cobble together something that achieves compliance, yet is still somewhat marketable.
    Last edited by Anti Federalist; 12-13-2018 at 08:00 PM.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    Hey trump, how about cancelling those CAFE updates for 2025 then? That's what the root cause is ya tool.
    He may.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    He may.
    I saw that Angelatc tweeted that at him a week or so back.

  9. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    I saw that Angelatc tweeted that at him a week or so back.
    Good for her.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by specsaregood View Post
    Hey trump, how about cancelling those CAFE updates for 2025 then? That's what the root cause is ya tool.

    ^^^^This^^^^
    Chris

    "Government ... does not exist of necessity, but rather by virtue of a tragic, almost comical combination of klutzy, opportunistic terrorism against sitting ducks whom it pretends to shelter, plus our childish phobia of responsibility, praying to be exempted from the hard reality of life on life's terms." Wolf DeVoon

    "...Make America Great Again. I'm interested in making American FREE again. Then the greatness will come automatically."Ron Paul

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Um GM has not gone "all electric". It may be a future goal for them, but they have not gone all electric yet. But either way, should the government tell a company what they should or should not produce? He declared he is in charge of of Ohio so I guess he can.
    Are you seriously arguing the Democrats aren't? Are you seriously arguing that GM would be making cars with an eighty mile range and a six hour refuel time if the government wasn't forcing them to?

    Really? Trump isn't telling them to build something they don't want to, he's wondering why Congress and Obama-era bureaucrat regulations told them (and all automakers) to build stuff nobody wants. Who do you think is going to buy that lame spin? Why do you wake up every morning assuming we turned stupid overnight?

    Why don't you stop making an ass of yourself and watch the Chargers get beaten?
    Last edited by acptulsa; 12-13-2018 at 09:30 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  13. #11
    Guillotines and Red Octobers

    https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018...-red-octobers/

    By eric - December 13, 2018

    The French would be in the streets.

    Of course, they are in the streets – but that’s in France. What about here? General Motors just announced it will be closing five plants and firing about 15,000 people – and that’s probably just for openers.

    This, by itself, isn’t cause for pitchforks.

    Companies sometimes have to lay people off – because sometimes, people aren’t buying what the company is selling. Even when this is the result of mismanagement, it’s a normal part of life in a free economy.

    But GM used the government as its personal Luca Brasi to mulct taxpayers – including those people GM just fired – to the tune of $33 billion back in 2009 – so that those jobs would be saved.

    That, at any rate, was the alleged basis for the bailout.

    Now GM is cashing out – and that is cause for pitchforks.

    The money that GM will save by not paying those 15,000 workers – and not building those cars – won’t be refunded to the taxpayers whose generous, at-bayonet-point “contributions” made it possible for GM to keep its doors open. The money will be pocketed by GM – including CEO Mary Barra, whose annual compensation package amounts to in excess of $21 million. She is the highest-paid CEO of any car company and heads a company that is losing market share, contracting its operations and firing its employees en masse.

    Mary Barra isn’t even taking a pay cut.

    She will probably give herself a raise – for making GM more “efficient” and giving it the “flexibility” to ” . . . increase the long-term profit and cash generation potential of the company.”

    She means cash generation for herself and other executive class-insiders, of course.

    Barra is also aggressively tub-thumping for more taxpayer bailouts – in the form of a continuation in perpetuity of the $7,500 per car federal tax subsidies given to float the “purchase” of otherwise unsaleable electric cars. These are set to expire at just the moment that GM (and not just GM) is ramping up production of these EVs almost no one wants – or at least, which almost no one would buy if they couldn’t offload some of the purchase cost onto the backs of someone else.

    Barra and GM also insist that federal fuel economy mandates not only remain in force but be raised, per Barack Obama, to almost 50 miles-per-gallon by model year 2025.

    In the name of “sustainable development” and “urban mobility” solutions – GM’s new catchphrase in China, where it sees a glorious future for itself – funded by plant closings and layoffs here.

    At the same time, she says GM will “focus” on building trucks and SUVs – vehicles that stand as much chance of achieving 50 MPG as OJ Simpson has of beatification by the Pope in Rome. The latest GM truck – the 2019 Silverado 1500 series – actually gets worse mileage than the outgoing 2018 model. The V6 version’s mileage is down by about 3 MPG vs. the 2018 with the same engine; the 2019 V8’s mileage is down by 1 MPG.

    And the 2019 Silverado’s new “efficient” 2.7 liter turbocharged four cylinder engine – the first use of a four cylinder engine in a full-size truck – averages a flaccid 21 MPG. Possibly because putting a four cylinder engine in a full-size truck is like expecting Danny DeVito to piggyback carry Arnold Schwarzenegger up a flight of stairs and not breath hard doing it.


    The only way a full-size truck is ever going to average 50 MPG is down an elevator shaft – engine off, transmission in neutral.

    Yet Barra is betting the house on a class of vehicles which cannot comply with the onerous regulations she champions. And most of the cars which stood a chance of surviving in a 50 MPG fatwa’d, small-carbon-footprint world have been cancelled, per Barra. What will GM fall back on when the Jenga tower collapses about five years from now?

    Or sooner?

    Barra and GM probably think they can sell trucks and SUVs with the cost of EVs folded into their prices – which will continue to rise like a Weimar Mark. The manufacture of lots of EVs will help with the CAFE math (one EV that uses no gas at all plus one SUV or truck that uses a lot of gas averages more than two SUVs or trucks that use a lot of gas) and government mandates and subsidies will help with the EV math.

    Even if you don’t buy an EV – you’ll pay for one.

    The whole hideous business is a textbook case of socialism for the rich – the (ahem) free market for everyone else; the impolite but accurate way to describe what most textbooks politely but far-from-accurately call a “mixed” economy.

    While Barra puts on her weight belt so as to not hurt her back hauling her $22 million from the Brinks truck, those 15,000 fired people and their families ( doubling if not tripling the number of people affected by this) will have to figure out how to pay the rent, the electric bill and feed their kids. Many will go on the dole – and who will pay for that?

    Not GM.

    Not Mary Barra.

    The mass firings were announced – without warning – the day after Thanksgiving and just in time for Christmas.

    It’s the sort of thing that led in the past to guillotines and Red Octobers.

    Will it lead to the same things here? Not unless Americans can be roused off their sofas and pulled away from their TVs and “the game.”

  14. #12
    But my Jetta diesel could get 50 mpg.

    But Uncle Sucker banned that and almost bankrupted VW over it.

    Over "cheating" on 3 tenth of one percent.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Good for her.

  16. #14
    GM Shoulda died decades back.
    In New Zealand:
    The Coastguard is a Charity
    Air Traffic Control is a private company run on user fees
    The DMV is a private non-profit
    Rescue helicopters and ambulances are operated by charities and are plastered with corporate logos
    The agriculture industry has zero subsidies
    5% of the national vote, gets you 5 seats in Parliament
    A tax return has 4 fields
    Business licenses aren't a thing
    Prostitution is legal
    We have a constitutional right to refuse any type of medical care

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by CCTelander View Post
    ^^^^This^^^^
    Trump administration is not going to do anything that is counter to Agenda 21/2030 mandates, such as emissions restrictions that choke out gas engine production. His entire cabinet is globalists.
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing."-Ron Paul

    "We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of COLLECTIVISM. They have never yet and they never will have the sense to reflect that this hobby-horse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality."- A Quote From Some Old Book

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    GM Shoulda died decades back.
    They would have, except while other car companies got in the habit of hiring talent, they got in the habit of buying Congressmen.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...



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  20. #17
    Guess I can buy a suburu .
    Do something Danke

  21. #18
    Good thing the shareholders of GM appointed the brilliant businessman Donald Trump CEO to manage their business

    ...o wait

    ...they didn't

    Maybe the idiot-President should shut his stupid $#@!ing face and let businessmen handle business.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by r3volution 3.0 View Post
    Good thing the shareholders of GM appointed the brilliant businessman Donald Trump CEO to manage their business

    ...o wait

    ...they didn't

    Maybe the idiot-President should shut his stupid $#@!ing face and let businessmen handle business.
    Maybe Trump has a right to an opinion too.

    Maybe he is right.

    Maybe GM shouldn't take a bailout from the pockets of the American people and then stab them in the back.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  23. #20
    No one supported the bailout of GM who wasn't a straight retard or shill for affected constituencies.

    Bush, Clinton, Trump and the rest of the gang (and their media whores) were in universal agreement on the bailout.

    Bush, Clinton, and most of the Congress did it because they were shills.

    Trump wasn't even in office; he supported it because he was/is a retard with no understanding of economics.

    Now said retard thinks he knows how to run this company.

    It is a gruesome commentary on modern society that this stupid horse$#@! generates anything other than hysterical laughter.

    WTF is wrong with you people?!

    WTF?!

  24. #21
    Trump is right:

    Quote Originally Posted by Anti Federalist View Post
    Inside EV Baseball

    https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2018...e-ev-baseball/

    By eric - December 19, 2018

    Most people have no direct experience with electric cars – and neither do I.

    Well, not officially.

    The difference is, I should have it – because unlike 99.9 percent of the population, I am a car journalist. The car companies send me new cars every week to test drive and evaluate.

    It’s been my full-time job for more than 25 years.

    But I don’t get electric cars.

    And not just me. Other car journalists don’t get them, either. And that ought to serve as a kind of 9 volt canary in the coal mine about electric cars.

    Why don’t some of us get them?

    It’s not because we don’t want them. “Want” in the sense of professional obligation. I’ve been accused of not liking electric cars – which is true. I also do not like minivans and most “crossovers,” either. But I want to drive them in order to write about them because I know there are lots of people out there who are interested in them.

    My personal affection or lack thereof is as professionally immaterial as a doctor’s liking or disliking of his patient.

    I want to get electric cars for the same reason I want to get any other car: To get seat time and real-world experience, in order to convey useful information to the people who read my stuff, which is how I make a living. And that is important to me.

    But I don’t get electric cars – for two reasons.

    The first reason is that I live too far away. My place is up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the far southside of rural SW Virginia. The press pool for this part of the country is located in the DC area, which is about 220 miles one way.

    This is too far for electric cars.

    They run out of juice before they get here. Which means they have to be flat-bedded here – and that gets into money as well as hassle. It also begs the same question the little boy posed to the emperor about his new clothes… .

    Any other car can easily make a 220 mile trip without being at least temporarily crippled by it.

    They have been making the trip, regularly, each week – for the past 15 years that I’ve lived where I now live. The distance has never been an issue because it isn’t one – for non-electric cars.

    Even if there is a wreck on I-81 (which is the major stretch of Interstate between DC and here) and the trip becomes a six-hour-long slog in stop-and-go traffic, it’s not a problem. The driver can blast the AC – or the heat – to keep comfortable and if he has to pit to refuel, it’s a five minute stop.

    It takes longer to get and pay for a cup of coffee than it takes to fill up the tank.

    An electric car, on the other hand… .

    If it has a best-case range of say 150 miles (like the Nissan Leaf) that means at least one 30-45 minute stop and probably two – because the best-case range is exactly that and not a realistic range. It is interesting that Uncle allows such latitude when it comes to certain things – yet is stricter than a Jesuit when it comes to other things.

    Highway driving is to electric cars what pulling a few spark plug wires is to a non-electric car. EVs are fundamentally city cars and their best-case range predicated on low-speed/light-load driving.

    The situation is analogous to electric power tools – which are fundamentally the same thing. How long will your cordless drill’s battery charge last if you run the drill continuously? How long does it last when you use it to do heavy work, like put screws through 2×4 wall studs?

    Electric cars are no different.

    Well, there is a difference – and it’s an important one. Most power tools come with a spare battery, which you keep on the charger and swap out with the discharged one, so that you can keep working without waiting.

    But you can’t swap out an EV’s battery. So, you’re forced to wait.

    If this is a problem for the car press, it will be a problem for the general population, too.

    While lots of people live in cities, most of them can live without cars and already do. It is the people in the suburbs who most need and depend on cars – and for them, electric cars will be a problem, for the same reason they are a problem for me.

    It can take longer to travel 50 miles in the vicinity of a major city than it takes to get from a major city to where I live. I know this because I lived it – and that was 15 years ago, when I lived in the DC area.

    It is surely worse now than it was then.

    Plus, winter. And summer. Both of which tax the EV’s batteries, because they entail use of accessories that consume a lot of (wait for it!) electricity.

    Yes, I know. “Fast” chargers. But if 30-45 minutes is “fast” then we might as well go back to using prop-driven airplanes to cross the Atlantic. Just for the romance of it.

    Also – and they aren’t telling you this, either – you lose 20 percent of the best-case EV range when using these “fast” chargers, in order to avoid damaging the battery.

    Thus, even the touted 238 mile best-case range of a longer-legged EV like the new Chevy Bolt is really only 190 miles after “fast” charging. It can’t quite make it here in a single swing at bat. And once it finally gets here, I wouldn’t be able to drive it to test it because I’d have to wait for it to recharge. Since I don’t have a “fast” charger, that means overnight on the 120V household outlet.

    Lose a day to waiting.

    And the same on the other end.

    Unless I remember to plug it in the night before the driver comes to pick the car up, he’ll have to wait.

    Luckily, I have a spare bedroom.

    But think about these logistics as they apply to you – which they will, if you’re gulled by all this emperor’s-new-clothes idiocy into an electric car.

    You will have to add time to longer trips – and you will have to think about all your trips in a way you don’t have to now. The freedom to just go will have become as much a memory of better times as being able to just board an airplane, without being felt up or having to assume the I surrender pose in an irradiation chamber so that a government worker can view your anatomy in lieu of fondling it.

    Oh. Yes. There is another reason why car journalists like me don’t get electric cars. It is because we write stuff such as you’ve just read. You know – the truth about electric cars. This is troublesome to the manufacturers thereof – especially Tesla, which only manufactures electric cars.

    Tesla not only wants favorable coverage, it must have it. Because unfavorable coverage means kaput for Tesla. And that is why Tesla only allows friendly press to test drive its cars. You may have noticed this from the resultant coverage – which never mentions the fact that “fast” charging entails partial charging – or that conditions (heat and cold, use of accessories) greatly affect the range.

    Nor other less-than-convenient truths.

    It’s an interesting inversion.

    Like the political Left – which once at least pretended to care about the working man – the “consumer” car press – which once at least pretended to care about “consumers” (an incredibly insulting term) stands revealed for what it is:

    The captive poodle of a rent-seeking con of stupefying proportions.

    My having said so, of course, means I will never get a Tesla to test drive.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Trump is right:
    And yet he has done nothing about the mandates or the incoming impossible CAFE standards.

    What does one say about a politician who sees the problem with stupid legislation and does nothing about it?
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...



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