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Bob Lutz begins by blaming government regulation for doing in GM (and the housing bubble), forgetting that American car makers happily chose to whore themselves to creating and actively marketing (you want this, America! SUV's make you HAPPY, small cars KILL you) big cars in the service of sucking down big oil, just as big oil happily sucked down government subsidies (free market rules, praise Jesus!) and set their lobby loose on said government to murder the very regulations that would have saved the American auto industry -- not to mention freeing us from a lot of CO2 emissions. Anyway -- he was followed by Tesla's Elon Musk, and I found myself pulling out notes from 2010:
I remember being upset when the plane that carried a senior electrical engineer, a senior interactive electronics manager, and an electrical engineer from Tesla Motors went down last February, killing all three:
"Although they weren't executives in the company, these three guys are the type of guys who were doing the work, who were doing the innovative stuff that makes Tesla what it is," Virag said. "Not all electrical vehicles are the same. In fact, they could differ considerably depending on the company." ~Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Mich.
But now good news; the electric car will not be stopped...
Why Toyota Is Interested in Telsa
EV World -
SYNOPSIS: For $50 million, Toyota can play electric car catch-up and capitalize on Telsa's coolness factor. It's tough to say which company will benefit most from the new partnership between Japanese automotive giant Toyota Motor and American electric ...
Tesla beckons to the true believers MarketWatch
Inside Toyota's Tesla Play Forbes
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extra credit
last Jan: Toyota in Argentine lithium deal for hybrid car push
More Reuters Results for:
"Toyota in Argentine Lithium Deal for Hybrid Car Push"
moreover...
Automakers drive investment in lithium Toyota takes stake
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meanwhile
volt!
Former Chevy Volt Frontman Bob Lutz on GM’s Missteps
"“Why is it that when you look at the best foreign companies — and it’s not that the foreign-owned companies have people who are smarter or work harder — what they have is senior management that didn’t go to business school.”Blame it on b-school, at least in part. That’s what Bob Lutz — the General Motors executive who for years denied climate change, made his name with muscle cars and trucks and eventually came to champion the Chevy Volt — suggested Tuesday as one factor in the automaker’s missteps and financial troubles over the years. ... At GM, ... he said ... there was pressure to reduce hours per vehicle in manufacturing. “Nothing to do with customer. We had to take seminars on how to reduce die costs,” he said. “Nothing to do with customer….Instead of starting with the concept that we’re going to have the best car or truck, we had to compromise on that vision.” more...
Makes you think, don't it.
This, from around the time that Toyota was getting uber press for certain non-existent dangers.