Summary of GM's positives

[BodybyFisher]

Yesterday I heard Bob Lutz speak on CNN, he defended GM's innovation, development, fuel efficiency, productivity and summarized the various vehicles that have received Car of the Year honors. Do we have that video any place?

Do we have a summary of GM positives someplace?

I was riding in the car with co-workers this morning and the tone of the discussion toward GM was negative and I was unable to offset the discussion strongly.

For instance someone said that the VOLT only goes 40 miles on electric. I don't know enough about the VOLT to know its efficiency, etc. I kept going back to Bob Lutz's interview.

What do we have?

[Bruce Nunnally]

Gm has a fact and fiction website in an attempt to address.

GM doesn't make cars people want? Wrong. Actually, they are the top vehicle seller in the US.

GM doesn't make fuel efficient cars? Wrong. GM makes the most models that get over 30mpg.

And my favorite, the newest Cadillac Escalade gets better MPG in the city than the Mini Cooper S convertible.

GM sells trucks and SUVs? Sure, if people want to buy them. So do Toyota and Honda. Lexus sells more trucks than cars, so actually one might say they are a truck company.

GM has very competitive cars and trucks in most every category and price point. GM quality and reliability are world class. GM factories are superb.

The current financial crisis caused car and truck sales to plummet. Car and truck manufacturers throughout the world are in a financial fix due to the banking crisis.

[BodybyFisher]

Thanks Bruce

[Cadillac Jim]

List of GM innovations from memory:

• Production V8, Cadillac, 1915
• Two-plane V8 crankshft, 1924 Cadillac
• Closed body vs. original carriave concept, Cadillac about 1910
• Brake lights
• Electric starting
• Points and coil (Kettering) ignition
• Hydraulic brakes
• Automatic transmission, Pontiac, about 1936
• Catalytic converter
• Digital fuel injection, Cadillac and Corvette, 1982
• On-Board Diagnostics (OBD), Cadillac, 1982 (with precursors for over a decade)
• Heads-up display in automobiles
• Four-wheel disk brakes, Corvette, 1965
• Living room sound systems, Cadillac (Bose)
• Electronic stability control, Cadillac, 1997
• OnStar, Cadillac, 1997
• In-car satellite radio, Cadillac, 1998
• Integrated supercharger (Cadillac, original V-series)
• Distributorless ignition, Oldsmobile Quad 4 series
• Direct injection mass production engine, Cadillac, 2006
• Cabin monitoring of bulbs, Corvette, 1970s

Areas where others led and GM followed with its own technology to compete:

• Rack-and-pinion steering
• Low-cost GT, MG-TC, 1947; Corvette, 1954
• Turbocharger, Saab
• All-aluminum DOHC engines Infiniti, 1988
• Variable valve timing (VVT), Honda, 1992
• Hybrid power train, Toyota, 1998

Guys, help me out here. Add things, subtract things, put them in chronological order, add or correct dates, etc.

Some of these, the catalytic converter, DFI, OBD, electronic stability control, direct injection, etc. make the modern automobile possible.

I'll close with the fact that Cadillac has the Manufacturer's Championship in the Trans Am series with the CTS-V, which has no sedan class. Its principal competition is the Porsche 911 in special race trim and similarly modified Corvettes and Vipers. Without the Americans, only the $100K+ Porsche 911 is there, and without competition there is no series. In 2009 street form, the CTS-V has more horsepower than the Trans Am series racers because the limitations put on the power plant by the Trans Am sanctioning organization are removed. Want a Porsche killer? No problem, see your local Cadillac dealer and you can have yours by the weekend.

[JimD]

I was riding in the car with co-workers this morning and the tone of the discussion toward GM was negative and I was unable to offset the discussion strongly.

The negative vision of GM was based on applied technology and product development?

Or was it based on the fact that GM and the Detroit Three cannot deliver a viable-workable business plan that has much chance of being anywhere close to accurate for the economic reality of 2008 and 2009 (and beyond). Their crystal ball figures are based on a middle ground somewhere between the best case and the worst case scenario.

For instance someone said that the VOLT only goes 40 miles on electric. I don't know enough about the VOLT to know its efficiency, etc.

As of today, the battery capacity of the Volt is limited (as a funtion of battery cell technology). The Volt has a small gasoline engine driving an alternator to extend the range far beyond ~~ 40 miles. But that requires evil fossil fuel.

It's too easy to overlook or ignore the source of the energy when the Volt is plugged into the garage outlet every night, so that is not part of the discussion.

As for the technological contributions of GM in the past, that is only a trip down memory lane for me. The Detroit Three are facing the economic reality of December 2008; and it ain't pretty. Sink or swim folks. Chapter 11 bankrupcy protection laws/procedures have been in place for a long time and the process seems to work.

[lothos]

If I remember right, GM lets automakers use the catalytic converter design for free to help the environment. I can't find the website where I read that, but I just found that GM engineered the PCV valve, which reduces exhaust gases by 30%.

[Cadillac Jim]

The point of the list of innovations is that without the USA and German manufacturers the future of the car industry is the motor vehicle as a commodity. As a hint of what this means, look at Britain; they invented the everyman sports car and their Cooper, Lotus, and others in the Coventry area dominated sports racing for most of the 20th Century. They lost the private ownership of their indigenous auto firms and Formula 1 is not what it one was; it's lost its elan. Honda never made a Viper or a Corvette; their idea is an NSX or, given examples and microscopic sales of the NSX for years, the 2000, which they make available in very limited quantities as a teaser. They don't get it. Nissan, with its Fairlady line, culminating in the 280 ZX, did a good job of scaring Porsche out of the 2.4 liter class but they lost their edge when they became Japan, Inc. -- run by the Government, not the car people. Honda is passing that same milestone.

JimD, you seem to talk like GM, Ford and Chrysler don't know how to run a business in America. You will understand if I don't agree? See this and other threads for other viewpoints of what is happening and why. They have a workable business plan that adapts to the realities of the recession but since the banking business is locked up then cash flow to get there is not available through the usual channels.

[JimD]

....JimD, you seem to talk like GM, Ford and Chrysler don't know how to run a business in America. You will understand if I don't agree? See this and other threads for other viewpoints of what is happening and why. They have a workable business plan that adapts to the realities of the recession but since the banking business is locked up then cash flow to get there is not available through the usual channels.

**** happens.

And you can believe I understand the reality of the domestic/global financial gridlock. My abilty to provide subsistance food/clothing/shelter depends on how I manage my IRA assets (I'm retired).

If the Detroit Three are not nimble enough to adapt to reality (within days), one or more of them will fail in January or April or August.

Capitalism is effecient. And ruthless.

[BodybyFisher]

Well I did a little research and found that yes on FULL electric the VOLT will go 40 miles

As a comparison, the Prius on FULL 'EV' is limited to 25 miles and 25 MPH, plus its a much smaller car. The EV version of the Prius is available in EU but not in the US because of our driving habits, higher speeds etc.

Battery technology is definately the limiting factor here and there are some serious technological hurdles its not a shortcoming of GM

[Cadillac Jim]

The difference between the Volt and the Prius is that the Prius is a hybrid, with a gasoline engine that can run the car on the highway, and does. The Volt may have a charger engine but it is not part of the drivetrain and is much smaller than would be required to run the car on the highway.

The difference between running a 401K and an enterprise is that in a 401K, you have choices between investments that are made on the basis of differences in rate of return (estimated from history) and risk (or, variability in traded value, again estimated from history). In an enterprise, you *must* take risks or die. The risks are investments in plants and production capacity for different models. If you don't update your models, their sales will taper off and the burn rate (monthly expenditures such as rent/lease, utilities, insurance, taxes to cover fire and police protection, wages, maintenance on the building and equipment, etc.).

Another fact of life for publicly traded companies is that there are only two business horizons that really count: 90 days, when the earnings reports come out (f it doesn't match the "analysts" expectations, watch out!!) and yearly, when the annual report comes out. The time-to-market of a new model is three years, so the vision of management must be 5 years. If somebody guesses wrong, you can lose big bucks. This is the case right now for all the automotive manufacturers in the world, more so for those who use the US market as their primary source of income. Without continuous support of the stock price, the marketplace will cause large fluctuations on the stock price, making it a high-risk stock in the history analysis, so that it will find itself in large portfolios only at a high rate of return -- e.g. the average market price will be driven down. Thus 90-day and yearly business horizons are forced on companies that have 10-year visions, 5-year business plans, and 3-year commitment-of-resources times.

There's more, much more...

[Marika]

Well I did a little research and found that yes on FULL electric the VOLT will go 40 miles

As a comparison, the Prius on FULL 'EV' is limited to 25 miles and 25 MPH, plus its a much smaller car. The EV version of the Prius is available in EU but not in the US because of our driving habits, higher speeds etc.

Battery technology is definately the limiting factor here and there are some serious technological hurdles its not a shortcoming of GM

Since Tesla Motors is getting ready to go bankrupt (I predicted this a long time ago), I recently E-mailed GM and suggested to them that they buy Tesla motors' technology and apply it to the Volt. A Tesla Motors car has a range of 220 miles on one charge of the battery, which takes only a few hours. GM can turn their Volt car into a FULL electric car instead of a kiddy bumper car with a back up gasoline engine. The Volt is a very attractive car but I'm not crazy about dual technology/hybrid. Recently, Tesla Motors asked the federal government for a loan which would allow them to build a factory where they could make a cheaper version of their $120,000 sportster. Tesla is figuring it could produce a $57,000 car made for everyday road sedan use but they need the money from the government to build the factory. I say GM can build the Tesla road sedan version for much less, production would be much faster and probably better quality control. Any takers on a GM/Tesla merger? I think it would be a great idea.

[Cadillac Jim]

It seems to me that the performance and miles per charge of an electric vehicle on batteries alone isn't really a matter of technology, but a matter of trading parameters in the design of a particular vehicle. The basic parameters are battery size, engine size, and the mass of the rest of the vehicle. The miles per charge is limited by the ratio of thee mass of the battery to the sum of the masses of the engine and the rest of the vehicle, and the efficiency of the electric motor.

The base enabling technologies are lithium-ion batteries and high-efficiency, high-torque DC motors, which have been available since about 1990. The breakthrough on the motors was metallurgy for the magnet that allowed very high field strength in a viable electric motor geometry at lower magnet mass than had been possible before; viable means cooling the motor as well as turning the electric power into horsepower efficiently. These have been around since the early 1990's and are used in everything from e-Bikes to golf carts to mobility scooters to hybrid highway vehicles.

What the Tesla Motors plant would provide to GM is a ready-made design and production facility for a high-performance vehicle, not just an economy car or an affordable SUV. That's well worth having and would be a leadership and image thing, like the specialty Corvettes, the M-series BMWs, the Dodge Viper, the AMG Mercedes, and the V-series Cadillacs. But, it needs a cash bridge to get to the other side, and right now the Big 3 don't have that.