Apr 07 2009
GM Unwilling to Learn from History
Today I read that GM is looking seriously into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, this little Segway vehicle might be what this former car giant has been reduced to. GM might be mass-producing these soon. It’s called the PUMA, for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility. Not a bad idea, but shouldn’t GM invest in something a little more serious to save itself?
This little vehicle (a prototype) will eventually use “vehicle-to-vehicle technology”, whatever that means, and supposedly be able to navigate it’s own way through tough traffic situations on regular city streets. I don’t think this is terribly likely. It will just take one of these little things squished between a city bus and a semi truck and that will be the end of that. They should have their own little bike path-like roads, and in fact I can see cities accommodating tiny vehicles like that in the future.
Last week President Obama gave GM more or less an ultimatum: shape up and make a viable plan for the future, or no more public money loans. That means they can and probably will go into bankruptcy and this is what should have happened a long time ago. GM was a great car company at one point, before anyone knew what CO2 or Peak Oil even was. Then after we knew what it was, and gas prices rose, GM continued to churn out big gas-guzzling monster SUVs and big pickups. People wanted smaller more fuel-efficient cars in the last 20 years, but GM didn’t respond with what they wanted. If they had, it’s possible that hundreds of people would have lost their jobs because GM had no contingency plan. No “Plan B”, no plans for better cars (except the EV1). Even when they were failing and the government gave them the first two ultimatums to shape up, GM didn’t take it seriously. Now GM is in serious danger of failing for good. But these little Segway vehicles won’t save them.
It didn’t have to be this way! America had electric cars in the 1930’s. Why didn’t GM start seriously making lots of hybrid vehicles and electric cars years ago?
Well, they did. In 1996 they made a very cool-looking electric car that was wildly popular and a best-seller, called the EV1, pictured above.
Even Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks owned an EV1 and drove it and raved about it. If GM had made millions of EV1s, they would have sold them all, they were that popular. For reasons that are still not totally clear, they instead pulled the car off the market shortly afterwards, recalled the remaining ones, and crushed them. A famous documentary was made of this bizarre story, called “Who Killed the Electric Car ?” GM killed it. Now GM might suffer a similar metaphoric fate, being crushed under its own failure to adapt and move forward into the future with its products. (There are many theories as to why GM killed off its own electric car, usually along the lines of there being a deal with the oil companies. The EV1 was described as being a “profit barrier”, so it was gotten rid of.) Recently, GM announced its new electric car, the Volt (scheduled to launch in November 2010). It was too little, too late. Now the new Volt might not even see the showroom floor, if GM really does go bankrupt.
In the 1930s, through the Great Depression, GM not only survived, they thrived. They cut costs and made basic cars that people wanted to drive, not obscenely large SUVs and trucks no one needed. GM made a profit all throughout the Great Depression. Part of their success was also that they made rail cars back then, for trains. Why couldn’t they make rail cars and buses now? (See story here ). At this point, it almost seems like GM isn’t even trying to survive.
Instead, they are making a feeble effort to be relevant again by making a super-small, slow vehicle with Segway. True, it won’t look like that in its final version, and it will be more practical by being encased in an actual car-like body. But going only 35 mph is pretty slow, and that is its top speed. The great thing about it is that it is all-electric. (You can read about it here ). These will never be freeway-road-worthy and they are just for getting around town. The demonstration I saw today on MSNBC made it look like a pared-down golf cart. The reporter sitting next to the driver was literally hanging out the side of the vehicle. This might eventually be a fun little transportation mode, but it will never replace the electric cars we will eventually see, and it won’t save GM. It probably won’t even save Segway.
