GM’s $4,000 Car That We Won’t Get
By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist
Here is a startling tidbit:
In coverage of GM’s reported intention to produce a $4,000 car, the company revealed that its near-term “goal” is to “have 75 percent of its sales” outside the United States.
Your tax dollars at work.
Now, the $4,000 car is a fine idea. It represents a return to economic sanity. It would be simple and affordable. No six year payment plan. No $40,000 “investment” (like the completely insane Volt electric car) that will depreciate to less than half original MSRP sticker price by the time it’s finally paid off. No GPS, closed-circuit cameras, power parallel parking systems, multiplexed seat heaters or built-in coffee pots.
Just, you know, basic transportation.
America needs this right now. Or rather, tapped out Americans need such a thing right now. The proposed $4,000 car costs less than the government’s loathsome “cash for clunkers” giveaway — which forces some taxpayers to subsidize the “purchase” (loosely used) of a new car by others.
Instead of ripping off one group of taxpayers to provide a government giveaway to another set of taxpayers, GM’s $4,000 car would represent honest productive effort, free exchange — goods produced by a market that freely consents to buy them. People would get the basic, inexpensive transportation that has largely disappeared from the new car marketplace. GM would make money.
What a concept.
But, here’s the catch: GM won’t be able to sell the $4,000 car in the United States. Because in the United States, new cars must be “government approved” before they can be approved by consumers. And to be approved by government, a new car must be fitted with a horn o’ plenty of government-mandated safety and emissions control equipment.
“Safety” and “low emissions” may be laudable, but they aren’t free. The federal requirement that each new car be equipped with multiple air bags is alone worth an estimated $,1000-$1,500 per car – or one-third to nearly one-half the projected final cost of the GM $4k car.
In so-called “developing countries,” there are not (yet) such requirements, which explains why GM will be selling its $4k car in such countries rather than in this country.
GM knows the United States is a dying market for new cars — mainly because Americans are increasingly no longer in a position to buy them. And they are no longer in a position to buy them because they have become so expensive (an average mid-sized family sedan such as the Toyota Camry or Chevy Malibu typically sells for around $25,000). And they have become so expensive because of the endless conveyor belt of new diktats issuing forth from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington.
Until The Crash, we were able to pretend we could afford all this via the helpful hand of easy credit and by dipping into the bubble-financed “wealth” of artificially (and temporarily) jacked-up real estate and 401k portfolios.
Now it’s all gone and not likely to return.
But the mandates continue to flow (most recently, the congressional edict that all new cars average close to 40 mpg within a few years — no matter the cost).
GM knows there’s no future in this — or here. And that is why it is shifting its corporate gaze to greener pastures, where it expects it will be doing 75 percent of its business within just a few years.
You can’t really blame GM for this — as galling as it maybe to recall that American taxpayers were forced to chuck over billions in “bailout” loans — monies that will surely be used to finance the move to those greener pastures, and with it, the movement of all those manufacturing jobs to places like India and China (where Buick is GM’s hottest selling brand and a rising star).
We Americans won’t get the $4k car.
We’ll just get the bill for it.
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While America forces these car companies to install these costly options, understand that the American Public requests and demands these options. Moms with children are not going to say she can live without airbags. Heck, they can’t live without the factory installed DVD player.
Sure, a lot of people would want to pay $4,000 for a car. But how many truly are going to say they can live without many of the features, both convenience and safety, that they have demend be installed in cars over the years?
Co² emissions causing global warming is the biggest scam since the Bible. Those who believe that C0² is harmful either are relying upon people who can/are benefiting from promoting this bunk or, themselves, have a vested interest.
Anyone who has a complaint regarding the warming or cooling phases of the Earth, should lodge his concerns with the Sun.
Yeah the largest factor contributing to the global warming is the orbit around the sun. The orbit actually changes and if we get closer to the sun this has a larger impact then CO2 emissions. Also Sun spots are also a major contributor. Right now we don’t have many sunspots which means the sun is cooler. The more sun spots there are the hotter the sun. So it will be interesting to see that now we are in the low period if global temperature start to decrease again.
But unfortunately the ice caps play an important part. As the snow reflects a lot of the radiation back out to space. But as they get smaller less radiation is being reflected and more absorbed into the earth system.
perhaps we should be making our roofs white instead of black and planting more trees would be much better than trying to reduce carbon emmisions.
What kind of PHD do you guys have that says you are more correct than pretty much any scientist out there?
You say it is all about the sun and we do not have any control. What are the billions of barrel of oil and millions of tons of coal we are burning doing to our earth? Nothing?
Well if the IPCC is to be believed, the human contribution to CO2 is 3%.
George says:
August 24, 2009 at 11:34 amWell if the IPCC is to be believed, the human contribution to CO2 is 3%.
George;
Did you really think that nobody would go back and research the latest findings of the IPCC?
Well I did. The report is titled: “A report of Working Group I of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Summary for Policymakers” and can be found in its’ entirety at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
It is scathing in its’ condemnation of the effect people have had on Global Climate Change, and the ridiculous statement you came up with appears nowhere in the report or in the IPCCs other findings of fact.
The report is summarized by the committee as follows:
“Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased
markedly as a result of human activities since 1750
and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined
from ice cores spanning many thousands of years
(see Figure SPM.1). The global increases in carbon
dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel
use and land use change, while those of methane
and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
{2.3, 6.4, 7.3}”
Please submit your apology for your misleading comments at your earliest convenience.
John G.
IPCC has become less believable over time.
and why would I even consider what a political body says about science. {oh no!, we need global government}
They, IPCC, claim they have 2,000 scientists to agree with their AGW nonsense, when in reality they have about half that. People have had to threaten to sue so that their name is removed from their reports.
Isn’t the latest count of scientist who say no AGW or are skeptical, roughly 30,000?
Take you fascist nonsense elsewhere, I do not apologize for the truth.
No, George. The number of scientists that support Anthropogenic Global Warming include all of the members of all of the major scientific organizations of all of the major countries of the world, and number in the hundreds of thousands (check Wikipedia under “Global Warming”. There are not 30,000 true scientists that oppose the concept that AGW (as you call it).
The “scientists” that are willing to go on record saying that Anthropogenic (caused by human activity) Global Warming does not exist, or that it is not serious if it does, are made up exclusively of those working for the industries causing it, or those whose political ideology, not their science, determine their stand. Those scientists number far fewer than 30,000 individuals. Few real scientists are RWNs and even fewer are willing to admit it.
My religion isn’t Gaia worship, like those ‘scientists’
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monthly_report/sppi_monthly_co2_report_july.html
Cool George. It looks like there is at least one other site than this one that promotes lies.
John,
There was a period about 125,000 years ago where the that ice cap data indicates as having average polar temperatures 3-5 degrees Celcius higher than those we presently have. As far as I am aware there were no fossil fuel vehicles then and it was a natuaral occurrence of the earths orbit. Isn’t it possible that something similar is happening now?
Where is the money coming from for all these people to purchase $25000 cars Has the financial [lending] market finally loosened up so they are all borrowing the money? Will we have a new crash when they cant make their payments and the cars are repossesed [foreclosed]? And who is making sure that the thousands of “clunkers” are not being stripped for parts or being resold [ or shipped overseas]? Will the FBI have to divert hundreds of agents to police this program? I cant wait for the new health care program
i dont know about u but can tell u where i get the money. what happens is i get up every weekday morning and go to work, then at the end of every week i get a paycheck at the end of the year i take all of the accumulated koney thai ha havent spent on taxes and what not. when i feel i have a secure job and a good enough paycheck i take out a loan and buy the car, then over a period of months i pay all the money back to the bank(and some interest of course). so, technically "people" that you are talking about get the money from the hard work they do every day
I completely support the U.S. governments attempt (as late and as behind what it was supposed to have been by now) to reduce emmissions that are – I REPEAT – ARE – contributing to the global climate change that is, even now, starting to effect our ability to grow food and supply water to United States Citizens. Allowing cheap cars that do not have adequate emmission control devices to be manufactured and sold ANYWHERE is a serious, and very expensive, mistake.
reducing emissions are only good for personal health and living environment. That should be the argument, not because of global warming but because we should all want to live in a healthy environment with clean air.
I finally agree with something that John G. says.
In the 20th century global warming increased the temperatures .75 degrees. Given that in 1900 we couldn’t measure .75 degrees accurately who is to say that global warming is anything more than a conpiracy to add cost to the cars we drive.
dude, you really need to get your facts straight…
1) global warming is not caused by CO2, in fact there is no such thing as global warming in the first place, it is simply a 1500 year cycle by the sun…
2) the safety codes that our government puts on these companis put them in a stranglehold.
3) these interferences by the feds have ruined competition in the car market, if the government would stop this idiocy and let the free market do its job