🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 17 May 2008 23:10:12 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@pergamos.net> wrote:

>David L. Jones wrote:
>> "Eeyore" <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
>> news:482FA872.804C42A9@hotmail.com...
>>>
>>> "David L. Jones" wrote:
>>>
>>>> I just saw the movie Who Killed the Electric Car?:
>>>> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/
>>>>
>>>> Fantastic!
>>> It completely misses the point.
>> 
>> Sounds like it's you who missed the point of the movie.
>> 
>>>> Everyone should watch this one.
>>>> The IMDB user comment is spot on - " This film WILL frustrate you 
>>>> greatly"
>>>> In fact, it's enough to make you want to cry.
>>>>
>>>> Can't believe I had never heard of the movie before the other day.
>>> http://gm-volt.com/2008/05/11/the-ev-1-wasnt-killed-it-was-dead-on-arrival/
>>>
>>> Required to do so, GM went on to make the EV-1. It used lead acid 
>>> batteries
>>> which held 0.4% as much energy as the same weight of gasoline.
>> 
>> Irrelevant.
>> 
>>> Thus the EV-1
>>> weighed 2970 lbs, 1175 lbs of which were the batteries.
>> 
>> Also irrelevant.
>> 
>>> The resulting range
>>> was 90/70 miles hwy/city.
>> 
>> Plenty enough for the majority of people. Especially when you can 
>> conveniently recharge at home, at work, or at a shopping centre etc.
>> 
>>> To achieve this, the tiny two-seater also had to
>>> have the record lowest CD, the most advanced powertrain of the day, and a 
>>> cost
>>> of $80,000 (they were only leased to consumers).
>> 
>> So what? price would come down in time.
>> Thousands of people buy $80,00 cars every day.
>> 
>> No excuse for GM to go to ridiculous lengths to get back every one of the 
>> cars and then crush them literally out of existence. Especially when there 
>> were thousands who would have taken them off their hands and waived all 
>> rights to support.
>> GM did an evil thing, just evil.
>> 
>>> The article concludes:
>>>
>>> "In the end, though, the price wasn't an issue. The reality is the EV1 was
>>> hostage to a technology the engineers knew from the get-go just wasn't 
>>> able to
>>> do the job Roger Smith and the California Air Resources Board believed it
>>> could. That's what killed the electric car."
>> 
>> Everyone had better rush and get one of those Humvees with the $100,000 Bush 
>> government tax rebate before the new government gets in. Or has that 
>> fire-sale finished already?
>> 
>> Dave. 
>> 
>> 
>
>A lot of assets get crushed on account of the corporate tax code and 
>accounting rules.  I vividly remember 1992, when IBM got into the glue 
>really badly--we crushed a whole lot of brand new equipment, all paid 
>for and everything, because our budgets were being slashed and it was 
>either keep the people or keep the equipment--which had to have the 
>depreciation paid.  The waste was astronomical, but the management was 
>in a bind and did their best with the choices available.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Phil Hobbs

A small business can expense about $120K a year in equipment
purchases. The big boys have to show equipment and real estate and
improvements as assets, ie as taxable profit, which the public doesn't
generally understand. No wonder we export jobs.

But in the 1992 situation, they could have had a garage sale for
employees, got rid of the stuff at a suitable loss, and made some
employees very happy. I think.

John