🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 18 May 2008 08:38:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@pergamos.net> wrote:

>John Larkin wrote:
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>That's probably true, but what would I do with a $2m copper dep tool?
>

Sell it and buy a ski lodge?

John