GM closing all operations in Oshawa, Ontario: sources
ctvnews.ca
ctvnews.ca
For all the criticism Chinese tech companies get, the main control the Chinese government has is by being the largest shareholder of said companies. If the company does something that jeopardizes the stability of society, just enforce control. Every sizable Chinese company has a party secretary for the very same reason.
As part of the bailout, Canada/Ontario took a 12% ownership stake in GM. They have since sold their shares (at least Ontario has). At the time, the union president argued they should be keeping the shares for that exact reason, so that they have a reasonable influence on company decision making.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ontario-s...
Governments regularly dole out tax and other equivalent subsidies all the time to businesses. From these bail outs, to funding stadiums, to getting new jobs or headquarters.
This is all comes with risk and the risk should entirely be on the government making the deals. If they are making bad deals then hold them accountable. Part of this is making sure that all other taxation and such does not eventually price manufacturers out of your region.
With regards to the auto industry, the key word is industry. It is spread across multiple countries which means all must be taken into account when it comes to where vehicles are produced. This gets more important as the industry shifts the types of vehicles being made.
EV production will lead to the largest number of plant closures in the history of automotive production. The drive train savings alone in complexity will remove the need for engine and transmission plants as well as many plants which make the supporting hardware like pumps and more. The cascade effect on repair and maintenance shops will be even more hard felt.
edit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-restructuring/gm-to-cu...
Appears they are dropping three plants and a few cars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Leyland
The best option is to let uncompetitive businesses fail and concentrate on things the private sector can't do well.
This is such an Economics 101-style response, I'm not even sure how to address it.
When the plant stops production, it's not only the 2500 people who lose their jobs, it's also the auxiliary economy of parts suppliers, logistics networks and food and drink businesses that are affected and may have to shut down as well. That creates a negative multiplier effect that pushes economic activity down further. Not to mention the long term impact of lower tax receipts, lower property values.
You can't snap your fingers and replace the underpinnings of an entire community overnight via the magic of the "free market". Another company will only accept the costs of relocating there if the government starts offering tax incentives and the like to make it worth their while.
I agree that we need a better system, especially when companies can simply move when it's convenient. But manufacturing is a strategically important industry and governments are willing to pay to keep that industry at home.
I keep seeing this response pop up.
"Sure, my position fails to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of economics, but your argument reeks of being built on the fundamentals of the field!"
Not the outcome rather the consumers, tax payers, even the workers, possibly the environment although I suspect that is somewhat orthogonal to this.
Ever heard of Renault? Due to neo-liberal politics the ownership has changed in more recent times, but they have been state owned for a lot of their history.
The disease of neo-liberalism was a contributory factor to the demise of BL and the word neo-liberalism didn't even exist prior to 1982. The writing was not on the wall with BL during the post war years and their products were highly successful. The UK balance of payments was helped not hindered by the predecessor companies - the Rovers, Triumphs, Austins and what-not.
The problem was investment. So in the years when BL was a lot of private companies they could not get investment from the city. This is because London only invests in companies they can asset strip, they don't speak the same banking language as in Germany where banks invest in companies and people.
After the Labour government that preceded Thatcher rescued BL there was a problem due to the lack of investment, however BL did what they could to rise to the challenge despite the difficulties of strikes and useless managers. Then when Thatcher arrived BL was privatised. There was obviously no investment from the conservative government, that is not how they roll. They just wanted to sell the family silver.
So then it comes to the media and how they portray the story as all the fault of the unions and the company being nationalised. Yet the story is not an honest one, the truth is that the UK banking sector just don't invest in actual companies that employ people that do actual work. They might front the cash for some asset stripping or they might invest in property, but never did they invest in UK industry. German culture was different, banks there have much better investment ideas, they can also see a better return from investing in their own concerns.
The disease of neo-liberalism was enforced on the world so you have things like Renault that the state aren't allowed to own if they are to be in the clubs of the EU/IMF/GATT and what not.
The people that manage companies are not automagically better people just because they work for vulture capitalists instead of the government.
I have a lot more faith in decisions that get made because people put money down then because people put votes down. What's the line? A bet is a tax on bullshit. People say they like lots of things. They'll pay money they had to work to earn for a lot fewer - and they'll think about those a lot harder.
It's interesting to note we now make more cars in the UK than we ever did in the BL era.
It didn't work out well with Bombardier (CS-series).
It should also be noted that the US ended up owning 60.8% of new-GM while Canada owned 11.7% and the unions' benefit fund owned 17.5% with the unsecured bondholders owning the remaining 10%.
I know that it's easy to hate on the bailouts. People think money was given as a gift rather than the loans and ownership stakes which were what actually happened.
In the meantime, they have been offshoring production of parts and vehicles like no one's business. I looked at a new full size truck, and it had 45% domestic content. Most of it is built in China and Mexico. The Ford that I purchased has 75% domestic content.
If it was a gift, who was it a gift to? It wasn't a gift to GM shareholders who received none of it. If the bad-guy in this situation is greedy shareholders looking to layoff workers, they didn't get the government's money.
One can certainly argue against the investment. However, it's hard to say it's a gift. Who was the recipient of that gift? If anything, it would have to be the workers who didn't face mass-unemployment in the wake of a crumbling auto industry.
If the government hadn't bought GM's assets, workers would have been out of jobs very quickly. During the economic crisis, no one had the available capital to take on that risk. The government's investment meant that most of those workers saw stability (or as close to that as could be had).
If you're on the workers' side, the government bailout is the side you need to be on. Shareholders lost everything while workers (for the most part) kept their jobs and benefits. Yes, there have been layoffs and contract re-negotiations, but that's nothing compared to the chaos of tens of thousands of people suddenly jobless concentrated in areas that don't have a lot of other employers (and during an economic crisis).
That doesn't mean that everything is perfect. However, the bailout benefitted workers, not shareholders who lost everything.
Not bailing them is also easier said than done: tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs.
And because the state bailed them out 10 years doesn't mean that the plant in a certain city will stay open for eternity.
Obviously it is GM's prerogative and can do as they please but it is time for politicians to stop falling for the folly. Just like your stocks and mutual funds - diversify your industries and don't rely on one big player.
Not only easier said than done, it's basically I think the hardest thing to do in governance in business.
The reason subsidies exist is because everything flows from these 'tentpole' industries, it's hard to underestimate.
Canada overall has become less diversified in the last 30 years, and less able to build more sophisticated products, which is not good. There are a host of reasons.
Subsidies have never worked. It seems in the end these companies never paid net taxes and the workers lost their jobs anyway. Subsidies are a scam.
I'm skeptical of this, but I don't know that it's wrong. I'm only making this comment in hopes of somebody else more knowledgeable responding to it (either for or against - really I am just curious if subsidies work).
It depends on what you mean by “worked”.
1) Have they allowed a slower and more humane shift of workers to other more competitive industries?
Yes. The GM bailout is a great example.
2) Have they helped keep certain skill sets in a country?
Yes. Undoubtably.
Is this important? I think so but there are opposing arguments.
It can take decades to build up an industry from scratch vs a few years to pivot into a related industry.
Think of how long it would take Germany to swap its automotive engineers and factories to producing tanks vs how long it would take a services based country to start producing tanks.
3) Have they lead to the revitalization of an industry?
This ones a lot more murky and it all depends on what time frame you are looking at and what you think the future will hold.
There are certainly examples of it working between first world countries for limited time periods (a decade or two).
The subsidies should be spent to retrain the workers for hard-to-export and costly-to-automate jobs like electricians, plumbers, etc instead. Part of the funds should support their cost of living during the reskilling period as well.
It is easy to throw shade at politicians, I am sure there were some that genuinely wanted to preserve jobs for the long haul, but sadly they are a minority.
It's far easier to move capital around to different industries. Not so easy to transfer your skills between them.
Frankly I'm glad GM is moving out now while the recession still hasn't hit.
But we do that all the time and with good reason. Blockbuster employees and coal miners for example. At some point the jobs no longer make sense.
Blockbuster disappeared because the technology it was built upon became obsolete. It also didn't require specialized labour skills - the employees just took their retail experience across the street.
This just seems like a different kind of situation to me. Automotive isn't going anywhere, GM just couldn't perform.
edit: I'm reading some other comments about drive trains and EVs & reduced manufacturing requirements due to it. That's interesting. Maybe I should read about this more
Then again, nothing is forever, and the fact that a single factory closes after a decade doesn't exactly disprove the whole model. That is bound to happen in any industry, subsidized or bailed out or not.
That money could have been funneled into social services instead of propping up industries.
You played and lost, you don't get my tax dollars.
Thos jobs pay for the social services of many, and if GM and Ford went kaput, it would wipe out the governments ability to pay for those services.
Now - I'm not saying it's the right thing to subsidize, but in a 'subsidize or collapse' situation, that is the reality.
A corporation has many stakeholders: execs, staff, buyers, suppliers, investors, debtors, and then all the ancillary people who benefit independently - they're all in a power struggle to share in the surpluses.
If a company is facing legit collapse, and the investors are truly willing to bite the bullet, it's because they don't think their is incentive there for them. The surpluses generated may actually be going into the other entities in the power equation: just because investors own the profits does not mean that profits represent the big chunk of surpluses.
My ex-neighbour was a long-tim plant worker, he earned quite a lot, granted he was senior - those are in fact plumb jobs that often pay way above others when you factor healthcare, retirement etc.. Also consider low turnover - most people change jobs every few years and lose a few months pay. When you work in an auto plant, for a bank, for the government etc. the stability factor is a real economic benefit you can calculate.
It's hard to tell if companies are bluffing or not, but in many cases they are not - and it illustrates really where the surpluses are and it's not with them.
There's a big Boeing 777 business case that's used in B-School for accounting, and it basically demonstrates that the project is kind of a loser for them, and they should not invest. But the government came along with incentives, making it worthwhile. It's not a paradox, it's just a lesson in who profits from what and how.
I am totally in favor of letting bankruptcy courts do the job they are best at. All those assets don't just go away, they are put to better use.
A bailout/subsidy for a company is different than a bankruptcy situation.
You can be assured that in a bankruptcy, the factory will probably close, and it's workers laid off. It doesn't matter i some assets are sold off, significant economic activity will dissapear in almost all cases. It's usually better for the economy for a company to survive than not.
It's very unlikely.
A) Plants are tooled for a specific car, often to platforms that are company specific.
B) There is a reason GM is shutting it down, and other companies are probably in the same set of circumstances.
C) Do you think company A wants to buy company B's powerful Union? Uhhh, no! It's not entirely rocket science to train people to make cars.
Thanks for letting me know.
A car company, like 'Jaguar' (similar story) has assets.
Isn't this what the subsidies are all about? If you want diverse industries to move to your region, you need some incentive to attract them.
"Today, GM is continuing to take proactive steps to improve overall business performance including the reorganization of its global product development staffs, the realignment of its manufacturing capacity and a reduction of salaried workforce."
...
Increasing capacity utilization – In the past four years, GM has refocused capital and resources to support the growth of its crossovers, SUVs and trucks, adding shifts and investing $6.6 billion in U.S. plants that have created or maintained 17,600 jobs. With changing customer preferences in the U.S. and in response to market-related volume declines in cars, future products will be allocated to fewer plants next year.
Assembly plants that will be unallocated in 2019 include:
Oshawa Assembly in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.
Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly in Detroit.
Lordstown Assembly in Warren, Ohio.
Baltimore Operations in White Marsh, Maryland.
Warren Transmission Operations in Warren, Michigan.I got to know a few people that worked at the factory. GM announced they were going to pull out of Oshawa more than 5 years ago. They've been operating on borrowed time. Nobody there will be surprised at the news. From what I recall it was mostly impala and camaro assembly happening there.
The GO train takes you right into Toronto, there's no doubt in my mind most of the laidoff will find work.
They just need to do a better job of advertising it. It's not advertised AT ALL. The only people who know about it know about it from word of mouth and research.
"GM is expected to announce it will cut the Chevrolet Volt, Impala and Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and XTS, and the Buick LaCrosse"
More info at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-restructuring/gm-to-cu...
"The company also plans to stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse.
GM said it will shift more investment to electric and autonomous vehicles."
That reads like they're investing in the Volt.
Obviously, they say they are focusing on electric. Maybe they are killing off the hybrid to focus on the purely electric. Maybe some new product will be released to replace it. It is far from clear at the moment.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/26/18112536/gm-layoffs-fact... [2] https://jalopnik.com/general-motors-may-kill-the-chevrolet-v...
"The company also plans to stop building several models now assembled at those plants, including the Chevrolet Cruze, the Cadillac CT6 and the Buick LaCrosse."
And yes, it's not like they're moving back toward the steam engine, but in the short run it might make sense to kill the Volt and do something else. But the optics of it will look bad. Think Reuters got tripped up by the "increase investment in electric and autonomous vehicles and connected vehicle technology" line because it's broad and potentially conflicting.
Here's a selection of top "Chevy Volt" headlines for the past few years:
2015: "Yes the 2016 Chevy Volt Will be Profitable."
2016: "GM Will Lose Money on the Chevy Bolt to Make Money On Other Models"
2017: "GM trims battery costs, aims to make profitable EVs"
2018: "GM races to build a formula for profitable electric cars."
In the larger sense, GM's leadership has been sending some weird messages talking about a future they don't fully understand. Spouting things like blockchain, autonomous, ride sharing, and future profitability being tied to selling customer information. You know, all the apparently popular contemporary trends.
They're a car company.
When I see that word mentioned in any business I get skeptical, especially one where there's a classical product involved, like bananas. Or cars. In this case I strongly believed it was used for adding feathers to their plume and so I used it in a mocking tone. Radio Bloomberg (broadcasts) mentioned the blockchain line with some skepticism for awhile and so it stuck in my head.
None of these parroting futurisms make sense for GM. Their largest customers are fleets like Enterprise Rent a Car, who buy massive numbers of new models before consumers can get to them, assuring delivery numbers. If they compete with them for rentals or ride-sharing, what if ERAC orders a bunch of Fords next year? They'd be crazy to endanger this relationship. GM should stick to making cars and messaging to that effect.
Anyhow, I stand firmly by how I interpreted this announcement. My overall opinion on GM, however, is probably very ignorant and naive.
"A GM spokesperson told Jalopnik over the phone: “We are ending production of the Volt March 1, 2019.”"
> Update (Nov. 26, 2018 10:50 A.M. ET): It is official. A GM spokesperson told Jalopnik over the phone: “We are ending production of the Volt March 1, 2019.”
It's never powered by a gas engine, it just has an onboard generator that produces electricity to power the electric engines or charge the battery when the battery gets drained.
The engine in the Gen2 is connected to the transmission and does provide mechanical force to turn the wheels.
https://gm-volt.com/2015/02/20/gen-2-volt-transmission-opera...
At first GM claimed that it happens only above 70 mph, or when the battery was dead. But then GM goes consistently more vague, and them eliminated this completely in the generation 2 revision.
So the current volt is a bog standard parallel hybrid.
I invested a small portion of my money in GM because I did not have a car manufacturer in my portfolio, and Tesla seemed hyped to me. I considered that GM is making a profit, betting on electric cars and already has an affordable model on the roads that could actually benefit society.
I do not care wheter GM production is in the US, Canada, Mexico or China, as long as the employees are treated fairly. In fact, I would think it is unfair that GM makes a choice that will lead to lower dividends and is held back by something that happened prior to the moment that I invested in it.
I know there are big important things to discuss here (such as the bailout that we all know isn't being paid back and overall manufacturing) but my first emotional response is a certain finger pointed in your general direction.
The bailout presumes a degree of economic health in the region (and perhaps the country) that may not be there. Being bailed out means the employees are on borrowed time.
Money is the bottom line. Failure is necessary. Jobs are a byproduct of consumption and are not a 'right'. If GM pulls out, there will be other places those employees can seek work. If there aren't other places they can get jobs, perhaps Canada should reconsider some of their business regulations (as regulation suppresses numbers of new businesses).
In fact, if the Constitution were taken seriously any more, someone would have noticed the bit about "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
I suppose this is Canada we're talking about, so the above doesn't mean anything in this context.
You duplicate your list by listing taxpayers and government, as the government is the repository of tax money. You also assume the government would have to send any money to a corporation. And how would someone benefit from NOT getting paid at a union auto job instead of getting paid?
I know businesses need to make money, but as another poster said, society is the bottom line.
Because of how the money flows through the system. Instead of products being purchased and driving profits for the company (that then pays the workers), the money comes from the general populous (who get no return for the bailout expenditure), to the government, and is then given to the corporation.
So, the people being paid from bailout money are no longer benefiting the population as a whole, and instead have become parasites that act to divert government money (the population's tax money!) away from the common good.
Nortel did not
Christmas of 2019. This is not an immediate shutdown.
I should also note that my investment in GM is very small. My investment in GM went up about 150$ because of this decision.
I opt'ed for VW as it was very cheap after the scandal and had some of the best brands in the business. Why did you pick GM instead?
1. The scandal itself. I do not want to support a company that has a proven record of not caring about the environment. I understand that this probably applies to all car companies, but VW is the only one that got caught. Getting caught circumventing environmental laws should be something that CEO's are afraid of, and this is an easy way to contribute to that fear. I would not buy a VW for the same reason.
2. I wanted to diversify outside of the EU. The Dutch and German economy are very connected, which would make my portfolio very vulnerable to a recession in either of those two countries.
Moreover, I believe that oil, at least for now, is a necessity for human society and I have no reason to believe that there are other oil companies that are better for the environment than Shell, whereas in the car industry there are plenty of viable alternatives.
GM is hedging their bets at best. Right now the Volt and Bolt are compliance cars that allow the remainder of their fleet to be inefficient and still meets CAFE standards.
If a small child manages to wipe his/her own nose then they can be told 'well done!' but it isn't an achievement really. You would not commend a grown adult for keeping their face clean.
This GM company has been going for a century and for most of that time their products have shown no effort to be considerate of the environment. Stop-start is not rocket science. Light hybrid vehicles are not rocket science. A small child can see the absurdity of cities gridlocked by slow moving or completely stationary vehicles all of them spewing exhaust for no reason. If not the environment it is a waste of petrol. Stop-start has only came along in the last few years, this could have been marketed to people as the thing to have, who doesn't want a nice quiet car when stuck in traffic?
But GM never bothered to do stop-start, something that is a nice engineering challenge, not beyond the realms of impossible. In fairness none of their rivals took this route until the laws made CO2 and other emissions a problem for them.
We know from EV cars that going down hills does not mean lots of heavy braking, you can store the energy and save the brakes. It would not have been impossible for GM to implement something similar, even fifty years ago a solution could have been worked out with a mechanical flywheel, maybe using the already present battery as the mass for that. GM - and the others - never even bothered with that.
The aerodynamics of a car is another aspect where GM failed. It is not hard and even with no wind tunnel it can be deduced that tucking in the windscreen wipers, door handles and other parts will improve the efficiency. The underside of GM (and other) cars is a joke when it comes to aero. They just never bothered.
My background is bicycles where a 4 watt gain is pretty good. A 4 Kg weight saving is epic, the difference between a Tour de France bike and what a mere mortal can afford is 4 Kg. The chrome trim on a GM effort weighs more than my heaviest steel mountain bike. Obviously my heavy mountain bike is actually quicker than any GM product through a congested city and I certainly don't have a V8 motor in my inner core.
So where is this Bolt thing really? Are we talking rocket surgery or a kid being applauded because they have wiped their own nose?
It is easy to criticise when you haven't built a car yourself, sure the realities of mass manufacturing are hard, but I don't think GM have ever really tried. There may be many jobs and communities dependent on GM but there were many jobs and communities dependent on the predecessor companies that made buggies in the Detroit area. The sooner GM is gone the better able the rest of the automotive trade can get on with providing people with cars more in line with Ford's vision, circa Model T era, before GM came along with their planned obsolescence and before the Dodge brothers shafted Ford as best as they could.
Tesla is the only manufacturer right now that's 100% committed to EVs. Everyone else is either making compliance cars or legally obligated to dabble.
That's not really what the term "compliance car" means in general use.
A compliance car is a lazy rebadge of some other vehicle, that only exists to meet compliance. The Ford Energi vehicles are compliance cars. The Chevy Spark EV is a compliance car.
The Volt and Bolt were mostly unique designs, with state-of-the-art technology, and were generally the best electrics available in the US to date (second only to Tesla). The Volt has the highest customer satisfaction rate of any car sold in the US. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1080762_chevy-volt-elec... .
Yes, these vehicles help Chevy meet compliance (as any efficient car technically does), but they are not "compliance cars" by the normal definition of that phrase.
The term "compliance car" in general use refers to cars produced to be in compliance with a regulation. More specifically the cars you sited were produced to be in compliance with CARB standards.
The Volt/Bolt are compliance cars for CAFE, which unlike CARB specifies that fleet is a reference to cars for sale in the United States.
As I said in my original post, GM is probably hedging it's bets by developing the technologies that will scale up to it's entire fleet but has no desire to do so.
When the Bolt launched, GM said they were going all electric and would be launching 18 EV models by 2023. So far we haven't heard anything about new models and the Bolt is speculated to be losing GM up to $9000 per car. Maybe those 18 models were just re-badges of the Bolt for different markets?
There is more to be said about the purpose of providing liability shields and corporate rights in exchange for positive contribution to society and the economy; employment is by far the largest benefit society derives from those.
And yet, most on HN seem perfectly happy to give Amazon huge tax breaks to setup in NY, which is exactly the same thing.
Thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454215
In no way is "here's billions of dollars, hopefully that'll save you!" the same thing as "move here and we'll cut your taxes by 20% per year for the next 25 years, up to a maximum of $x, as long as you hire this many people and pay them at least this much, and also x, y, and z."
One is highly speculative, one is essentially guaranteed.
It's remarkable that you can say they're the same with a straight face.
In Australia it was estimated that each auto job produces 6 other jobs through network effects [1]. All up that number would be fairly substantial and likely enough to justify some subsidies/bailouts.
[1] - https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Sen...
In 2008 and its aftermath the U.S. ran up huge budget deficits, and the Federal Reserve for the first time monetized enormous amounts of debt. That was all money that the government did not have.
Besides, money is fungible. It doesn't matter if an entity has the money or can quickly raise it, especially if when it has the money it was already earmarked (or soon was going to be) for some other particular purposes.
Ford recently announced ceasing production of all sedans in favor of SUV's. GM said it wouldn't follow suit but it looks like the market might be dictating terms.
This shutdown is a bellwether, not just a cost move.
Pick your favorite reason to minimise your crude oil consumption. Global warming and not subsidising oil despots are two good ones to me.
I don't know too many people who could afford a $20k car to drive to work and then a $40k truck just to park in their garage 95% of the time. And if they can, they're buying a BMW instead.
People tend to buy more engine than they need, and 1.8L's are more powerful than ever. And nobody had 300hp thirty years ago except the sports cars. We survived.
I'm guessing the next argument will be "yeah but no one needs a 5,000 lb camper" to which I will say "why do you need a camper or car at all if you're trying to save the environment" to which the response will be "yeah but" and then I'll come back with "but no" and then I'll get yelled at by `dang so let's skip all that and say someone buying a 3.6L engine they don't need is a bad thing but so is the self-righteous idea that what works for you must always work for everyone else, and then agree that we're not going to solve the world's climate problems with throwaway HN comments.
My first car, 45 years ago!, was a '66 Chevrolet Impala with a standard, small block, run of the mill, 283cu in. (4.6L) engine. The motor was blown so I bought a used one for $75 and swapped it out myself. Took about 6 weeks because I had never done it before.
The 283 was rated between 200 and 345hp. It was my daily driver for school (hardly a sports car) until markvdb's "oil despots" tripled the price of gas. I sold the Impala and bought a Volvo 144S with a 1.8L 4 cyl. engine.
Neither car (or engine) was ever able to get better than 25+ mpg and the Volvo made you very aware of how much power you had available.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#SAE_gross_power
The '66 Impala was a heavy car and I didn't purchase it for racing. I did put a heavy duty clutch plate into it when I replaced the engine. It did burnouts just fine until I snapped the welds on the rear differential and sent the universal joint banging upward against the bottom of the car. Learned a little bit about welding, u-joints and spider gears on that one.
You could just rent a truck when you need to transport something that's beyond the car's capabilities.
That’s why my car has 300hp and my next will as well. But I don’t pretend I’m saving the environment or that it’s practical.
Very much topic-related.
Not sure where you're going with the "oil despots" statement. That seems off-topic.
What should have happened: GM Fails, GM assets inevitably acquired by someone else. Business involves risk, taxpayers shouldn't subsidize that risk.
Yes, liquidation is the answer when the patient is insolvent and bankrupt.
In a systemic crisis, however, our bankruptcy courts cannot move fast enough. That is a problem that needs to be tackled, otherwise scared politicians will always have enough time to reach for bailouts.
> GM or any other automaker with manufacturing operations in North America going belly up would have contributed to an even larger disaster
Is an equally bold claim and is often asserted without citing a single thing.
It's also how every crisis was handled until the Great Depression. Then we resorted to massive intervention to prevent liquidation. This experiment was repeated in the 90s in Japan, leading to two lost decades of economic growth. We don't seem to want to learn.
Its so awful when you lose your job because the job goes away. So many people are going to have to retrain.
Our Hydro prices are about middle-of-the-road in North America. We have a tiered-use system that sees prices as high as 13.2¢/kWh On-Peak (during the day) and 6.5¢/kWh Off-peak (at night), with an average around 8-9¢/kWh IIRC. Far from expensive, but when everyone compares our prices to Quebec (one of the cheapest in NA and is something around 4¢/kWh average IIRC) it seems astronomical.
Labour rates generally aren't too crazy either, we do have a relatively high minimum wage of $14/hr, but when unions start to run the show and wages become "competitive" it starts getting out of hand. Cami is in my hometown and IIRC the average employee takes home something around $35/hr. Toyota in Woodstock and Cambridge are over $35/hr at their highest rate, even though they aren't unionized, but they still have to pay competitive wages or they'd never have enough employees. A lot of the feeder plants (i.e. the places that make components; engines, doors, etc) are in the $20-25/hr range and they have an astronomically high turnover rate, nobody wants to do the work unless there's huge money involved. I'm wondering if this is the reason; why pay thousands of ungrateful employees >$30/hr for work that can be done for <$10/hr virtually anywhere else on the planet? Even by the time you factor in the costs of shipping vehicles it's gotta be thousands of dollars cheaper per-vehicle. It can't be easy to justify the cost to shareholders unless the (monetary) benefits massively outweigh the cons
Maybe because Ontario has ridiculous housing costs?
Id be happy to work for $15/hr if I could get a decent 3 bedroom house for $70-80k.
I mean seriously mortgage costs + $11/hr on top and I would be happy.
Yet even somewhere like London it will cost 400k+ and just forget about Toronto.
These seem like unusual expectations.
Are there any decent areas anywhere in the country with these kinds of prices? That seems abnormally low. Also a $15 wage single income isn't supposed to support a 3bd house.
Because if everyone does this, you wouldn't have any customers that can afford to buy your $35-$70,000 cars.
While that might not be completely true...gas prices are down. I'm talking $1.45 to $0.99 / L.
As someone who drives ~ 3 hrs a day (and all my friends do too) - We do appreciate the reduction in the gas price.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not sure, but looking at the average gas price in Ontario (no cap and trade), Quebec (cap and trade) and Canada on [1], the same kinda of savings existed all around, so we can't really credit the removal of the cap and trade. Overlaying the price of cure, it does seem to have had more to do with the massive price drop in crude.
(source: Ashlee Vance's bio)