Friday, Jul 24, 2009
All roads lead to Rome.
Sky: Car Production Falls By More Than 30%
"As production volumes and registrations begin to stabilise, Government must help to sustain consumer confidence and encourage banks to deliver the credit industry needs."
Posted by devo @ 01:25 PM (1336 views) Add Comment
17 Comments
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1. flashman said...
Imagine how far it would have fallen without the scrappage nonsense. I do wish the government would stop fiddling with things.
The car industry is hopelessly old fashioned and it is scandalous how little technology they have put into their cars. We landed on the moon 40 years ago, so why does my car have the same controls and engine type that a car had 100 years ago. The best I've ever got out of the piece of shit was 22 mpg.
Market forces should be allowed to destroy these anachronistic, backward looking companies so that we can get transport that doesn't pollute and gives us 200mpg. I'm sure they could do it if was a choice of do it or die
2. happy mondays said...
@ flash,
so why does my car have the same controls and engine type that a car had 100 years ago. The best I've ever got out of the piece of shit was 22 mpg.
You know why ? It's in the oil company's interest to keep it that way, until they have found something else, just as, if not more profitable to sell us, & justify the selling of it at the price that keeps them happy.
3. happy mondays said...
Here we go flash, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20090724/tod-oukoe-uk-bicycles-japan-116e0fe.html
Enjoy the ride..
4. flashman said...
happy: interesting stuff
5. timmy t said...
I saw a guy on one of these a couple of weeks ago. He must have been 70 and was flying along. The fact that the govt is bailing out the car industry but lets a wind turbine factory close without doing anything makes me think that Happy Mondays has hit the nail on the head.
6. yoyo1 said...
I tip bucket loads of veg oil into my astra and it actually improves the performance including mpg. It's obvious to me that the oil industry and government are not committed to improvements or change or green energy at all, herbivorous cars have a zero carbon footprint as it's renewable, so I'm told.
7. down wave said...
Timmy: - There’s no tax income on wind turbine blades so why should our government support the
company?
There is no tax on electric car energy, you can plug it in and charge it anywhere.
The tax income on petroleum fuels for transport is gigantic, so the government would if
necessary give everyone a car, so why make them efficient? Why bother to save a few
kilograms of CO2?
The planet’s forest have been destroyed by logging and fire, bush fires liberate more carbon
than man. The current drive by politicians for us to reduce our carbon footprint, by
comparison has nothing to do with saving the planet. It is entirely about making all of us feel
guilty, too introvert all of us down into grovelling appeasement and chronic apathy, too
control us and extract money (slave labour) from us.
8. wally said...
Fascinating programme on TV a few months back called 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'. The answer was the suspects as already pointed out above.
But very briefly the US had a lead in delivering this technology. California had a law that forced manufacturers to produce electric vehicles, and so major manufacurers got stuck in to making and selling them. A car called the EV1 sold the most. Then the US government intervened and the law was repealed. All EV1s were forcibly recalled and the manufacturer scrapped them.
And who made the EV1? It was GM. They were leaders in the electric car industry and they blew it.
9. denzil said...
Whatever happened to water-powered cars?
10. shipbuilder said...
It's an interesting point raised by Flash and one i've often wondered about. It's true that cars are pretty much the same as they were 50 or more years ago. Competition amongst car makers is fierce. So why hasn't the free market delivered the leaps in technology that it should have? Could it be that the free market does not actually deliver what it claims to? The reality is that most leaps in technology come out of University and government-funded establishments. In a large corporation, evolving too fast for the 'market' can lead to commercial death. Could large corporations competing in a free market, while undoubtedly good at improving existing technology and making it cheaper, actually hold back real progress?
11. charlie brooker said...
@wally
"Fascinating programme on TV a few months back called 'Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Free to watch on Google Video:
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=who+killed+the+electric+car&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
You may not know it but Los Angeles once had a public rail system that rivalled cities like London but back around the late 19th century a combination of oil car and tyre companies saw to it that that network was bought and dismantled ensuring Los Angeleans became almost completely dependent on the car for transportation. This happened in many other US cities too.
Most big European and Asian cities have there own rail systems. Ever notice how most US cities don't? That difference didn't happen by accident.
12. Europeanbear said...
The greatest single improvement in industrial production and innovation the world as ever seen was between 1941 and 1943 in the Soviet Union, that well known bastion of capitalism. From having antiquated military equipment in grossly inadequate quantities allowed Hitler to get to the outskirts of Moscow. The Soviet Industrial comeback from behind the Urals was astonishing...
13. alan_540 said...
@7 downwave... Couldn't agree more!
14. last_days_of_disco said...
Maybe the car is just a good idea and till you have a better one you are going to be stuck with it. I don't buy the, we haven't improved them yet thing. Cars are massively better than they used to be. Much safer and cleaner and prettier.
15. shipbuilder said...
13. last_days_of_disco said...
"Maybe the car is just a good idea and till you have a better one you are going to be stuck with it. I don't buy the, we haven't improved them yet thing. Cars are massively better than they used to be. Much safer and cleaner and prettier."
Of course they are better built, more reliable and so on, but still fundamentally the same, with the same IC engine. The same could be said of many other consumer products. Having worked in product development, I know that large corporations are very conservative when it comes to big changes - it is built into the way they work and management/marketing/design theory. it's not just technological progress that (with obvious exceptions) has stagnated over the last few decades - we seem to readily buy into the delusion that we have reached near the peak of progress and got the fundamentals of our economy and politics right (a view heavily promoted by the neocons following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc). This is what i am questioning.
16. Skeptical First Time Buyer said...
I've recently left the automotive industry. I designed fuel injectors for large trucks.
There have been improvements, it's about focus. There has been a revolution in emissions reduction in terms of soot NOx uburnt hydrocarbons (not Carbon dioxide). This revolution has come about through legislation from various government mandating emissions criteria. For example US2010 next in the US, and in Europe we will have EURO VI regulations coming on line. It all started with clean air acts in california. If you change nothing else on the vehicle, some of what you do to reduce particulates, can actually decrease the efficiency. There is the weight of the catalytic converters. Also the fuel injection system uses very high pressures to achieve a good "atomized" spray, that allows clean burning. For diesels we are talking multiple 1000s of bar pressure, and this costs energy.
Having said all that a lot has been done for efficiency too. Accurate timing and fuel quantity control can bring big dividends.
I do not agree with the statement that things have not improved. If we take trucks while average fuel consumption has stayed the their carrying capacity for that consumption has gone up markedly.
I understand your view on cars, the fuel consumption has stated roughly the same for a long time. I will explain why. modern cars tend to be heavier with a lot of additional kit, air bags, air cons, sat nav, electric windows, etc. The engines have improved a great deal but, the focus has been performance, not fuel economy. Acceleration and top speeds have increased whilst maintaining similar fuel consumption. If the industry had focussed on efficiency we would have efficiency, it didn't. It also didn't need to when fuel prices were low. the industry will change focus with the oil price.
As for the industry as a whole there are two many companies making cars to support the global demand, so some of them need to fail.
17. Puppee said...
if they want to sell more its quite simple really but it might be a bit radical for these car companies to comprehend drop the bleeding prices then