GM facts and fiction

[Gene]

But the larger and heavier, the more fuel of some sort, whether gas, diesel or electric. Obvious to me if Newtonian physics still rules on Earth, more mass costs more to move. A giant MOHO or a bus has even more mass and an Abrams tank would be the ultimate. Individual vehicles of the same mass are different in safety ratings and some smaller vehicles are engineered better for safety than some larger ones.

Death rates aren't necessarily a measure of safety. Part of it is the type of drivers who drive certain kinds of vehicles (some of them are called "teenagers") and I suppose somewhere out there is a survey of who are the safer drivers and what they buy. I think there's something to learn from the death rates of pickups compared to SUV's since many SUV's are built on pickup platforms. Others are cars underneath, so statistics should differentiate between platforms. I can't figure out why pickups are so much more dangerous—bad drivers buy pickups? Light rear end causes spin outs in snow? The big ones are certainly heavy, so the death rate should be comparable to cars and SUV's the same weight if mass rules. The numbers are interesting and, to me, raise more questions.

I once rented a Ford Aspire. It was cheap to rent and so small and built so badly, it was scary. It was so low to the ground that when I ran over a pot on a Florida interstate (I couldn't get out of the lane at that moment), it sounded like I ripped the engine out before I stopped. I don't know why a pot was on the road, maybe it fell out of an RV. My wife wasn't happy with that rental. I never rented anything like that again, although a Mitsubishi car I rented another time had the worst brakes I've ever experienced. If those were the only small cars I ever drove, I'd never ride in another one.

If the vehicle fleet gets smaller, small vehicles become safer because there are fewer big ones to crush them. Given that energy is going to get more expensive, most vehicles will be smaller. There will still be vehicles big enough to tow a trailer or bring a pallet of cinderblock to a construction site, but they'll have to be more fuel efficient.

Gene

[overlander63]

The pickup accident problem is twofold. The bed is light, which can result in spinouts, and the cab roof is not reinforced very well, resulting in collapse of the roof in a rollover.
SUVs built on pickup chassis tend to be more top heavy, as you are taking an already heavy vehicle, adding more weight higher up with seats, roof, etc, and then usually jacking the whole works up in the air several inches besides. That was a big issue with the Ford Explorer, it was a Ranger with several hundred pounds more weight in the roofline, jacked up another 6 inches in the air.

[Larry in MO]

Originally Posted by 53flyingcloud

Greetings Larry~
My experiences was so much different than yours. When I was a teenager, due to relatives, I got to visit one Nike site in the Tidewater, Va. area. It was manned by the ARMY personnel, not the US Air Force.
ciao
53FC

You're right! For some reason, I was sure it was the Air Force. I called my older sister in Nevada and she affirmed your statement and added that some were run by the Army National Guard, as well.

Thanks for correcting me!

[craftsman]

I'd like to see more of these. My 96 Mini Cooper. Sold it last year and really miss it.

[Larry in MO]

Originally Posted by cooperhawk

How about this. Instead of giving the money to the auto industry, Let's offer every American citizen several thousand dollars if they will buy a vehicle from one of the big 3.

It would work, Hawk, until the people that don't have any money would wonder why they could not get a new car like the rest of the folks that have jobs. It would escalate to "elitism" and class warfare, etc.

[wheel interested]

Instead of several thousand how about 7 thousand? It was in the energy speech.

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/facts...ech_080308.pdf

Invest in Developing Advanced Vehicles and Put 1 Million Plugin
Electric Vehicles on the Road
by 2015. As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama has led efforts to jumpstart federal investment in
advanced vehicles, including combined plug‐in hybrid/flexible fuel vehicles, which can get over
150 miles per gallon of gas As president, Obama will continue this leadership by investing in
advanced vehicle technology with a specific focus on R&D in advanced battery technology. The
increased federal funding will leverage private sector funds and support our domestic automakers
to bring plug‐in hybrids and other advanced vehicles to American consumers. Barack Obama and
Joe Biden will also provide a $7,000 tax credit for the purchase of advanced technology vehicles as
well as conversion tax credits. And to help create a market and show government leadership in
purchasing highly efficient cars, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will commit to:

o

Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to

plug‐ins as security permits; and

o

Half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug‐in hybrids or all‐electric

by 2012

And here's a part for you'll like Redshed

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities.
Over the long term, we know that the

amount of fuel we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns.

For the last 100 years, our communities have been organized around the principle of cheap

gasoline. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that we must devote substantial resources to

repairing our roads and bridges. They also believe that we must devote significantly more

attention to investments that will make it easier for us to walk, bicycle and access other

transportation alternatives. They are committed to reforming the federal transportation funding

and leveling employer incentives for driving and public transit

You all might want to give it a look see and we can all start over and approach it all from the president elect's standpoints. There is very much germaine to the previous discussions in this thread.

Such as

Senator Obama pushed for $50 billion in loan guarantees to help the auto industry retool, develop new battery technologies and produce the next generation of fuel efficient cars here in America. Congress passed only half of this amount.

Probably explains why during the hearing the big 3 could not say why they asked for 25, they did not, as noted by one of them. that was the appropriated amount. What they want is a lifeline and they will be as prudent as possible but it all depends how long the economic downturn lasts how much is needed to bridge the gap.

Their failing was not due to inferior or undesired products or mismanagement, (not to say it could not have been better, leaner and more friendly to workers) it was due to credit drying up to front production and consumer loans.

Ford came in with a profit first quarter before the economy plummeted and GM had been downsizing. Ford and Chevies are good products. The new Chevy SUVs are more stable than ever lowering the platform and responded with smaller engines and increased safety features.

[mrmossyone]

[quote=CrawfordGene;640897]But the larger and heavier, the more fuel of some sort, whether gas, diesel or electric. Obvious to me if Newtonian physics still rules on Earth, more mass costs more to move. [/quote]

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

Not necessarily true. There are many variables that can allow a larger car to get better mileage than a smaller one. I.E large displacement, low rpm, very high geared rearend,etc. For example my Roadmaster gets better mileage than several if not most midsize cars. If a motor has to work harder to move its mass because of less displacemnt, hp, torque, etc. it will use more fuel. Now granted all things being even except for mass then the vehicle with less mass will get better mileage.


Death rates aren't necessarily a measure of safety. Part of it is the type of drivers who drive certain kinds of vehicles (some of them are called "teenagers") and I suppose somewhere out there is a survey of who are the safer drivers and what they buy.

Granted in individual cases there could be many more variables that cause a fatality but over a large number of samples the average will sift out the other variables, so to speak.


I can't figure out why pickups are so much more dangerous—bad drivers buy pickups? Light rear end causes spin outs in snow? The big ones are certainly heavy, so the death rate should be comparable to cars and SUV's the same weight if mass rules. .

Most pickups have a higher center of gravity than cars even than SUVs, even SUVs built on the same platform. Trucks tend to have much stiffer suspensions as well, coupled with a much lighter rearend you have a higher probability of a rollover or spinout and since the cabs aren't reinforced as well you have a higher probability of a fatality.


If the vehicle fleet gets smaller, small vehicles become safer because there are fewer big ones to crush them.

In two accidents where everything is identical except for mass, where in one accident two 2800 lb. cars collide and in the other two 4800lb. cars collide the people in the larger vehicles with more mass still have a higher probability of surviving. Here is some more data:

According to a 2003 NHTSA study, when a vehicle is reduced by 100 pounds the estimated fatality rate increases as much as 5.63 percent for light cars weighing less than 2,950 pounds, 4.70 percent for heavier cars weighing over 2,950 pounds and 3.06 percent for light trucks. Between model years 1996 and 1999, these rates translated into additional traffic fatalities of 13,608 for light cars, 10,884 for heavier cars and 14,705 for light trucks.12
Gene

I guess I haven't mastered editing within a qoute it said I had to enter more words, that's what this is.

[mrmossyone]

I know this is off topic but for anyone interested in the safety aspects of the "green" econoboxes and subsequent "savings" to you and our society then here you go.


According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimate, implementing this change will cost American consumers over $6.71 billion in added vehicle expenses from 2007-2011.5 Yet Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, calculates that the fuel savings will be a mere 0.44 billion gallons of gasoline annually.6 On average, U.S. cars and light trucks consume some 11 billion gallons of gasoline each month.

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) proposed burdensome across-the-board legislation to increase CAFE standards to 35 mpg on both light trucks and cars by model year 2017.

But such increases have unintended safety consequences for the safety of drivers and passengers. The reason is because carmakers build lighter and smaller cars that burn less fuel to comply with CAFE standards.11 The trade-off is these lighter, smaller cars fare much worse in violent crashes, resulting in greater rates of death and injury for occupants.

A number of studies have documented the lethal consequences of requiring carmakers to improve fuel standards.

* According to a 2003 NHTSA study, when a vehicle is reduced by 100 pounds the estimated fatality rate increases as much as 5.63 percent for light cars weighing less than 2,950 pounds, 4.70 percent for heavier cars weighing over 2,950 pounds and 3.06 percent for light trucks. Between model years 1996 and 1999, these rates translated into additional traffic fatalities of 13,608 for light cars, 10,884 for heavier cars and 14,705 for light trucks.12
* A 2001 National Academy of Sciences panel found that constraining automobile manufacturers to produce smaller, lighter vehicles in the 1970s and early 1980s "probably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993."13

* An extensive 1999 USA Today analysis of crash data found that since CAFE went into effect in 1978, 46,000 people died in crashes they otherwise would have survived, had they been in bigger, heavier vehicles. This, according to a 1999 USA Today analysis of crash data since 1975, roughly figures to be 7,700 deaths for every mile per gallon gained in fuel economy standards.14
* The USA Today report also said smaller cars - such as the Chevrolet Cavalier or Dodge Neon - accounted for 12,144 fatalities or 37 percent of vehicle deaths in 1997, though such cars comprised only 18 percent of all vehicles.15
* A 1989 Harvard-Brookings study estimated CAFE "to be responsible for 2,200-3,900 excess occupant fatalities over ten years of a given [car] model years' use." Moreover, the researchers estimated between 11,000 and 19,500 occupants would suffer serious but nonfatal crash injuries as a result of CAFE.16
* The same Harvard-Brookings study found CAFE had resulted in a 500-pound weight reduction of the average car. As a result, occupants were put at a 14 to 27 percent greater risk of traffic death.17
* Passengers in small cars die at a much higher rate when involved in traffic accidents with large cars. Traffic safety expert Dr. Leonard Evans estimates that drivers in lighter cars may be 12 times as likely to be killed in a crash when the other vehicle is twice as heavy as the lighter car.18

[mrmossyone]

Here are some very interesting quotes from experts in the field:

In addition to the above studies, the following quotes provide a quick reference point of safety experts' results and statements on the consequences of CAFE regulations as they relate to vehicle safety.

* "The negative relationship between weight and occupant fatality risk is one of the most secure findings in the safety literature."
-Dr. Robert W. Crandall, Brookings Institution, and John D. Graham, Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health19
* "Why Does CAFE kill? It does so because it constrains the production of larger cars and, in most modes of collision, larger, heavier cars are more protective of their occupants than are small cars."
-Sam Kazman, Competitive Enterprise Institute20
* "[I]n terms of just the total number of lives, when I purchase a larger car, there is a reduction of risk. I'm safer, and so is society overall... We can conclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that when weight is reduced, as it must be under CAFE, we will increase casualties."
-Dr. Leonard Evans, physicist, author of Traffic Safety and president of Science Serving Society21
* "During the past 18 years, the office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress, the National Safety Council, the Brookings Institution, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the General Motors Research Laboratories and the National Academy of Sciences all agreed that reductions in the size and weight of passenger cars pose a safety threat."
-National Highway Traffic Safety Administration22
* "If you want to solve the safety puzzle, get rid of small cars."
-Brian O'Neill, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety23
* "CAFE is a solution in search of a problem."
-Dr. Robert W. Crandall, Brookings Institution24
* "The evidence is overwhelming that CAFE standards result in more highway deaths."
-Charli E. Coon, J.D., Heritage Foundation25
* "The conclusion is that CAFE has caused, and is causing, increased deaths.... CAFE kills, and higher CAFE standards will kill even more."
-Dr. Leonard Evans, physicist, author of Traffic Safety and President of Science Serving Society26

[mrmossyone]

Okay here is some more....
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Just kidding, I'm done...................for now...................

[hampstead38]

"Ford and Chevies are good products."

If enough car buyers agreed with you, then Ford and Chevy would not need government money. And if banks believed more people felt like you, then Ford and GM would be able to secure loans from private sources rather than from the U.S. taxpayer. If I liked GM's chances as a company, I would buy their stock. I really don't like the idea that rather than engage in legitimate public services, the federal government is going to use my tax money (and yours) to make a speculative investment in a private firm that I consider fundamentally unsound.

[wheel interested]

Maybe you're right. But of the three crises of housing, credit and finances, I don't think we have seen the worst of it. And that fear, like mine, means that many are not parting with their money.

I don't know how the government handles its money and its debt. And I don't know why the three motor companies are failing but suspect many businesses will fail and not because of anything they have done themselves.

Maybe the government thinks it will run out of money for legitimate public services if the situation gets much worse and the unemployment keeps rising. I suspect they want to intervene on behalf of the citizens to evade still more dire straits.

To impress others that if they do not risk the chance of making things better, things will get much worse is probably where it stands now. And there are no guarantees. The best argument is that it will affect so many others all over the nation and world. Of course being affected by it currently in Michigan, Michiganers probably feel they are worth saving on their own rite. When an area loses its industry and workers are looking for jobs that don't exist well you know the rest. The state runs out of funds because no one is paying into the state, more business and jobs collapse. People lose their homes, their pay check, their savings, their retirement, their health care, schools close, then multiply that and then multiply it again.

[RedSHED]

I'm sure we all hold thoughts about vehicle safety that are as personal and individual as undergarments as well.

Personally, I'm convinced that it's around 95% operator, here are some links to some data that haven't had a whole lot of interpretation applied to them.
I suspect when the 2008 data comes out sometime next year, we'll see a tremendous drop off in fatalities per registered vehicle due to the lower number of miles driven in 08 vs 07, and maybe by passenger mile too, since speeds were down slightly in the peak travel months.

From the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
Fatality Facts 2007
and
HDLI Insurance Losses by make & Model.

Buried in both of these, if you dig, are some interesting relationships between crash tests (also available on line) and real world data.


For a decent rule of thumb: when in doubt, go Swedish.

[Ganaraska]

Originally Posted by thatscool

I am not shocked that some dont want to LOAN the auto companies money. Those mean spirited posts like the one from "Ganaraska" are hurtful. I am a union member, thats how I support my children, thats how I hope to send them to college so they can get a better education than I had. So someday my son could take advantage of his many talents. So what your saying is you just dont care that my ex wife will lose her home because I cant pay child support? and next year it will be forgotton?
What do you do for a living? if your going to attack others, put your rate of pay for us to see and evaluate. Ill tell you if your worth it. Where do you work? I would like to post sensless negative posts over the internet in high hopes I may ruin you financially!

Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of America, AFL-CIO Affiliate, Local 1240 and proud of it.

At the present time I have a 1996 Chev Suburban, a 1980 Chev motorhome, a 1998 Lincoln Town Car, a 1951 DeSoto, and a 1972 Travelux in my driveway. All made in North America. So don't blame me for not buying American. I have supported the US auto industry with MY OWN MONEY all my life.

It's funny you should mention rate of pay. 20 years ago I bought a Renault LeCar to get some cheap mileage. It sat in my driveway with a Chev van and a Chev pickup truck. A friend who worked at GM gave me hell for buying a foreign car.

I said "Excuse me? Are you trying to tell me the $5 an hour man should lower his standard of living to subsidize the $25 an hour man?".

I might mention that in my whole life, I have never made even half what a GM line employee makes. Yet I manage to live quite comfortably and have money in the bank.

This is all neither here nor there. GM's problems did not start overnight and will not end overnight. We put the skids under the auto industry 40 years ago. No one wanted the auto industry around, no one wanted to support it, everyone wanted to milk it for all it's worth. Now it's too late to cry about it.

If your talents are really so valuable you should have no trouble getting a job that pays as much as you make now.

And if they aren't, you should count your blessings for being so overpaid all these years, and try to be philosophical about joining the rest of us who haven't been so lucky.

I might also add, that I have been hard up too and no GM employee ever offered the slightest sympathy for me. Even now, it would be possible to save GM if the executives and the union agreed to reduce their compensation to only double or triple what the average worker makes. But I'm not expecting to see that happen.

There have been too many handouts and bailouts for fat cats already.

[toastie]

UAW Losing Pay Edge: Foreign Automakers' Bonuses Boost Wages in U.S. Plants as Detroit Car Companies Struggle

UAW Losing Pay Edge: Foreign Automakers' Bonuses Boost Wages in U.S. Plants as Detroit Car Companies Struggle: aftermarket News

[cooperhawk]

Originally Posted by Larry in MO

It would work, Hawk, until the people that don't have any money would wonder why they could not get a new car like the rest of the folks that have jobs. It would escalate to "elitism" and class warfare, etc.

True, however if the bail out goes through the same is true. The auto makers get money and no one else does. Not fair either.

Now, in reality three hundred milllion people would not buy new vehicles. A lot of them are too young or to old to drive anyway.

But let's say that three million do. Then the twenty five billion would be more than eight thousand dollars a buyer. That much would probably motivate me to trade up.

The trick is to get the money moving in the economy. This way the auto makers benefit as well as taxpayers. The fall out to all the supporting industries would be huge as well.

Next, take most if not all of the restrictions off US Industry! We have been programed to hate big business and in most cases its just wrong. Have you thought about who owns the Oil companies, auto makers, airlines, ect. Check your mutual funds. WE ALL DO!

[Larry in MO]

Originally Posted by cooperhawk

Have you thought about who owns the Oil companies, auto makers, airlines, ect. Check your mutual funds. WE ALL DO!

I know it, you know it, but most folks believe, for some reason, that "big business" is bad. Too much bumper sticker politics, I guess.

Let's say, for example, if suddenly there were no more ExxonMobil or Conoco Phillips. Anyone up for trying to go find your own gasoline? The oil is not $50/barrel but free-all you have to do it find it, drill for it, store it, transport it, build a refinery for it, refine it, transport it some more, and then use it. That ought to be cheap enough! And, as a plus, no more complaining about "Big Oil"!!

[Air2Go]

"Carmakers have to be steered by market forces" (Irwin Stelzer piece from The Sunday Times [London] this morning):

Set out a giant honeypot and the bears will come. And the more bearish they are about their prospects, the faster they will come, and the louder they will grunt. The Bush administration presides over a giant honeypot, containing some $350 billion. And a smaller one, with a mere $25 billion already promised to the begging bowls of the three US carmakers. This smaller pot comes with too many restrictions — money must be used only to produce greener vehicles — to suit the “Detroit Three”.

So the carmakers want Congress and the White House to dip into the money originally intended to help financial institutions weather the current credit crisis, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp).

President Bush and Treasury secretary Hank Paulson don’t want to bail out the carmakers, and so are arguing that they do not have the legal authority to transfer Tarp money to a purpose not authorised in the legislation.

If GM is on the verge of bankruptcy, says the administration, all the Democrats in Congress have to do is remove the green conditions, and the initial $25 billion will flow to GM and others to meet their immediate cash needs. By the time they burn through that cash pile — at current rates that will take a few months — Barack Obama will be sitting in the Oval Office, from which perch he can decide how much taxpayer money he wants to commit to satisfying the seemingly insatiable appetite of the cash-guzzling trio.

The politics are clear. The United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which claims more than a million active and retired members, helped deliver the key state of Michigan to Obama. They are calling in their IOU.

Two things surprised the car-company bosses when they appeared before Congress last week. The first is the weight of the baggage carried by their principal spokesman, GM chief executive Rick Wagoner, whose company is in worse shape than Chrysler, and in far worse shape than Ford, which says it can survive without aid through 2009.

Wagoner contends that GM’s problems stem from a short-term liquidity crisis caused by high oil prices, tight credit and consumer reluctance to spend — all forces beyond the control of management. But Wagoner has been boss since 2000 and at GM for 31 years. During this period its market share has sunk from over 50% to 20%, its losses have mounted so that it is haemorrhaging over $2 billion in cash every month, and repeated efforts to restructure the company have failed.

The sad truth is that GM has too many workers making too few cars that people want, being sold through too many dealers at prices too low to turn a profit.

A second surprise for GM, Ford and Chrysler has been the extent and intensity of the opposition to a bailout from a variety of politicians.

Proponents of the bailout have always expected to have a fight on their hands from conservatives who believe that capitalism without failure is like religion without sin, from long-time critics of the industry’s management, and from those who feel that the UAW has for years extracted excessively lush compensation packages from the carmakers. (If you doubt that GM’s union contracts are a big source of its inability to compete, consider this: outside North America, where it is not burdened with such legacy costs, it is a highly successful company.)

But nobody guessed that politicians in the many states in which non-union foreign carmakers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda and BMW are providing good jobs for more than 113,000 workers would be quite so vigorous in protecting those companies from unfair, taxpayer-subsidised competition.

That opposition and the weak performance of the carmakers’ chiefs in their appearance before Congress forced the Democratic leadership to abandon efforts to push through its bill to allocate $25 billion of Tarp money to the Detroit Three. Score a win, although only a temporary one, for the Bush administration.

The car companies will now have to await the coming of Barack Obama before receiving the taxpayer-funded loans they seek — which he will make available, he says, only if he can be shown that “we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere”.

The opposition to the bailout makes a powerful case for denying aid and letting GM file for bankruptcy. A bailout will do nothing to lighten the burden of the legacy costs under which GM and others labour. GM’s over-numerous dealers are protected from termination by state laws, and its workers’ extravagant benefit packages by contracts that require almost full compensation for laid-off workers, indefinitely. Only a bankruptcy court judge can undo those legacies.

Bankruptcy is not an option, says Wagoner firmly. Consumers will buy tickets on bankrupt airlines because their relationship with the carrier lasts only for the short duration of the flight. But car purchasers are entering a long-term relationship with the manufacturer on whose warranty they must rely.

Unfortunately for Wagoner, there is an easy fix to that problem: a government guarantee of all warranties backing vehicles sold while GM (or Chrysler) is in bankruptcy. Throw in government guarantees of pension obligations, some retraining and other protection for older workers who might be adversely affected by rulings of the bankruptcy courts, and you have a compassionately conservative and economically efficient solution to the industry’s problems.

But that is not to be. Politics trumps economics, and Obama now has promises to keep. Nobody wants to take note of the fact that our British friends poured billions into a failed attempt to rescue British Leyland.

The stark choice is bankruptcy now or bankruptcy later, and now beats later by at least $50 billion.

[toastie]

One of G.M.'s Contributions to National Security

General Motors converted all of its production to the Allied war effort and delivered more than $12 billion worth of goods, ranging from airplanes to tanks, marine diesel engines, trucks, machine guns, and shells. No other manufacturer delivered as much material to the Allied forces.

Here is a list of the WWII General Motors War Material Production 1940-45:

198,000 Diesel engines for tanks & landing craft
206,000 Airplane engines
3,000 Complete bombers and fighter planes
97,000 Aircraft propellors
301,000 Aircraft gyroscopes
38,000 Tanks, tank destroyers and armored vehicles
54,000 Trucks, including amhibious DUKWs
190,000 Cannons
1,900,000 Machine guns and submachine guns
3,142,000 Carbines
3,826,000 Electric motors
11,111,000 Fuses
360,000,000 Ball and roller bearings
119,562,000 Shells
39,181,000 Cartridge cases

540,619,000 Grand Total

To this day, the government has not forgotten GM's
contribution.

[cooperhawk]

Wow, AIR2GO really says it all. One further point however.

It's not the car makers we should be concerned about. It's our economy nationwide. The stimulous packages were hardly enough to make a difference. They were spread out over too large a population to do any good. Most people just paid bills with them

What we need is to get the consumer buying again.