First, American cars are big and gas guzzlers. User's weight is a good consideration for our designs. So, using gasoline with water solution(alcohol, oil, MTBE octane booster or substitutions) that we have today, makes internal combustion engine effectively a steam engine. Pollution is way down, and cost is down too, so that a consumption tax can be applied to replace income tax. Other technology are more expensive because they are less efficient than steam generation in the combustion chamber.
Now that we know internal combustion engine will continue to be the major power plant technology, we can easily run the car companies profitably.
Recent customer resistant to car sales were effected by high gasoline price gorging. But price will be retreating to make car sales easy again.
Car design has been changing because of Nascar technology in construction. Frame, suspension, and skin design are different nowadays. Manufacturing method have changed with design changes. Old manufacturing assembly plant of automatic welders are no longer used as much. Skins are more plastic than sheet metal. The many models also promotes individual car assembly instead of a moving belt assembly plant. So, amortization cost is ballooning. Car designs however still has suspension design problem, where a lighter weighted plastic car is easily flipped over. Suspension has to be much stiffer with heavy duty dampers.
So, design changes change manufacturing methods. It will take another year to straighten out all the problems and resume market share recovery and making profits again with the help of doubling the dealership on location, location, location selections. |
