Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (403075)	7/31/2008 7:35:50 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576882

"Its amazing the number of private venture companies working on electric and hybrid cars." Well, it is relatively easy to build a prototype car. The trick is to manufacture them in any volume. There have always been small manufacturers making a few dozen to a few hundred cars a year with significant amounts of hand labor. Not so many making thousands, the next step is usually millions and that takes a huge chunks of change. DeLorean was probably the last to attempt this, making about 10k vehicles in two years. Building cars in volume is an extremely complex task and takes gobs of money. Even though DeLorean raised gobs(100 million pounds from the British government alone), he didn't quite have enough to overcome all of the little problems at launch. Suffice it to say, when a drug smuggler turned informant called him up with a plan to get some money to save the company, he bit. And that killed the company. Now, if you are into conspiracy theories, Detroit could have been behind the whole thing. It was the Reagan administration and doing favors for big companies turned out to be pretty common... "The Big Three really blew it.....big time! " They always do. Their engineers are top notch. Just look at some of their concept cars. Chrysler has their Natrium allpar.com GM has their AUTOnomy diseno-art.com supercars.net Now both of these are fuel cell vehicles. But the AUTOnomy is designed to be power plant neutral. All that is required is electricity. The source could be a hybrid like in the Volt, a fuel cell or a battery. The total concept has the platform iterating through all three as the infrastructure builds out to support all electric. It is telling that GM has thrown its weight behind the Volt and not the AUTOnomy concept. The reason? The Volt fits in the way they build cars. AUTOnomy would require major changes. Yet the hybrid version of the AUTOnomy would be a better use of resources, but with a higher upfront cost. The Volt just pushes back the point where the investment needs to be made.