Think Big, Really Big
At the beginning of the 20th century, most Americans walked or rode transit to work. With few hard-surfaced roads outside towns and cities, the horse and the interurban remained the most practical way for farmers to get to town.
Companies making motorized vehicles had largely inherited their money or were already producing farm vehicles and wagons. Their business model was to use capital to produce a product, which was then sold to people who could afford it. At that time building a car usually took well over a month, and probably in 1900 America built about as many streetcars as automobiles.
Then Henry Ford arrived. His business model was to create capital and the market by mass production, totally transforming American society by "putting us on wheels".
Much of what is said about Ford is a myth, invented after the fact, but the power of the myth derives from events- by the beginning of the 21st century, walking or riding transit to work had only a little more market share than the automobile had in 1900. The Ford model had redistributed the profits of mass production to the workers, entirely rebuilt the infrastructure of the nation, and drained the petroleum resources of the continent.
But now the wheels are falling off. Check out recent headlines- GM loses $39 billion (and 74,000 jobs disappear- this is the Ford economic model in full reverse)- Oil breaks $100/bbl but production remains flat-climate changes could kill thousands by 2012.
Within the lifetime of many readers, America must "nail the dismount", abandoning mass car ownership in favor of transit, bicycles, and walking.
Think big, really big.
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I would suggest GM got into the railcar manufacturing market, but I would think it is a bad idea. The Aerospace Industry tried to, but failed.(Our Aerospace Industry that is, Canada's Bombardier just bought the companies that had the know-how. As Bombardier started out making snowmobiles) GM, to pump money into their auto business, sold off the Locomotive division, Electro Motive Division. GM had been disatisfied with it over the past few decades, almost forgetting about it, unlike GE, which managed to promote their Locomotive division. THey still own it. GM seems to have always had only one true focus of their company, and diversification is not it.
Cars won't go away in the future. There will just be less of them, and they'll be electric.
The long-term problem for GM is that it doesn't take their massive internal-combustion-engine manufacturing ability to make an electric car. Electric cars are fairly simple devices and any mom-and-pop company can get into the market. So they'll cling to high-profit SUV's as long as possible, then change to still-reasonably-complex hybrids.
So what products are complex enough to require GM's robust engineering and manufacturing skills, yet won't die off as we realize gasoline is killing us? I can imagine very few: perhaps modularized home solar-thermal kits or efficient and affordable manufactured homes. Maybe they'll hold their own in the electric car business, or any mass transit oriented business. But their main business advantages are all but useless in the new world (hence their struggle to hang on to the old world).
A few comments here-
Cars all share the same roads- new cars can't make an efficiency breakthrough by an improvement in the gradients or road surfaces. Energy use by cars is governed by weight, rolling resistance, wind resistance, and thermal efficiency of the engines.
Therefore, improving the car as we know it is actually a simple matter of shrinking it to the lower limit and cutting the performance, which takes us to a two-seater a little larger than an HPV, with a top speed of about 45 mph. This vehicle might get as much as 125 miles per gasoline-gallon-equivalent.
IOW, for most people, the long distance commute would be a thing of the past, residences would cluster on transit, and the expense and inconvenience of owning a car would dangle slowly in the wind. Probably, just as farmers eventually realized they didn't need the horses, people would eventually see that the car just isn't worth it.
OT, but I doubt Frank reads my blog- Frank, you're tagged for a book meme, with the rules and an example at Cat Quibbles.
(psst... look here - the gasoline version gets 300mpg and goes 90mph)
Yes, I notice that's a nominal 300mpg for a gas-hybrid according to the company's website, which does a good job of explaining the problems in calculating mpg for hybrids, but is a little coy about what size the gas motor actually is.
That's all good for the individual, but of course in our emerging reality the total energy costs, including the generation of the electricity, will be important.
It would be interesting to see how it compares with a BMW R69S with a sidecar- a technology about 70 years old.
Ah, it looks like you're right (click on the Perfomance tab from this page). They do factor in battery use in the 300mpg number, and driving on gasoline alone gets you 130mpg at highway speeds.
But then that's just gasoline. We will have to switch to renewable sources (or perhaps nuclear for a while) for our electricity, or we'll create an unlivable planet.
What matters then is not how many mpg-equivalent your car gets, but the cost of energy. At one end of the spectrum energy is cheap and we're limited by battery technology (which is getting better). At the other, it still won't be unaffordable for necessary trips but it will make public transportation look more and more attractive.