Save the US auto industry from itself
Posted in Uncategorized on 11/12/2008 04:52 pm by John HarrityUS auto makers are in deep financial trouble. It’s no surprise that an industry that relies on confident consumers and an array of financing options would feel the effects of a near-collapse of credit, and looming predictions about hard times ahead.
These companies are certainly as important as many of the financial sector businesses now on taxpayer-funded life support. Between them, GM, Chrysler and Ford employ 240,000 workers directly. Up to 5 million US workers, employed everywhere from parts suppliers to auto dealships, depend on the US auto industry for their livelihoods.
The automakers are now asking for a bailout. There’s a sharp debate brewing in Washington, on Wall St. and down at the local diner where you find the folks who eventually will pay for all this, about whether to assist with government funds.
Whether these enterprises are saved through private means or the public coffers, they are in need of a drastic overhaul. For years, we have happily motored along in monstrosities — vehicles that use too much fuel, create too much pollution and are loaded with toxins. US cars are too big, too dirty and too inefficient for our own good, or for global sales.
Earlier this year, I visited the Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan. They touted a grass-covered roof, skylights to save electricty, rain basins and other ecologically-friendly measures, all in service to a factory producing trucks that get 12 - 14 miles to the gallon. I asked then if the facility could be retooled for smaller vehicles. The Ford Escape, an SUV, is the smallest car that can be made there.
The workers in that plant earn their money. The tasks they perform are complicated, repetitious and exacting. But by virtue of the high profit margin associated with trucks and SUV’s in general, the Dearborn Ford workers are wedded to a product whose time has passed.
It cannot be expected that the automakers will, on their own, raise emission and mileage standards, or shift to alternative sources of energy. They have had a long, successful history of bending the market to their products through skillful and non-stop advertising. Now, for a variety of reasons, we are at the end of that ride too.
Regardless of what Congress does in the form of a bailout, there should be an insistence on steering vehicles into the 21st century. That means less harmful exhaust, much greater fuel efficiency, and alternative energy sources. It also means “greening” the vehicles so that more of the product can be recycled at the end of its use.
Especially if we’re all chipping in, we ought to have a say on where we’re going. And we can’t get to the future if the automakers remain stuck in reverse.