Category Archives: Auto Industry
Trump Base Battle
Click the image to enlarge
The economy is booming but the Trump base is taking a hit.
GM is shutting down Chevy Cruze production at its 6 million square foot Lordstown plant. And Reason says the billion dollar cost of steel and other tariffs might have something to do with it. Steel workers are an important part of the Trump base. So are autoworkers and 1400 of them are about to lose their jobs.
Trump Base
“The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get!,” tweets Trump.
Kevin Williamson at NR says it was dumb to bail out GM in the first place. American carmakers can’t compete on sedans with the likes of Honda or Audi. But they’re good at making trucks and SUVs people like. They should have focused on that sector long ago, he says. But we “paid them not to.”
Electric cars too. NPR reports the government subsidies electric cars to the tune of a $7,500 tax credit for buyers.
So now GM will focus on what it’s good at. In Mexico.
Elon Musk Settles
Click Elon’s bong to enlarge the image.
“Musk might be a genius when it come to electric cars and space travel, but he’s a little bit of a numbnut when it comes to dealing with the SEC,” Stanford Law School professor and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest said in a weekend interview with the San Jose Mercury News.
Uber Founder Ejected
Uber investors forced C.E.O. Travis Kalanick out of the company he founded.
Here’s Reuters:
The resignation sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and leaves Uber’s board of directors with the problem of finding a dynamic leader who also has a steady hand needed to heal Uber after a bruising six months.
Uber Founder Ejected
And here’s MIT Technology Review on Uber’s driverless car problem:
Its new CEO will inherit many problems, but a business plan based on the elusive dream of driverless cars is the largest.
Ford Plant in Mexico
There’s a new Ford plant in Mexico. Presumably Mexicans will stay in Mexico to work there instead of sneaking into this country to steal jobs here.
Donald Trump calls that an “absolute disgrace”.
Tapped Out In Flint
Flint Michigan has third world tap water.
In a cost cutting move the City stopped buying water from Detroit and began building a pipeline to Lake Huron. Detroit cut Flint off before the pipeline was complete. The city began drawing water from the Flint River. People complained that the water was foul and smelly. The water department insisted it was safe.
The Flint water was so corrosive the auto industry stopped using it. The corrosion damaged pipes and caused lead levels to rise to five times acceptable levels.
Now it’s a huge infrastructure problem with no fix in sight. The entire population depends on bottled water passed out at fire stations.
The EPA didn’t acknowledge the water crisis in Flint until President Obama announced emergency federal help last week.
EPA also dragged its feet on its release of 3 million gallons of water from the Gold King Mine into the Animas River in Colorado last summer.
