Now would be a good time for all other car makers to get involved in advanced battery technology. Remember the dinosaurs guys…Warren Buffett certainly did….

http://www.dailyreckoning.us/blog/?p=927

Glad I’ve got my Prius…

Already the economy is hurting folks. I am giving a carpool ride to a colleague one day a week since they are down to one car in their household now. Their house is WAY bigger and “finer” than ours, and WAY WAY WAY bigger and “finer” than ours was back when I was her and her husband’s age.

Sign of the times; living in a McMansion and unable to afford a car to get to work.

Of course, Buffett benefits from ‘the Buffett effect’: whatever he gets into attracts copycats, pushing up those stocks and virtually guaranteeing a profit for Buffett himself, at least in the short term.

It doesn’t always work. Last year Buffett invested in USG at $46/share. That stock is now at $15/share.
So, you want a stock tip from Warren Buffett? Buy USG.

Only a supposition on my part.

But Toyota don’t have this game-changing cheap battery, in fact, nobody else does.

The ironic part is, BYD is apparently happy to sell parts to all and sundry.

But the usual “NIH” factor (”not invented here”) and that ole debil, pride, come into play…

Hence BYD may well stand for “Buffett – Yes – Dividends” before the decade is out.

He is known for always avoiding technological risk. Plenty here. His favorite age of a company? More than a hundred years old. This is more like a startup company.
Invest in a car company right before a deep recession is hitting? Pretty dumb.

It seems to me Mr. Buffett is in over his head with this investment.

I would think if Mr. Buffett is going to invest in a car company it’s going to be AAA-rated, (almost) 100 year old Toyota.

But then again, considering the small amount involved, it was probably a project of one of his underlings.

Yes, I agree fully in all that you say. Hence, I suspect that when BYD had already engineered and styled an F6 (mid-sized 2.4 litre D class auto) and plastered renderings of it all on the net, as well as some prototype photos – then replaced it with a near carbon copy of the last-gen Accord – it probably was after they crashed their own efforts and discovered they’d made a hash of it.

Another problem is cost and environmental impact of the new batteries. A regular lead/acid battery can be recycled just fine, a NICAD, Lithium and NIMH are rough on the environment.

BYD’s big problem is that they’ve had a nasty habit of copying Toyota designs. Given that they are obviously aware that they cannot simply sell facelifted ripped-off prior gen Corollas and Accords in nations with real courts and proper intellectual property rights, they surely are moving towards designing their own cars.

Frankly, if they can’t yet get there, they could simply hire one of the Italian coachbuilders to do it for them, at least on their first generation “western market export” cars.

It’s not like this wasn’t done by the Japanese – it was. The 1966-1971 Nissan Cedric (aka Datsun 2000 in some markets) was done by Pininfarina, for gosh’s sakes, and Diahatsu and others also used Italian houses. (No the Cedric/2000 was never sold in the USA).

I saw the BYD cars at the Detroit Auto Show in January and have to admit I was impressed.

Hopefully, after we get done experimenting with Socialism or National Socialism over the next 4 years, we’ll come to our senses and start working towards intelligently having this once great country (America) run well on our behalf again.

One bright spot is the fact that we have the means of generating electricity under-foot. I read just the other day that the gummint actually did something good and useful (for a change) and has allowed options on millions of acres in the US, for future thermal-hydro power development.

Using/tapping the heat and power under the earth to produce electricity.

Hey, BYD? When you’re ready to build car assembly and production plants in the US? Please give western Michigan more than a glance, ok?