Thank You! Fun reading about the air powered car. Who knows if it is practical over all but it is wonderful to take note of people who are thinking.

That’s an entirely reasonable product development plan. Get out something now that will work now for five years, and in four years replace those parts on your first sales, using what you’ve learned in the meantime to make sure that the part will work for ten years on new sales. It’s all about building a market.

Of course, GM doesn’t have big pockets to fall back on for this, so . . .

It would be an interesting compilation to add up all the realized gains, either direct checks or indirect tax-breaks, amassed by the domestics over the past ten years. All that fat was reaped with the idea of the Car of the Future being the goal.

The result? Hummer. Oh, and some mis-placed chauvinistic laughing at hybrids sold by the Japanese. Anytime you see a Detroit suit laugh or dismiss something new from a a foreign automaker that seems quirky, buy stock in said foreign automaker because that quirk is going to be a hit in the marketplace.

GM has a propensity for terrible timing. It is likely they will throw all their resources at this moonshot and then by the time it is really ready for the public, the demand will be where it seems to be now…competent, well built, durable, efficient gas-powered mainstream cars.

Here’s something worth looking at – if you’re considering alternatives.
Formula-1 developer Guy Negre used MDI’s money to come up with the air powered car.
Six seater, 125 mile range, 68mph speed.

They are launching their version of electric on the frame as they await approval of the air powered one.

http://www.theaircar.com/acf/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016.html

Unlike GM I know how to learn from history and the last multibillion dollar investment the general public put into those clowns didn’t reap a thing, the money just vanished. I think the money would be better spent going to startups and individuals struggling to make break throughs in their garage on shoe string budgets. This corperate welfare has got to stop. They wasted their money on who knows what and weren’t responsible, sorry but that’s not my concern, you made your bed.

We have the hybrid where both an ICE and an electric motor drive the wheels directly. ie: Prius and Civics.

We have the light hybrids where the ICE gets a small boost from an electric motor but saves very little fuel. ie: Ford Explorers and Lexus.

We may soon have plug in hybrids that can go much farther on their electric charge before their ICE has to go to work. ie: future Prius and Volt.

We have electric motor only. ie: Tesla

What are VW, Mitsubishi, and BMW working on in this area (mentioned in a previous TTAC News blog)?

Are there any other variations?

That’s funny, right there.

You can promise for future delivery a cult or specialty car to a small rabid band of followers like a camaro, and challenger. You cannot howwever, ask the larger general public to hold off buying a car until you are ready to sell it to them, and then at a price they are unwilling to pay ($40,000+).

It is this last reason they are hinting at govt. help. The Volt was supposed to be $30,000 and go head to head with the new prius. At 25% more, GM needs the govt to make up this 10K out of tax revenues.

Heres another one, remember the all hydrogen car? GM was to build that one too, however, without someone (govt. again) to figure out how to fuel these things, how can GM sell them? And then there are the industrious Japanese fiddling around with imperfect hy-brids and making them a little better every year while they actually sell hundreds of thousands. The Prius will be in it’s second generation before GM get’s out of the blocks, and for 10K less, even if it’s a little less technically advanced, it will have a solid track record of performance, reliability and a resale value higher than a new one.

Once again, while GM is getting it right the floating crap game has moved on. At some point the catch up will just be outran by the bankrupcy courts.

Keeping these bloated, dying dinosaurs alive will only ensure they continue to build poorly-built, gas-guzzing SUVs when what America really needs (I won’t say ‘want’ because, let’s face it, we haven’t been the brightest bunch in the past) is smaller, better-built and more efficient cars.

And now, not in 2010.

The government didn’t make GM fall ten years behind Toyota in hybrid development, then decide that they needed to take a monumental leap forward in technology and do it in three years.

GM needs to own their shit. To channel a little Jim Rome: “If you can’t keep your ridiculously ambitious promises, stop making ridiculously ambitious promises.”