Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Through the 1980s. But you are giving me a Japan Inc. story in 2012 and telling me it's absurd to not think something for which there is no evidence?

Keidanren, which was the vehicle the Japanese government used to funnel money to its businesses to give them advantage over foreign companies, is barely alive compared to what it was in the 1970s and 1980s. Toyota is a company that is perfectly capable of competing just fine without assistance.

Japanese government-business relations have traditionally been corrupt, but that is why they have gone through tremendous reforms. The country has suffered too many negative economic consequences due to cronyism and corruption, and if you want to point that out, I am all for it -- but it is hardly an argument for the things we are doing here that you seem to have advocated for on this thread. The Japanese economy has been depressed for two decades now and has barely ever left what seems like a permanent recession since the 1990s. Corruption led to the collapse of the country's stock market, which has never recovered. Most people with any business sense would argue that Toyota has prospered despite being a Japanese company. The story of the Japanese economy has been more the story of Sony. Back in the 1980s, they were going to take over the world. Today Sony barely has a pulse, and it's Apple -- a company that built itself not on government largesse, but by developing products for which there was consumer demand -- that is prospering in the world of consumer electronics.

You are basically arguing for the Walkman over the iPod--even with the benefit of hindsight.

 

I am not sure where to even start now.

First, he wasn't president of Toyota, was he? He ran North American sales.He also said the exact opposite thing when he was actually at Toyota -- he said many times that the Prius had been developed entirely by Toyota without government involvement.

He was at Toyota for 37 years and left under bad circumstances when he wanted to be made head of a consolidated North American division and the company didn't give him what he wanted. Which was when he bolted for Chrysler. Perhaps, just perhaps, he has an agenda when it comes badmouthing Toyota?

Then, as president of Chrysler--a company that went bankrupt under his watch and didn't rehire him in its restructuring--he made some comments out of his ass that directly contradicted what he had said when he was actually at Toyota. Toyota said he was full of shit. The Japanese government said he was full of shit. And of course, there is no actual evidence of any Japanese government subsidization of the Prius, and in fact, a day later, he was already backing off of what he said in that Businessweek article, with a murky explanation on the company's wesbite that he meant that "the Japanese government strongly supported R&D investment in battery development, and the Prius and other Japanese models benefited from that investment in industry."

Also, maybe it is irrelevant -- he could be telling the truth, even if he is a mess of a person -- but if you want to consider the source, this is a guy who was at the top of the auto industry but lived such a lavish lifestyle that he ran his own finances into the ground. He had creditors chasing him around the country, defaulted on a $600,000 bank loan and ran afoul of the IRS, which put a lien on his home for $1 million in back taxes. By the time Chrysler dumped him in 2008, his reputation was in tatters.

 

On March 14, 2007 , when Jim Press was still working for Toyota -- before his break with the company after 37 years under bad circumstances.

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, the subcommittee of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee:

Burgess "That seven-year interval, was any of that research and development [for the Prius] funded by the [Japanese] government?

Press: "No, sir."

Burgess: "So that was all just done under your own initiative."

Press: " Yes."

******

Jim Press, March 24, 2008 in an interview with Businessweek: “The Japanese government paid for 100% of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius.”

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Jim Press through a spokesperson on April 3, 2008, the day after the controversy: “The Japanese government strongly supported R&D investment in battery development, and the Prius and other Japanese models benefited from that investment.”

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Those are three contradictory statements.

And now it is more than 4 years later, nobody else has ever seriously suggested that the Japanese government had anything to do with with the Toyota Prius, nor has there ever been any proof that the car's success has been the product of anything except a product that met consumer demand, but for you the onus is naturally on Toyota to prove to us that it actually did the R&D without government subsidization because. ... why again?

 

1) The Prius was built by Toyota. It was not the product of billions of dollars of government "investment." You have no facts to the contrary.

2) If you think people are buying Prius', which are super popular cars, because of tax credits, you are deluding yourself. For the last decade plus, they have had no problem selling those cars. There have been periods in which they couldn't produce them fast enough and dealers were selling them at a mark up. Go ahead and make a comparison between that and the Chevy Volt and we have a conversation. Otherwise, you linked to Jim Press -- who has an agenda, given how his career with Toyota ended -- talking out of his ass, without any evidence of what he said, and him backing off it the next day.