Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

OK.

1) What you linked to has nothing to do with the Toyota Prius. This all began when you stated that "the Japanese government undoubtedly helped pay for the initial R and D on the Prius." Since I have challenged that you have run me around in circles with everything EXCEPT any evidence that that is the case. In fact, all of the actual evidence is that the Prius was developed entirely by Toyota on its own initiative.

2) The Prius is not an electric vehicle. What you linked to has a section on government-funded programs that pertains to electric vehicle battery technology. Even if that had anything to do with the hybrid technology behind the Prius, it begins by pointing to a specific program from the 1970s -- well before hybrid vehicles or the Prius, and actually points out that it "did not develop any successful vehicles." It also points out some other aspects of what they were trying to develop which relate to alternative fuels such as natural gas, which also have nothing to do with the Prius. And lastly, it discusses a program related to lithium batteries for home use, which have nothing to do with cars. It says that program involved 8 companies, including Sanyo, Mitsubishi, Fuji, Toshiba. ... Nothing to do with Toyota. It also discusses several other things that have nothing to do with cars, including ceramic gas turbine development in a program that ran from 1988 to 1996, which were intended for electric power generators, not cars.

3) It then goes on to discuss INDUSTRY PROGRAMS and mentions the car manufacturers, and points out research the various Japanese auto makers were doing in relation to electric vehicles for the prior 20 years in anticipation of regulations that might have been coming into effect. It said that research was on the back burner at the time -- "OTA staff visited with engineers from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Mitsubishi in Japan to discuss advanced automotive R&D. Despite the fact that the Japanese government has sponsored research in the past, and Japanese companies have in-house research programs on advanced technologies, it appeared clear that much of this work had been allowed to lapse until the California ZEV regulations revived their EV programs." So you have nothing about government-sponsorship of anything there, and even if you did, it is an obscure paper about ELECTRIC VEHICLES, that has nothing to do with the hybrid technology Toyota developed or the Toyota Prius.

4) I am not exactly sure where your $15 billion yen number came from (I don't follow the numbers), but in 1995 that would have been approximately $150 million dollars. Even if this had anything to do with the Prius, or the broader conversation we've had on this thread, $150 million in 1995 spent on anything pales in comparison to the $85 billion given to two U.S. auto companies in 2009 (in strained arrangements that took over bankruptcies and robbed the actual creditors of the companies to buy off votes from labor in an upcoming election). On top of it, how do you compare some nebulous $150 million dollar Japanese government expenditure on something that may not have had much to do with the auto industry to the $7.5 billion of loans (some of which we have already eaten because the companies folded like accordions) given to companies such as Fisker and Tesla. But yeah, your $15 billion yen thing. There is a huge disparity between $150 million dollars (even in 1995) and the billions of dollars in debt our government has laid onto our national debt in blatant acts of political cronyism.

 

All credible sources I have ever read suggest that while the U.S. auto industry was producing SUVs in the 90s, Toyota invested more than $1 billion in developing the hybrid that became the Prius. Article after article. I have never never seen anything serious and factually backed up by anything that demonstrated that the Japanese government had anything to do with that R&D, including all the stuff I have read in the last day or two since Azrael suggested otherwise on here and has followed up the suggestion with innuendo and obscure links that have nothing to do with the Toyota Prius. I am getting run around in circles with everything except the proof that the Japanese government had anything to do with the Toyota Prius.

There is something that will be enough, as you put it. Post something FACTUAL and that can be PROVED that establishes that the Prius was the result of Japanese government subsidization, and what he said is proven as fact.

The problem here is that all the evidence in the world, including a gazillion articles written about how the Prius came into being, suggest otherwise.

Here, again, is the Fortune article from 2006 that details well how the Prius came into being: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/03/06/8370702/. Not a mention of the Japanese government. A lot about Toyota R&D.

This from the NY Times earlier this year: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/business/global/07toyota.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Again, no mention of the Japanese government in there, when it estimates that the company has spent at least $1 billion to develop its hybrid technology.

You can't just throw something out there as a fact, when 1) It isn't, and 2) It gets to the heart of what this thread is about. The Prius is now the third best selling vehicle in the world. It was developed by a company (not a political mandate) that had the foresight to create a product that consumers responded to in a huge way -- not because of subsidies or government incentives, but because of actual marketplace demand. Contrast that to the Chevy Volt, which is what this thread was about, and the Prius is actually the example of how the billions of publicly-funded debt we have created because of governmental mandates that have nothing to do with marketplace demand is the wrong way to go about things. The actual performance of the Chevy Volt is the evidence of that. It took Toyota some time to recoup its R&D costs from everything I have read, but the car was almost an immediate hit. In the first year it was fully available, there were waiting lists for it and dealers were able to sell it at a mark up. The Chevy Volt? The thing is already heavily subsidized -- sold for less than what it costs to produce -- and on top of it, because it has turned into a political problem as the car generated little by way of sales, they have been heavily discounting -- subsidizing it even more at a loss to U.S. tax payers -- to try to make it look like they are actually selling any.

 

I am sure the stuff about robot technology and water recycling and reuse systems is scintillating reading for someone. Just not me. You realize ya'll have made this thread about a $1.8 billion American dollar program that encompasses the largest developmental organization in Japan -- covering very little to do with electric vehicles, but a zillion projects ranging from telecommunications equipment to nanotechnology.

$1.8 billion American dollars is nothing to sneeze at, but it is a sack of quarters compared to what we were talking about on this thread about GM before you co-opted it with a tangent that isn't even making a coherent point about anything.

And to think, this all started with the Toyota Prius, which is the third-best selling car on the world, and was the product of market-place demand. ... being discussed in the context of the Chevy Volt, which when you count all its different iterations -- Volt, Opel Ampera, Holden Volt and Vauxhall Ampera -- has sold more than 1,000 cars in only four countries in the last two years, and in the U.S. has only sold as many as it has because each car gets sold at a huge loss that gets tacked onto our national debt. 33,000 Volts sold worldwide since it was introduced, with the vast majority of them, 27,000, sold in the U.S. due to heavy subsidization.

So you essentially took the thread in the direction of comparing the 33,000 Volts sold worldwide in the two years since it was introduced -- most of those sold at a loss to U.S. taxpayers -- with Toyota, which is a company not run by its government and sold more than 1 million hybrid vehicles alone this year based on marketplace demand. And you want to argue that the GM mess has been a good thing?

The link to NEDO is well, not really interesting, but even if it interested you,... it still has nothing to do with the fact that the hundreds of billions of dollars (compared to the $1.8 billion thing that covers a wide spectrum of industries getting small grants you just linked to) our government has wasted of ours in trying a centralized approach to auto production that has been an abysmal failure should NEVER be contrasted to Toyota and what it has done with hybrids.

Anyone reasonable would conclude that competition based on actual demand is what produces cars that turn into such huge sellers worldwide -- not government mandates. We are talking more than a million Toyota hybrids sold this year versus what, 20,000 Chevy Volts? And those Toyotas were sold at a profit for the company. The Volts were sold at a loss that every American is on the hook for.

 

The battery is produced by Panasonic. Panasonic -- actually Sanyo, which Panasonic bought last year -- has been the leader in this marketplace (emphasis on market, not government mandate) for years. They produce the batteries in the Toyota Prius. Which has been the primary area of life support (and growth) for the company.

Panasonic (Sanyo) has been supplying batteries for Ford's hybrids since 2004, actually. It has been a very lucrative business -- consumer demand *gasp* -- which has encouraged the company to spend money on R&D to keep producing better and better batteries. ... which in turn is why a lot of manufacturers from a number of industries that rely on battery technology have turned to them.

Why would you "wonder" about why something like that would occur? That is how markets work. Do you also wonder why Apple keeps developing better and better tablets, and spending more and more on R&D on a product that keeps selling in record numbers and has made them a leader in that area?

This new tact of "I wonder how the Japanese" flies in the face of then posts earlier on this thread. For one thing, you are trying to insinuate that any of this was because of a Japanese government mandate - you keep insisting on it, in fact -- when it's just not true. And earlier on this thread, anyhow, the argument was, "We shouldn't be buying Panasonic batteries just because they are better. Our government should be handing money to every politically-connected Tom, Dick and Harry to try to steer technology away from what is actually selling to. ... "

 

You have a need to quote it because you don't have anything with a point to add?

Only you can answer that.

It's a silly link. Here are the details: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/nedo-to-lead-auto-consortium-on-battery-density-project

They spread out $214 million to 6 universities, 3 research institutions and the R&D departments at 12 companies to spend 7 years to try to develop a battery that can be commercialized by 2030.

Their little Japanese pork barrel project is their problem, not mine, thankfully. Either way, that is what it is. A little pork barrel project not unlike lots of pork barrel projects you find in the U.S. and Japan.

It has little to do with anything this thread has been about.

If you really want to shove that link down the thread's throat, I have no problem comparing that $214 million program that link is about to the $529 million loan we gave to Fisker to make unaffordable luxury cars, for example. Fisker drew down $193 million before the government froze its credit line because the company was so poorly run. So the thing you just linked to is essentially the equivalent of the money we pissed away on Fisker. OK.

If I was Japanese I might be aggravated, given my country's debt levels. But I'm not. I am American. So I am looking at Tesla, Fisker, Solyndra, A123, etc. And unlike what NEDO does, those were not grants -- the NIH model -- but government just handing public money to private entities -- picking political cronies to give public money to. At least the Japanese keep government oversight over their little program that pales in comparison to our runaway pork barrel programs.

How did that link even make itself to a thread where we are talking about $7.5 billion (compared to $214 million) that went to companies such as Fisker and Tesla, and the $85 billion we used to make a mess out of two auto companies that are now going to saddle our country in debt?

That link doesn't make a point about anything. Not a point about the Prius, which it has zilch to do with. And not a point about the U.S., which hasn't created little $214 million pork barrel programs, but instead has jumped to a whole new level with billions of dollars in pork that we can kiss goodbye.