Non-political news

[baxil]

In among the barrage of Obama/Clinton coverage today, you might have missed a quiet piece of interesting news: GM is going smallThey're closing four pickup truck and SUV factories; throwing brand weight into their smaller and more fuel-efficient cars like the Cobalt; talking seriously about their battery-operated Volt; and -- shock -- may drop

Comments

[dancinglights]

I saw that yesterday and was torn between posting it and jumping with glee, and screaming about why the #@$% they didn't lose the market share to push this into happening last year or before... I do rather like glee better, but wtf people.

[roaminrob]

The larger the business, the more slowly it moves, almost by necessity.

Further, the automotive industry in particular is clearly driven by demand. Most people do want to drive something that will caress their ego, and economy cars don't do that.

Only now that US gasoline prices have doubled in a preiod of 18 months are people beginning to put their ego aside and look at a vehicle's fuel efficiency.

Blame the consumer, not the company.

[dancinglights]

Indeed. Hence the sputtering wondering why they didn't lose the market share to make it worth their while earlier; or more explicitly, why people had continued to want the damn things while we've been ruining our economy at improperly declared war driving up peak-oil-approaching prices for years now.

I know the average American consumer hasn't been looking at things that way, but really it just makes me want to throw things most of the time.

[tropism]

You know, one of the things that's been killing GM is that it has far too fucking many models in production, so I'm glad to see they got the message. I'm guessing they're mostly going to drop their extraneous SUV lines and stick with cars and light pickups (the latter category just about the only one that does well...)

[delcan]

Fingers crossed... the fact that it's GM doing it gives me hope for everyone else.

Let's just hope that they don't backslide on it.