Weasel Wording of the Decade (GM Chapt. 11)

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy

Sorry if I jumped down your throat. As I think I've said before in other threads, the "hybrid" idea goes back to the '73 oil embargo...but in those pre-historic days for electronics, a mechanical solution to braking-energy recovery was proposed...flywheels. From an engineering standpoint, it makes great sense...just like recovering waste heat from a power plant.

What I support is making things in this country. To paraphrase Ross Perot from his '92 presidential campaign, the way out of our economic troubles is to have robust manufacturing in this country, to put people to work at good wages...who will then PAY TAXES instead of being on unemployment. And the people who have the jobs at REALLY good wages, should definitely pay their share of taxes. I saw Warren Buffet on TV saying that according to the IRS, the top 100 earners from the most recent year that statistics were available, paid 17% average tax--bullhockey! That includes that hedge fund guy that made $3 billion--I'm sure he could afford a little more in taxes to help out Len A.

So the car companies go bankrupt, so we can buy an even larger percentage of imported cars, and all those dealer mechanics and salesmen and admin people can go work at Wal-Mart and Target part time at half their pay.

Whatever.

Man, I couldn't agree with you more.

[SpoiledMan]

Len A, could you please make one more post. You're count is creepy! lol

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by SpoiledMan

Len A, could you please make one more post. You're count is creepy! lol

Ouch!

That should take care of it!!

[JuneBug]

Couple of thoughts- oil - we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years, we have 50 "designer"blends of gas that keep production from running at peak effienency, we have plenty of oil and natural gas - but can't drill - all cause of the wacko enviro's and their lawyers/PR/ liberal lame stream media. Don't get me started on that whole global warming scam, there are so many scientist coming out AGAINST that now that it's even fading from the press.

Cars - the American car companies where doomed from the 50's, you can't pay crazy wages to guys with a high school education to screw in a couple of taillights and then give him 85% of his pay to read newspapers. No company can afford that. The parasites at the UAW finally drained the last drop, good job boys, now maybe you can come down south, make a third of your old pay and piss & moan how grand the old union was, till some redneck like me slaps your teeth down your throat and kicks your sorry butt 10 feet northward. I hate it! My teenage years were all about Z-28's and SS396 Chevelles - great cars and now - my kids think a Chevy is only a truck or vette. Good job everybody, thank you.

Hybrid cars- why bother when VW and MB have clean diesels that are simpler, great on gas, and last longer than gas engines (and we don't have any numbers on how long these fancy hybrid systems will last) all we need is more capacity at the refineries - see above- and you have cheap fuel.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by JuneBug

Hybrid cars- why bother when VW and MB have clean diesels that are simpler, great on gas, and last longer than gas engines (and we don't have any numbers on how long these fancy hybrid systems will last) all we need is more capacity at the refineries - see above- and you have cheap fuel.

I'd agree...except I have a high-efficiency furnace in my house. What makes it high efficiency? It captures a lot more of the waste heat that would normally go out the flue. Is it more complicated, yes. Have I had a problem with it? Yes, once in 9 years I got a leaf sucked in the inlet. Was it more expensive? Yes, but I got a rebate from the gas company which largely offset the cost increase. And it burns at 93% regardless of the cost of the fuel.

A lot of you guys do your cooking outside on the grill during the summer, so as not to heat up the kitchen and make the house hot, or so as not to incur as much on your electricity bill from running the A/C to remove that heat. So my car is throwing off all kinds of heat everytime I apply the brakes, why am I a whacko for thinking it's a good idea to recover that energy as electricity instead of dissipating it as heat? Are you guys whackos for cooking outside? Be men and take the heat in the kitchen.

I shopped around for a few years before I got my HE furnace. I had one HVAC guy tell me they don't install them, there are too many problems. But ultimately this has become the norm, the problems are a thing of the past. And so will be with hybrid vehicles. I don't hear any of you guys bitching anymore that cars don't make any power because of emissions controls, cars are faster (and cleaner) then they have ever been (or as fast).

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by JuneBug

Couple of thoughts- oil - we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years, we have 50 "designer"blends of gas that keep production from running at peak effienency, we have plenty of oil and natural gas - but can't drill - all cause of the wacko enviro's and their lawyers/PR/ liberal lame stream media. Don't get me started on that whole global warming scam, there are so many scientist coming out AGAINST that now that it's even fading from the press.

Cars - the American car companies where doomed from the 50's, you can't pay crazy wages to guys with a high school education to screw in a couple of taillights and then give him 85% of his pay to read newspapers. No company can afford that. The parasites at the UAW finally drained the last drop, good job boys, now maybe you can come down south, make a third of your old pay and piss & moan how grand the old union was, till some redneck like me slaps your teeth down your throat and kicks your sorry butt 10 feet northward. I hate it! My teenage years were all about Z-28's and SS396 Chevelles - great cars and now - my kids think a Chevy is only a truck or vette. Good job everybody, thank you.

Hybrid cars- why bother when VW and MB have clean diesels that are simpler, great on gas, and last longer than gas engines (and we don't have any numbers on how long these fancy hybrid systems will last) all we need is more capacity at the refineries - see above- and you have cheap fuel.

OK, first of all, without wanting to get into a debate, the Detroit car makers pay structure is not that different from the transplants - $25 an hour plus benefits from the time an employee has gone past their probationary period, which , in about all cases now in North America, is three years on attaining full wages. I know you can find stuff on line that references $70 - that's, one, grossly outdated, even if it's from early last year - the contracts have been reopened, get this, twice already, and pay structures have changed downward. What hurt the Detroit car makers wasn't weekly pay - it was the work rules, the idiotic jobs banks (that's gone now), and the fact that all three car makers still have thousands of retirees on teh books from a time when they made all their own parts in house. Even if they spun those divisions off, Delphi in GM's case, and Visteon in Ford's case, they are still stuck with all the retirees, hourly and salaried alike, that retired BEFORE those division were spun off.

The other thing hurting the Detroit car makers is retiree costs. Health care comes off their books effective January 1, 2010. That's written in stone - the UAW VEBA (Voluntary Health Benefits Association) takes over hourly retiree health care costs, and that's that. Salaried retirees got their health care benefits cut down to a stipend last years, and that's done. In the case of new hires, no new salaried employee hired after January 1, 2000 has either a pension or retiree health care. They are 401K only. Any new hourly employee hired after November, 2007 has no pension, or retiree health care (no VEBA participation either). That's done.

Second, the press made a big deal about the transplants making, with benefits, $20 an hour less than the Detroit car makers. Too bad the newspaper web sites charge for an article older than a month, because there were several from early last December that had Toyota and Honda execs complaining that the congressman and senators making those claims had it wrong, and they shouldn't have been making those claims as if they were Gospel, because Toyota and Honda had several plants where the assembly line workers were making more than their UAW counterparts, because of big profit sharing bonuses. Moreover, all the transplants have had their labor costs go up, sharply, in the last three to five months, because they all laid off their lower paid contract and temp employees. Think about it. If the press kept quoting an hourly labor cost of $50 an hour, including benefits, and they laid off all, every single one, of their $15 and hour plus lower benefit employees, what did that do to their average labor cost?? Why do you think all the car makers, including the transplants, are losing billions of dollars right now? Not only that, but two months ago, the Wall Street Journal and Automotive News reported that Toyota's monthly cash burn was exceeding that of GM's.

No one is making money in the car business right now.

On the comment on new refineries and new drilling - Kuwait's oil minister said yesterday that production won't increase until oil gets back above $100 a barrel. The oil companies here won't drill or expand refining capacity either until oil prices go back - up enough to choke off a recovery. Great. Most of the new drilling projects went on hold when oil prices dropped last September.

[Len_A]

Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy

I'd agree...except I have a high-efficiency furnace in my house. What makes it high efficiency? It captures a lot more of the waste heat that would normally go out the flue. Is it more complicated, yes. Have I had a problem with it? Yes, once in 9 years I got a leaf sucked in the inlet. Was it more expensive? Yes, but I got a rebate from the gas company which largely offset the cost increase. And it burns at 93% regardless of the cost of the fuel.

A lot of you guys do your cooking outside on the grill during the summer, so as not to heat up the kitchen and make the house hot, or so as not to incur as much on your electricity bill from running the A/C to remove that heat. So my car is throwing off all kinds of heat everytime I apply the brakes, why am I a whacko for thinking it's a good idea to recover that energy as electricity instead of dissipating it as heat? Are you guys whackos for cooking outside? Be men and take the heat in the kitchen.

I shopped around for a few years before I got my HE furnace. I had one HVAC guy tell me they don't install them, there are too many problems. But ultimately this has become the norm, the problems are a thing of the past. And so will be with hybrid vehicles. I don't hear any of you guys bitching anymore that cars don't make any power because of emissions controls, cars are faster (and cleaner) then they have ever been (or as fast).

Setec, you got a High Efficiency furnace, and what makes it HE is that it captures waste heat?

Remember this link from an earlier post: Find greatest energy savings in power production industry

Bravo for you having the foresight to get an HE furnace. Now, read the above article, and imagine how much better it would be if the power utilities did what you did - capture the waste heat and use it!!

BTW, I'm going outside and grilling lunch! I have a BBQ with an Infrared burner (a TEC burner), and I cook faster outside, and I have less clean up to do. And I like the flavor of food grilled outside better.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by Len_A

Setec, you got a High Efficiency furnace, and what makes it HE is that it captures waste heat?

Rember this link from an earlier post: Find greatest energy savings in power production industry

Bravo for you having the foresight to get an HE furnace. Now, read the above article, and imagine how much better it would be if the power utilities did what you did - capture the waste heat and use it!!

I do remember. I guess I can't get my head around why people are anti-efficiency. Efficiency that costs more that it's worth isn't efficiency, but that isn't a reason to hate real efficiency. Airplanes fly because they are efficient enough to generate more lift than drag. If modern cars had engines as efficient as a Model T...the engine would be the size of your house to generate the same amount of power. Computers and related devices are smaller now because the integrated circuits are more efficient, they put a larger and larger number of transistors in the same space, partly by using less power per transistor than their predecessors. I don't see anyone (well, almost no one) saying they want a bigger, heavier laptop like in the old days..."if electricity was cheaper, I'd be happy to have a big old heavy laptop that was cheap to recharge...we don't need smaller computers, we need cheaper electricity".

[nrengle]

Originally Posted by JuneBug

Hybrid cars- why bother when VW and MB have clean diesels that are simpler, great on gas, and last longer than gas engines (and we don't have any numbers on how long these fancy hybrid systems will last) all we need is more capacity at the refineries - see above- and you have cheap fuel.

I was watching a episode of Top Gear (a UK car show) that did a test to see if three different cars could make it from Switzerland to Blackpool England, 750 miles on one tank of fuel. VW makes a car that is a 3 cylinder diesel that gets 75 miles to the gallon average. The car still had enough in it at the end of the test to get another 75 miles.

Jaguar (ok pricey, but get this), makes a car that gets a average of 50 miles to the gallon, they were able to make it over 1000 miles on a single tank of gas. So for all the hybrids I want to see numbers like that. And why don't we have that tech here in the states? Those are ridiculous numbers to get on any car, and the fact that it's not a hybrid is even more insane!

[XRL]

Cuz the CARB is anti-diesel.