Reply #37: The Clinton administration did give the big three massive amounts of money... [View All]

[DCKit]

to develop new technologies. I worked on some litigation dealing with the project back in the early-mid 90's. From what I remember, the total funding/grants were about $2.4 billion - cash paid directly to the Big Three.

http://www.ibiblio.org/darlene/tech/report8.html

Clean Car Initiative.

On September 29, 1993, President Clinton and Vice President Gore joined with General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler to announce an historic new partnership. The Clean Car Initiative aims to strengthen U.S. competitiveness by developing technologies for a new generation of vehicles that are both safer and up to three times more fuel efficient (80 miles per gallon or better) than today's cars. Major collaborations with the Big Three U.S. automakers are under development. On the government side, a high-level coordinating committee chaired by Under Secretary of Commerce for Tech- nology Mary Good is directing R&D in a strategic plan to avoid duplication, focus on priority areas, and make the most of existing resources. The first stage of the plan is in fast-track development, to be completed before the end of the year.

--snip--

And no, I don't speak for the Japanese and European auto makers because MY government doesn't fund their technology programs. However, my government does continue to roadblock their most efficient cars from import.

As far as the EV-1 and EV-2 go, we obviously took very different messages from "Who Killed the Electric Car?" Had GM tried to build an affordable electric car instead of making them a test-bed for all of their advanced technology, they would have had no case at all. Everything they did was engineered to fail.

My criticism of the Big Three isn't recent: I've been critical of them for a couple of decades because I remember the '70's. I was critical of them here on DU long before they suddenly went broke building SUVs - just as I have been critical of government, the mortgage industry, Big Agro, Wall Street and Big Oil - they invaded the government agencies who were supposed to regulate them with the collusion of the Republics and Dinos, and the resulting economic mess is no surprise to me.