When the Government Owns the Car Company…
Guess which car you’ll be forced to buy?
Now that Dalton McGuinty and Stephen Harper have bought us in to GM, it appears the government will spend our money giving us a rebate on a McCar. Want a car? How about this, buy a car that’s not even available yet, and we’ll throw in $10,000. The problem, besides the fact it’s not really Dalton’s money but mine and yours, is that GM is the only company close to having a viable electric car in the near future.
Those of you in favour of stimulus style spending, need to learn this lesson. Government spends the money, buys an asset, then encourages, pushes, legislates that we peons must buy that product. It is the nature of government. In this case, now that they have a stake in GM, they want you to buy GM. The words, in the public good will appear before long, and then any trampling of your freedom to choose will be fair game.
And if you build cars in Ontario, and didn’t need Dalton McHelp?
Toyota Motor Corp. is raising concerns over the Ontario government’s plan to offer rebates of up to $10,000 to people who buy plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles, saying the move looks like a deliberate ploy to help General Motors Co…
“We can’t set up a situation where the future of the industry depends on constant subsidies…. This suggests that [the government] is prepared to be interventionist beyond their aim to help the industry recover.”
and
“We don’t want government deciding winners and losers,” Jerry Chenkin, executive vice-president of Honda Canada Inc…
“This announcement of a $10,000 rebate is creating winners and losers on products that aren’t available yet and [on which] nobody knows the real time line,” Mr. Chenkin said.
That’s the way it works, first they buy into the company with your money, then they give people your money to buy cars they wouldn’t otherwise buy. And if the car doesn’t exist yet, and if and when it does exist will ultimately need plugging into a coal fired plant to run? No problem, you have lots of money.
h/t Blue Like You
The Volt … McGuinty picking losers .
Perhaps McGuinty will be remembered by history in the same derogatory regard as the Trabant … McGuinty’s Volt
Enter the East German Trabant … a polluting mess , made from fiberglass (duroplast)
” … Germany has a recycling problem on four wheels — millions of used Trabant automobiles that cannot be landfilled. Built from Soviet waste products in the 1950s, the Trabant became known as the “people’s car” and played an important role in the East German economy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many Germans drove their Trabant to freedom, then discarded the cars. Frontiers introduces one of the designers of the original Trabant and looks at his ideas for recycling these relics of the Cold War. …”
” … Duroplast cannot be further recycled, and burning it produces toxic fumes, so disposing of the bodies of old Trabants is a problem. However, its components are edible, and there are stories of pigs, sheep or other farm animals consuming duroplast[citation needed]. This is depicted in the movie Black Cat White Cat and described in a song by the Serbian band Atheist Rap.
A Berlin biotechnology company claims that it has developed a solution to the duroplast problem: a bacterium that will eat a Trabant in 20 days and leave only compost.[citation needed]
The same Zwickau plant that started making the Trabant went on to find a solution for duroplast disposal in the 1990s. After removing the glass and engine, the duroplast was shredded and encased into cement blocks for pavement construction. This was featured in an episode of the program Scientific American Frontiers on the American PBS TV channel.[1] …”
God help us in Toronto if the Dalton-Motors ends up becoming a CUPE Union run business with Jobs-4-Life and now way to Fire any worker for any reason.
What a joke, the Ontario Liberals subsidizing the ‘car of the future’ partially owned by the Government, with taxpayers money most of who will never drive a ‘volt’ or a ‘zenn’. I read today Toyota complained to the McGovernment today and I am glad to hear Honda of Canada also wrote a complaint.
A few concerns about a pure electric car.
1. Forgetting to plug it in the night before you need to use it.
2. Getting to the cottage and those road trips to cape Breton island and Florida.
3. how much extension cord will the trunk hold ?
4. getting stuck in traffic in -20 weather and having to choose between arriving at your destination or freezing.
5. The very expensive batteries lifespan ending before the useful lifespan of the car.
6. coal powered electric cars
7. Governments forcing people to drive crappy electric cars (ie. The Zenn) because the Government knows whats best for ‘the peoples’.