Any plan made now will undoubtedly be based on a return of the US motor industry, and the European and Japanese ones for that matter, to 'normal', ie producing 16 million cars or so a year in the US alone.

As many of you are aware, I support EV cars, but it is quite clear that there is no way that we can ramp up immediately to anything like that volume.

The US plan then will be to move towards building many millions of small, European style cars with better fuel economy.

It seems unlikely that anything like that number of cars will be affordable.

By 2012 or so when EV cars become available in rather greater quantities, although of course not in the tens of millions, it seems unlikely that more than a fifth or so of present production will still be running.

Joule,

I regret the rating system only allows me to give you a +1. Otherwise your would get much higher from me! My sentiments exactly. I just saw Denninger's rant for the morning. The monstrous actions with AIG is outrageous. And to expect these same crooks to take over the Auto Industry? I am a hard core fast crash doomer and getting the government to take over things is the fast way to achieve a quick hard crash.

Please note the captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Please put away any laptop computers or electronic devices and return your seats to the upright position.

How many major undertakings that the US government has embarked upon have ever been anything close to being a financial success and have not been vastly behind schedule and vastly over budget? Just look at the so-called 'defense industry' (which in reality is a quasi-government enterprise) and how many of its weapon systems turned out to be twice or thrice as costly as originally projected.

I would suggest the 'defense industry' is a huge success. At least for those involved. Two or three times over budget? Even better. A missile defense system that doesn't work? What's the definition of "working system"? If there are no missiles in the silos - or paper crete missiles - that works just fine. Bill'em Danno.

The concept of "saving the car industry" is, in and of itself, a death march. Wrong paradigm. Luckily, one won't have to make that case on resource arguments; it will be as simple as no one will be able to buy them.

cfm in Gray, ME

US readers seem to have so little confidence in their government to run anything, and so much in their market led companies. Has anyone ever stopped to question if that little canard is anything but spin?

The $500 hammer was sold by those companies...

Now, I'm hardly saying that the US auto industry has been doing a good job ... they haven't. But the US government can only do worse, far worse

One thought:

Governments have elected officials up top... companies have appointed CEOs. Governments (supposedly) are accountable to their populations, who could demand various things like safety, or justice, or jobs etc....companies answer to shareholders, who demand profit. I'm not sure, but I think if you look at "job perks" as a variation of "bribes" the corruption might be similar.}

Not saying governments owning businesses is a good thing, but I'm not entirely convinced that its a bad thing either. Especially if the majority of people don't have the money to own shares but can vote.

It all might depend on how democratic the US government is.