Comments on: Cars You Can Buy Right Now that Don’t Need Gasoline

By: Pamela Grundy

Pamela Grundy — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:44:34 +0000

Your comment made me laugh, because right now the manager at the cube farm where I work is walking around with an unlit Tiki torch to inspire us (it’s unlit due to safety regulations).

It’s so scary when they start walking around, isn’t it?

I just can’t get past being mad at Detroit: not the workers, management. But I guess when you get right down to it, Americans were buying all those gas hogs as fast as they could pump them out at one time, so it’s not like it was totally their fault.

By: Jan Skoog

Jan Skoog — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:16:27 +0000

What kind of management is innovative? At HP they used to say that management by walking around was a core value. What they meant was that management who by the way made both engineering and marketing decisions were very out of their offices and out of the board room.

They would walk the design floors, the manufacturing floors and the retail stores where their products were being sold. In fact I found an HP manager spending a week selling at Best Buy just to see what the customers were asking for in a printer.

Apply this to the car companies and the managers would be driving every car made particularly the one coming out of small design shops in Japan, Europe, and California. You will probably see the next car come from Palo Alto not Detroit.

By: Pamela Grundy

Pamela Grundy — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:05:35 +0000

Corporate culture doesn’t really encourage innovation unless there is a crisis of some sort, and sometimes not then either. Living in Michigan, I’m angry at Ford’s corporate management, and frustrated with all the blame being directed at union workers. I see Ford’s problems as being the result of not keeping up with the times, and that’s a management problem, not a labor problem. Right now, if you look around, you’ll see CEOs of lots of major corporations being rewarded for running their companies into the ground by doing one thing that worked once until it doesn’t even sort of work, and then doing it some more.

By: Jan Skoog

Jan Skoog — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:49:02 +0000

Honda produced the Insite and also took it off the market but did not destroy the cars. The difference was these cars were a purchase not a direct lease from the manufacturer.

Ask your self the question how does innovation happen? Then read the Wikipedia entry for The Encumbant Player’s Dilema and Wikinomics.

The problem is that for the auto companies to innovate like Toyota did with the Prius they have to have a culture of creative distruption of existing markets and GM just doesn’t have that culture.

Ford is looking to get one and if you look at their prototype cars some are very interesting. But Trucks still pay the bills.

By: Dow Plunges Over 300 Points, Oil Up $10 per Barrel in One Day | Personal Finance Analyst

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 11:12:32 +0000

[...] to this country and start to lead the world by example in this area. We could be manufacturing electric cars right now and people would buy them faster than we could pump them out. Are we doing this? No of [...]