As usual, these people can't see the forest for the trees.
I've been sending these articles (and others) to someone who's been working with the auto industry for much of his career. I say with, not in, because his position as an outsider allows him to be objective, despite experiencing first hand the destructive management tactics and moronic decisions made by the people in charge. His response below to Mark Cuban's post:
The root problem of the current situation is that consumers cannot get financing to buy cars.
Jeremy Clarkson also makes a good point. It's all well and good to say that Detroit "chose evil" by making Escalades instead of Volt's but that's not what happened. The GMT900 project was in all likelihood initiated before 9/11 - think how much our world has changed since then. At that time, electric cars were considered a failure.
In conversations, the commenter explained to me that very few people appreciate the R&D, lead time etc. that goes into making a car(5-6 years on average), and its components (which are handled by suppliers, not manufacturers). I don't know anybody that has an injection molding facility in their basement, but I do know that the only people who pay cash for new cars are coke dealers, and there's not enough of them to keep Detroit going.
