At any rate, glad to see progress from Tesla. I'd love to buy an EV from them at some point in the future.

Hi All,

The UAW and other muli-company unions are why the in the US Engineering is a second class profession. A multi-company union has power over the industry, without the big picture background ( ie PHD's in all the technical arts required). They force companies to live for today, and forget about tomorrow. Nothing can be more illustrative of this than the Prius episode in automotive history. Rather than have thousands of people who would go into engineering for the serious rewards for serious effort and talent, and serious positive change for society (otherwise known as the "American Way"), that money is bled out of the company for the union guys boat payments. And good engineering minds become the people who perpurtrate some of the evil that other professional but parasitical positions in society perpertrate.

Unions really should be limited to single company membership.

Yea, GM was stupid to go for the job banking idea. But, yea, UAW was stupid to push for it too. Those guys could learn automation, or somebody from the line could learn automation, and the displaced guy take that guys' job. The UAW just did not have the wherewithal in economics, engineering and technical education to have the smarts to make the right decision. And the result is catastrophic. Because GM could not come out with anything that can compete with the Prius in time. They were focused on the big home run, because the home run (SUV's and fuel cell cars) are cheap to assemble or high profit or both. When if they had the money, they could go out there and hit singles all day long, keeping a different group of engineers busy on each of those singles and occaisionally the double (Prius), like Toyota did.

Now the weakness of the Japanese system is the reliance and compensation of engineers too. You do not have these guys out there in research. They called the Prius Research, but its really developement. The technically smart guys are all in development, where the money is. So, things are more evolutionary, than revolutionary. The Prius is to a technically aware individual a sum of a bunch of evolutionary technological threads. And what is amazing is most of these threads are American in origin. Hell, there are people who have made their own Hybrid Cars in their garage out there in the U.S.! I saw my first one in 1979. TRW was the first company to patent an electric torque-converting transmisson. Computers were invented in Silicon Valley, and the NiMH battery in Rochester MI. The valving concept in the Prius engine was invented by an American named Miller in the 1940's.

If a technological revolutionary event happens, it will most likely be in an American or European lab. And whoever brings it to market will have the advantage. A company thinking about today will only do this, if tomorrow is bankruptcy. And that is where Ford and GM are now.

The problem is that technologically revolutionary events are crap-shoots. They happen hap-hazardly, and sometimes with initial mistakes. Which is why allot of the companies that originally came up with those things that got put into the Prius did not necassarily profit from them.

I want to know what type of production numbers Tesla is planning.

1000 sedans is nothing...100,000 sedans is impressive.

I don't believe anyway here commenting on Japanese companies has ever worked for a Japanese company (judging from the comments). An American subsidiary of a Japanese company tends to pay FAR more for American workers. The American VP for my company gets paid 2 times more than the Japanese President of the company. Engineers in Japan are making very little for the number of hours they put in while any of the Engineers who come over to the US and work for an American company see an immediate raise of 25 to 150 percent. They NEED a national healthcare system because they don't make enough money otherwise.

In Japanese companies there are no ownership rights over patents and research for the individual.

In Japanese companies you do not make more pay if you are an exceptional candidate/employee...starting pay is starting pay and raises are given for seniority more often than for any other reason.

As an example, I personally know of an Engineer who left Sony to work for Microsoft and increased his salary by 100%. We lost a guy to Microsoft and his salary increased by about 100% over what our Japanese company would pay.

Just because they hire UAW workers does not mean they are signed into the same contracts as the US big 3. They also won't have to worry about healthcare & pension benefits for a long time since their US based manufacturing facilities are rather young still.

Ok, lets take a wild guess. Fred, you are talking about Armor Electric ( ARME.OB ) arent you ?
They sold a bunch of BEVs to mexico recently according to their press releases, and have manufacturing partners in India ( Hero Majestic, famous in asia for millions of 2-stroke mopeds ) for bringing the prices down.
I dont think they own any IP in battery tech, though.

Rumor around here in Silicon Valley is that Tesla is having thermal problems with their roadster that they still haven't licked yet. Expect first delivery to be delayed from current predictions.

its strange that even though the assembly of the tesla roadster is being carried out by Lotus in england , the car has been compleatly ingnored by the tv and media in england . Anybody got any suggestions?

The UAW's big mistake was allowing the auto companies to control the pension funds and therefore failed to put the pension and healthcare plans in a diversified portfolio. OTOH the Teamsters control their pension and health care funds not the trucking companies. If the UAW had followed the Teamster model then the auto companies would have no legacy costs. It was the auto companies that wanted exclusive access to pension fund capital and now want to blame the union for legacy costs.

Originally this second Tesla product was billed as a
small econobox whose price was about half that of the roadster, or around $50,000. I suppose it finally dawned
on the amateur automakers that a $50,000 econobox is an oxymoron for those not a part of Eberhard's circle of wealthy customer friends. Eberhard's brilliant solution: now it's called a "sports sedan."

The best solution for now to lower the battery cost issue is to offer the vehicle with a few range option and let the consumer decide on how much they are willing to spend and how much they truly drive every day.

This way, any potential BEV buyer could start at a lower price and if needed or wanted he-she could upgrade the range by ´adding´ more energy power by paying for the the needed labor costs and the added batteries. For example, it could start at 50 miles range (city drving), then 150 miles range and hopefully double that at 300 miles range as soon as the technology allows for ´smaller´ packs (nano) etc...

What do you guys-gals think about this idea?

Fred ´The-BEV-Man´ Sands

Here's an article on CNN that explains the disparities between the foreign and domestic automakers.

A big reason is the cost of labor. As analyzed by Harbour-Felax, labor costs the Detroit Three substantially more per vehicle than it does the Japanese.

Health care is the biggest chunk. GM (Charts), for instance spends $1,635 per vehicle on health care for active and retired workers in the U.S. Toyota (Charts) pays nothing for retired workers - it has very few - and only $215 for active ones.

Other labor costs add to the bill. Contract issues like work rules, line relief and holiday pay amount to $630 per vehicle - costs that the Japanese don't have. And paying UAW members for not working when plants are shut costs another $350 per vehicle.

Here's one example of how knotty Detroit's labor problem can be:

If an assembly plant with 3,000 workers has no dealer orders, it has two options. One is to close the plant for a week and not build any cars. Then the company still has to give the idled workers 95 percent of their take-home pay plus all benefits for not working. So a one-week shutdown costs $7.7 million or $1,545 for each vehicle it didn't make.

Unions aren't prefect. No human institution is. The idea that unions can't be as greedy as any CEO is fallacious. Don't get me wrong, they do serve a vital purpose. But don't put them on a pedestal.

J.R.:
I have the same worries about Tesla and the durability and quality of their product. Any bad publicity due to mechanical failure could send the BEV community back to the stone age, so to speak. Lets hope they are doing their homework for their own sake, and the fate of the BEV world.