Unsurprisingly, it’s the companies with UAW labor that are closing down plants, while multiple companies (that aren’t UAW) are adding more plants and labor. Sure, GM is doing a great job or screwing up it’s product lineup, but the headaches that particular union brings are absolutely not going to inspire them to keep…

Oh, believe me. It’s here. The only thing that’s slowing it down at all is public perception and organizational inertia. I’m willing to bet that doubling or tripling of minimum wage will rapidly accelerate the change.

Eh. The extra safety stuff isn’t my jam, but I can’t hate on you for wanting it - or for putting your money where your mouth is. I can’t say anything, as I bought my OB used. (The STi, I bought new, and they still offer that one as a row-your-own. I guess the market does work.)

Don’t live in Oklahoma. Do drive an Outback. Would be considered ‘far right’ by most people here - not sure how, but whatever.

Nailed it. At this point, the US labor cost for GM, Ford, and FCA are so much higher than for other companies that they can’t realistically compete. This could have been addressed back in 2008, had the companies not been bailed out*. When purchased by a new owner, the old contracts would likely have gone out the…

(Of course compliance cars aren’t helping either as they give EVs a bad name)

What’s your metric for bringing things to market? As far as I can tell, forcing massive infrastructure improvement isn’t doing anyone any favors and really isn’t moving the ball forward with regards to the market. The leaf might have been a stepping stone, but it was an evolutionary dead end. You can see this…

Okay, so they’re already doing the sensible thing.  Why - besides feel-good optics - would a government implement push controls on a market?

Because fuck the invisible hand. These folks can’t think far enough ahead to where customer issues with battery energy storage are addressed on the battery front (I.E. the next generation of batteries not having degradation issues, charging faster, having significantly higher storage density, and costing less). Once…

The personal use full sized pickup is peaking - and I’m guessing that ten years from now EV mid sizers will give people what they need (nice daily driver with the capability to tow the camper/boat on the weekends and get mulch/make dump runs as needed).

While the Charger and Challenger remain profitable for FCA, it was not expected that redesigned models would move to the automaker’s Giorgio platform that underpins much of its future product plans. That could limit which vehicles, such as a high-margin Jeep vehicle, FCA can build at the plant.

Shut up, asshole!

Counterpoint:

Plus, it’s a right to work state, so those union dues should drop dramatically.  

For a lot of economic activity the churn can be more vital than the profit in the long short term. US automakers have never been good at planning for the long term.

Man, there’s a lot you are just not considering insofar as the truck market, but this argument has been beaten to death for the last decade on this fuckin’ website, so I’ll keep it short:

...and they should - the lot of them - gone into bankruptcy back in 2008, as opposed to getting a bailout and being turned into zombie corporations like they did. While the suck factor would have been high, a bankruptcy is the only thing that would have broken the vicious cycle created by the situation you described.…

I’m a little lost as to the relevance of you comment. Are you arguing that the lack of profitability for the big 3 is down to vehicle volumes (I.E. if they built a better car, then they’d sell more)? I ask, as my argument was never about vehicle volumes. The issue never had problems selling sufficient volumes of cars…

...and that the specific handling issues cited with the Corvair (which were common to all Porsche and VW vehicles at the time - yay garbage trailing arm suspension geometry!) had already been fixed for the second gen Corvair (which went to a multilink independent rear suspension)

It should come as a surprise, then, that the majority of the cars you’re talking about (BMW and MB SUVs in particular) are actually made in the US with largely US sourced components. It’s also worth noting that the majority of Subarus and Toyotas sold in the US are made in US plants. This includes - as a change from…