I say sink the America car companies

So I was reading how Ford's CEO is willing to take a annual salary of $1 if they receive loans from the government. But in the same article in Boston.com they mentioned how Ford was focusing on electric cars.

Ford says CEO will work for $1 to get gov't loans

DETROIT—Ford Motor Co. will tell Congress that it plans to return to a pretax profit or break even in 2011 when the Detroit Three automakers' CEOs appear before lawmakers this week to request $25 billion in government loans.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally said he'll work for $1 per year if the company has to take any government loan money.

After grilling the CEOs at hearings last month, Congressional leaders demanded plans from the automakers by Tuesday to show that they will survive if they get federal funds. The plan Ford submitted said the company will cancel all management employees' 2009 bonuses and will not pay any merit increases for its North American salaried employees next year.

The company also said it will sell its five corporate aircraft. The CEOs of all three Detroit automakers were harshly criticized during last month's hearings for flying to Washington in separate corporate jets.

Mulally said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday that Ford will give much more detail to Congress than it did previously, and the company will emphasize the steps it has taken to cut its labor costs with the United Auto Workers union.

Mulally said Ford will seek $9 billion as its share of the loan money but may not need to use it. The Dearborn-based company has said it has enough cash to make it through next year without assistance.

As part of the plan submitted to Congress, Ford said it does not anticipate a liquidity crisis in 2009, "barring a bankruptcy by one of its domestic competitors or a more severe economic downturn that would further cripple automotive sales." The loan would provide a safeguard against worsening conditions, the company said.

The company said it will accelerate plans to roll out electric vehicles as part of its plan.

"We are going to do that across our product line," Mulally said in the interview.

The first plug-in vehicle will be a Transit Connect small van for commercial use in 2010 and a car the size of the Ford Focus compact the following year.

My question is why weren't they focusing switching to electric cars years ago? This mostly revolves around GM Motors, but Ford had its hand in it too.

There is a great documentary made in 2006 by Sony Pictures call "Who Killed the Electric Car".

The movie does a great job showing the cover up of the electric car. Oil companies were afraid to lose money so they attached car companies to their hips to crush the idea of the electric car.

What if US car makers said F. U. to Big Oil when they were developing the electric car? Do you think it would have hurt their sales? Did the automakers really think that consumers wouldn't be interested in something besides a gas powered car?

The electric car has been around for almost a 100 years, this is not a new invention. Nikola Tesla came up with the first electric car, along with a lot of other things. Electric cars are not some primitive technology that can only travel slow and have a short range. (Which is what the automakers want you to believe). They can actually out preform regular cars.

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.

The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright's car? It runs off an electric battery.

What I am trying to point out is the American car companies are late to the party. Instead of building a product that Americans could be using right now, they choosed the route of pleasing Big Oil. Car companies kept manufacturing huge gas swallowing machine. So when gas became $4 a gallon, no one wanted to buy their cars. Just think if ONE American car company came out with a electric car, lets say 5 years ago. They would have the #1 selling car in America, and probably would have bought out at least one or maybe even two of the other large American car companies.

So I really have no sympathy for the American car companies, let them suffer.