Why GM Really went Bankrupt, When They Could Have Been the World's Leading Car Company!
Politics / US Auto's Jun 05, 2009 - 06:10 AM GMTBy: Kevin_Geary
GM is bankrupt, and yet it could have now been the world's leading car company, way ahead of any competition. It had a world-beating, world-leading, unique, battery-operated car called the EV-1. It got 140 miles on a single charge! And yet it deliberately destroyed its own invention!
One of my best friends had one. She absolutely loved it. She drove it four times a week from Sebastopol in California, to San Francisco and back (a distance of about 120 miles), on one charge! The car was incredibly fast (it accelerated 0-60mph in about 4-5 seconds). It was quiet (no engine noise). Everyone who saw her in the car at traffic lights, etc., or at the shops would approach her and asked her about the "neat car" and asked her "if it was one of those electric cars."I rode with her in it once, and it was utterly amazing. It was well designed inside; it was amazingly fast in acceleration; the seats were comfortable. And it was so quiet you thought the engine had been turned off! It ran on batteries that were NiMH batteries and they were the most advanced batteries ever (even more advanced than the Lithium-Ion batteries used now in computers and the new "electric" and "hybrid electric" cars.)
You couldn't buy the cars (even though they were only $25,000 each). You could only lease them. Everyone who had one, loved them, and there was never one single complaint about any one of them (that's unheard-of in the car industry!).
So, what did GM do? They recalled all of them from the leasees, and refused, when offered, to sell any one of them. They then took all the cars and crushed them in Mesa, AZ! They destroyed all the batteries, and sold the patent rights (remember, this was THE world's finest and first battery for cars that could get 120-140 miles on a single charge!!! New Electric cars can't even achieve this - except for the Tessla sports car, that does 220 miles on a single charge on souped-up lithium-ion batteries!).
They destroyed this wonderful invention AFTER 9/11! In 20002, after it was obvious that oil was going to be a big problem and dependency on oil was causing us to become the targets of terrorists and getting us involved in the Middle East (Would we have
even gone into Iraq if we'd had a growing, world-beating, electric car industry?)
To whom did GM sell the valuable patent rights to this amazing and world-beating technology? --------- CHEVRON Corporation!
Not that I'm a conspiracy nut or anything, but really, this is SO blatantly obvious that it would be funny, were it not so sad!
It is estimated by an electrical battery expert, who was interviewed by the BBC, that, had GM continued with the EV-1 and moved on and developed the technology, that they would have NiMH batteries now that could get 300 miles on a single charge! He also stated that had GM continued with all this, they'd probably NOT be in bankruptcy court now, but instead be the world's leading car manufacturer, selling cars that cost virtually nothing to run, when gasoline was over $4 a gallon!
Did you, when Congress was questioning the heads of GM, ever hear one Congressman or Congresswoman ask, "Why the hell did you guys crush and dump a world-beating car, and sell the patent to the giant Oil Company, Chevron?" And when did you hear any member of Congress suggest that they buy back the rights from Chevron?And force them to do so by legislation or Act of Congress if they refused? Imagine if GM had this available to them now. Do you think they'd be in bankruptcy court right now? Of course not!
By Kevin Geary
Kevin Geary is an artist who lives in Sedona, Arizona. He was the youngest political cartoonist on the Financial Times at the age of 19. He had his first one man show at 20, opened by the prime minister of Great Britain, Harold Wilson. He has had over 60 exhibitions of his work; has work in several major museums, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, and his work has sold at major auction houses, such as Christie's, in London, Whyte's in Dublin and Doyle in New York.
He has followed politics, history and economic history for many years, and has also written about it elsewhere online. He predicted this depression long before it happened, timed the collapse of the stock market in June last year, long before it happened, and his stock picks have often been very accurate. The four stocks he picked on January 1st, 2009 to do well (Amazon, Apple, Baidu and Google ), are all up from the beginning of the year. He does not offer specific public advice about stocks, but he has written from time to time about long and short term trends in the political and economic realm.
© 2009 Copyright Kevin Geary - All Rights Reserved
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