This week has indeed been, shall we say, troubling for General Motors. On Monday they released news that they are going to help state governments promote and add E85 gas pumps at stations. With the stocks plummeting and the faith in their stock holders all but gone, We are wondering where they will get the money to do this.
Then Wednesday came about and General Motors announced that it is reducing, if not eliminating, the medical insurance benefits of its white-collared work force (they can not do that to the blue-collared work force because they gave the control of benefits, and a large sum of money to the United Auto Workers to control and take over blue-collar benefits this last contract, which may have saved the blue-collar workers benefits, but in our opinion ironically hurt GM and helped contribute to their current financial liquidity issues).
So is this where the money is going to come from to continue heavy investing into the "FlexFuel" division and push E85? Maybe, it could be just coincidence too.
But, that is just the preamble to the actual post here we had in mind. So here is the bad news/good news story...
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J.D. Power And Associates 2008 Alternative Powertrain Study
NOTE: Below is only an excerpt, but you can read the whole article by clicking the link above.
"The study also finds that the percentage of consumers who are considering a hybrid-electric vehicle is up from 50 percent in 2007 to 62 percent in 2008. Consideration for flexible fuel (E85) capable vehicles—which are designed to run on gasoline or a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol—has decreased slightly from 2007 (47% vs. 43% in 2008), while consideration for clean diesel demonstrated the most notable decline from 23 percent in 2007 to only 16 percent in 2008. The drop in consideration for diesel technology may be attributed to the substantial increase in the relative price of diesel since 2007."
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Like we said, good news to us. But this is another blow to the mighty GM. Are they, already on the financial brink of disaster (a one time impossible thought), once again chasing a declining market? They are putting more into E85 FlexFuel programs, but we feel that they should continue on projects like the Chevy Volt instead.
Once E85, Ethanol, FlexFuel, Corn Gas, or whatever you want to call it, gets exposed for the farce that it is to all the public, we think that it will become just another history lesson. Then again, if history repeats itself, it probably won't. Not sure about you, but our history books were only filled with positive things in U.S. History, not our failures.
By the way, if you want to download a PDF of J.D. Power's Report, Click Here!
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