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You do know the F-150 has been the top selling vehicle in America for 42 years and there were plenty of BOF vehicles between those years also, including full size station wagons. So you’re assumption about the outlawed BOF is kind of ridiculous.
CAFE standards are much different for trucks than cars.
It is no coincidence that the F-150 became the best selling vehicle two years after CAFE was passed.
Before CAFE, the F-Series was never the best selling vehicle.
After CAFE, large BOF cars gradually faded from the scene, replaced by more and more trucks.
The standards are rigged to favor light trucks, a segment dominated by domestic manufacturers.
How many decades did it take Ford to become the truck sales leader? For what Tesla has done in such a short period of time, no other car company has ever done. They sold 245k Electric vehicles last year with starting price point of what $45-50k, and they're EV, EV's are the hardest sell of all vehicles. I'm not a fanboi at all, but what they've done is amazing.
They have burned through some money aright but what they have created is phenomenal.
Not really. It’s just a Leaf with more batteries and a higher cost.
Creating an itself EV has never been a challenge. It’s creating an affordable EV that returns a profit that is the moonshot. Tesla has proven it can’t do either.
It’s creating an affordable EV that returns a profit that is the moonshot.
Their products are neither affordable or profitable. The more they make, the more they lose.
GM has gotten a lot closer than they have. You can get a new Bolt for well under $30K.
But they don't make much of an effort to sell them. They have price and range, but not profit.
They know from hard experience that you can't lose your shirt and make it up in volume.
GM,Ford etc. Are giving their customers what they want and SUVs and $80K trucks with WiFi is what they want. Never mind you can’t get a signal if there are no towers around.
Chalk it up to people wanting what their friends and neighbors are driving. The Japanese and the Germans are the only ones making CARS these says, so if you want a car then you’ll have to go to those manufacturers.
In the end I feel it’s the consumers fault.
Or you could say invested $6.3 B in ten years. This ain't Henry Ford's day and age. Building corporations costs money. As an example, watch what Uber's IPO hits today. They've invested a helluva lot more money.
We have seen it for the past few years: Ford, Chrysler, GM all dropping the majority of their sedans in favor of crossovers because they cant compete or not selling as much as they want. Which leads to the question, if they cant build a sedan to compete with the foreign automakers, why would you even want to buy their Crossover vehicles, when they are pretty much based of the sedan platforms too? Wont that same issue of being unable to compete just apply to them as well, just at a much higher price?
Yes. It will.
But these companies are not known for their common sense.
Not really. It’s just a Leaf with more batteries and a higher cost.
Creating an itself EV has never been a challenge. It’s creating an affordable EV that returns a profit that is the moonshot. Tesla has proven it can’t do either.
How much have we made on our space efforts?
Since you are talking moonshot I think this would be relevant.
I think it's crazy not to cheer on an American company that, in a decade, not only advanced the Art of Driving, but ALSO is sending up rockets.
I think what many fail to see is that the companies that did the actual moonshot...and many of the great companies that created our economy, took MANY decades to get to "par". Many went belly-up but their innovations were then brought forward by others.
The inventor of modern rubber (goodyear) and of FM Radio and many other innovations....died broke. Heck, Tesla died broke and he basically invented much of the modern world.
Don't equate short term profit with greatness. It is a uniquely American fault and will get us nowhere. Great companies and accomplishments are built up over decades.
If we used "didn't make a profit most quarters", what would you say about Amazon? That's right - you'd tell us Bezos can't be the wealthiest person in the USA...he can't be. Because, after all, he's never made money.
"Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was still in the red for its history until 2009."
That's about 13-14 years after founding........
GM,Ford etc. Are giving their customers what they want and SUVs and $80K trucks with WiFi is what they want. Never mind you can’t get a signal if there are no towers around.
Chalk it up to people wanting what their friends and neighbors are driving. The Japanese and the Germans are the only ones making CARS these says, so if you want a car then you’ll have to go to those manufacturers.
In the end I feel it’s the consumers fault.
I'm not sure this is the case.
There is a funny meme about capitalism that shows innovation in the car companies by a side view of every SUV. They are almost all exactly the same!
Take a small anecdote. ME.
Wifey has an old 2008 Subaru outback...a station wagon! The current outbacks are massive, so they are off the table. What can we buy at a reasonable cost that has the same basic footprint and capacity?
ONE MODEL...and that is likely to be discontinued. The VW Sportwagen.....
It sold well 2 years ago and 3 years ago, poorly last year. This was not due to consumers changing their mind...because I have direct experience with the situation!
We have stopped into VW dealers 3X in the last 18 months trying to find one to drive. NONE available. I was also going to buy an Arteon (VW) to replace my 9 year old Passat. Nope...not on the lot and delayed for a full year. BUT, they would love to show me an Atlas!
What came first, the chicken or the egg? I say the car makers in the USA wanted more profits and they always got them out of pumped up trucks and SUVS (very few people buy the base models).....
Back to that station wagon I want. Yep, I can buy a 55K Volvo or Audi to do the job. A nice E class Benz at 65K+ would do the job also.
At the same time, a real nice Camry Hybrid is 28K.
What is wrong with this picture? IMHO, I could do a LOT better (I'm a marketer) in knowing what the market desires than those at VW and the American car companies.
The foreign makers came up with better SUVs because the American companies proved American drivers were idiots when it comes to common sense. "Well, Joe, this model gets terrible MPG, doesn't hold any more stuff and is harder to park, etc....BUT, it gives you a sense of command since you sit higher".
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