>I'm glad to finally see someone else, at least one person, agree's with me. I >don't put it as eliquently as Josh. I use fewer, harsher and more maverick >words. I'm too radical to acheive mass audience receptiveness.
It depends on where I'm speaking. I think that the situation at times is so crazy that it's impossible to not come off as harsh. How can one discuss what GM has done to the EV1 without sounding a bit hard? And now: The Th!nk. Why were we even cutting Ford the slack? What were we thinking? Why were we that naive? >I think both of you are right on and can combine your points to form at least >part of the mosiac of this great picture puzzle we analyze with gritted teeth. Oh, you said it buddy. Gritted teeth indeed. I think the toughest part of the equation, at the base, or one of the toughest parts, is that when one extolls the virtues of this technology (not withstanding its arguable vices) and when one questions whether the larger businesses are not only ignoring potential demand but are actively seeking to forestall the technology, one is so often met by the response that one must be *anti*-capitalistic. Criticism of big businesses is automatically assumed to be a clueless criticism of them for seeking profit. But this case is precisely the opposite, and it is the ostensible defenders free market concepts who are allowing GM and the like to "hide in their skirts" while they continue their contempt for customer demand and newer better products. It seems to me that the free market concept has reached a point where the very large companies, in some fields, are not terribly responsive to consumer demand and are even contemptuous of customers or even fraudulent in their behaviour at times (and fraud implies a violation of consumer property rights, though advocates of free markets seem sometimes concerned only with property rights of big business and not individuals). To advocate continued free society and free markets, I think we should not allow the slovenly and the anti-competitive to hide so freely behind their right to compete. They aren't trying to compete but rather to forestall competition. Legal, yes, mostly. But it is also legal to expose it for what it is. I am tired of ostensible advocates of free markets assuming (without bothering to investigate the matter) that everything larger businesses claim about electric vehicles and demand for them is true. This response is, for my money, as big a problem as the technical challenge of designing better batteries and controllers. Bigger, I think. jl
