The news out of Detroit last week was that GM had given up the title of the world’s number one auto company to Toyota.  This was a development that had been expected, but when both companies reported first quarter sales last week, the numbers made it official.  Toyota sold 2.35 million cars and trucks, about 100,000 more than GM. These numbers were expected, as GM had made a decision last year to cut back on bulk sales to rental companies which have historically been included in the total sales numbers.

The reporting in the media was predictable.  Why did this happen?  What did GM do wrong?  How will Toyota take over the title of being number one without stoking nationalistic trade conversations?  Then of course there were all the interviews with executives and assembly workers who have worked for GM for decades, discussing this occurrence with sadness and frustration.

Let’s take a look at this changing of the guard at the top of the automotive world through another lens, the lens of history.  First, it must be pointed out that GM has been the number one auto company in the world since 1931.  That is impressive!  Seventy-six years as the number one company in its category.  Do you think Microsoft will have as long a time as the number one software company?  How long did Xerox stay at the top of the copier heap?  How long did monolithic IBM stay at the top of the computer world?  All things must pass.

In addition …

In my last post I wrote about GM and the presentation it made to some of us in the media about the new battery technology they are developing along with several other companies.  At the end of that post I highlighted the two distinct lines of challenging questions that have come up in response. 

I will quickly restate these two before moving on to address them.  The first challenge to GM about their commitment to creating a new battery technology for vehicles is to directly question how serious the GM commitment is.  How can the people who were identified as launching and then ‘killing’ the electric EV-1 be taken seriously?  The second challenge is to the commitment of GM to not come out with a true electric car until there is the ‘perfect’ battery technology to do so.  In other words, since it will take several years to perfect the lithium ion battery to meet all the necessary criteria for use, why not just come out with vehicles that use the current nickel-metal hydride technology so that ‘green’ cars can be put on the road much sooner.

To restate simply:  Are you guys for real, and why wait for perfect when good is available? 

Is GM for real?  All evidence points to a truly serious, committed company that has set as one of its core missions to reinvent the actual DNA of the automobile.  First, GM is being extremely open to the press, bloggers and the world at large about what they …

One of the most important research and development efforts in the world today is the quest for the perfect battery to power electric cars.  We all know that there is global warming, air pollution, and an increasing dependence on imported oil.  We know that petroleum is a finite resource that will be depleted in this century.  We live in a country whose culture and functionality is so dependent on the automobile that an alien might think the car is the dominant form of life.  Therefore, the solution to all of these problems and situations is to reinvent how the 200+ million vehicles in this country are powered. 

It has been 120 years since the internal combustion engine was invented and first utilized for a personal mode of transportation.  In that time, the 20th century, practically every technological aspect of our lives has been consistently upgraded, changed or replaced by a new invention.  Not so the power train of the automobile, which, at its essence, is still the mechanical, internal combustion engine we were using in 1900.
This then is the historical context for what the automotive industry and many of its suppliers are attempting to do regarding the invention of an electric power source for all the vehicles we drive. As readers of this blog know, I had been invited by General Motors to meet with some of their top management last month prior to the Chicago Auto Show.  In follow-up to that, GM invited me …

There was an article the other day in the paper with the headline “Phoenix Plans 24-Lane Highway”. The article described the plan to widen a two mile stretch of Interstate 10 in Phoenix to 24 lanes.  In each direction there would be six general purpose lanes, two high-occupancy lanes and then four lanes for local traffic.  The article went on to mention several other giant highway proposals around the country such as an expansion to18 lanes in Houston and 23 lanes in Atlanta. 

The reason for all this highway expansion is to ease gridlock that city planners are increasingly saying could stunt economic growth.  Leaders in metro areas around the country are worried that traffic congestion is an obstacle for them to ‘compete’ economically with other cities.  This implies that, as one city expands its highway system, other cities will feel compelled to do the same.  This is a competition to see who can pave over the greatest amount of land so that internal combustion engine vehicles can move more easily as they pollute the air, powered by ever more expensive petroleum purchased from countries that fund terrorism. …