Oh Dear ! Ford
- Thread starter limerickman
- Start date
Electric is a waste of time and money. If we are going to change to an alternative fuel it should be hydrogen. Electric comes from the burning of fossil fuels and is expensive with out many benefits. With out complete government regulation a switch will never be made. Once consumers start to adopt alternate energy the price of oil will fall through the floor because there will be no demand which will push people back into SUV and trucks. It is already happening.
The problem with Ford and GM is the fact that they have spread themselves too far. This is especially true for Ford. Just because you are good in one segment of the market doesn’t mean you can be good in all of them. The second problem is that product mix sucks Ford has 17 different cars for 2007 how many SUV crossover vehicles can you have? Consumers get tired of searching through that ****. Ford should concentrate on making fewer vehicles better rather than many vehicles that are not so good.( of course everyone I know who owns a Ford has close to or over 100,000 miles engines last forever if you take care of them) Looks and styling SUCK HELLO you see what the competition is selling yet you keep rolling out the same lack luster looking cars year after year.
GM did do a good job bringing Cadillac back from the dead and look how they did it; repositioned the image of the brand. This is no longer an old person car but rather a sporty luxury performance brand.
Its frustrating to see some drowning and they refuse to take the life saver. The market has changed the American Revolution campaign that GM is using for Chevy might hit a certain segment but consumers are more aware of the world now American car manufactures will have to start using other tactics instead of straight muscle and American appeal. The brands will survive but they are going to have to produce a smaller number of cars and have less of a market share.
"You can have it in any color as long as it's black"~ Ford
The bottom line is if you are the only comapny in the market you can produce whatever you want and it will sell. Ford still hasnt realized that their is competition now and the consumer's voice should be heard.
The problem with Ford and GM is the fact that they have spread themselves too far. This is especially true for Ford. Just because you are good in one segment of the market doesn’t mean you can be good in all of them. The second problem is that product mix sucks Ford has 17 different cars for 2007 how many SUV crossover vehicles can you have? Consumers get tired of searching through that ****. Ford should concentrate on making fewer vehicles better rather than many vehicles that are not so good.( of course everyone I know who owns a Ford has close to or over 100,000 miles engines last forever if you take care of them) Looks and styling SUCK HELLO you see what the competition is selling yet you keep rolling out the same lack luster looking cars year after year.
GM did do a good job bringing Cadillac back from the dead and look how they did it; repositioned the image of the brand. This is no longer an old person car but rather a sporty luxury performance brand.
Its frustrating to see some drowning and they refuse to take the life saver. The market has changed the American Revolution campaign that GM is using for Chevy might hit a certain segment but consumers are more aware of the world now American car manufactures will have to start using other tactics instead of straight muscle and American appeal. The brands will survive but they are going to have to produce a smaller number of cars and have less of a market share.
"You can have it in any color as long as it's black"~ Ford
The bottom line is if you are the only comapny in the market you can produce whatever you want and it will sell. Ford still hasnt realized that their is competition now and the consumer's voice should be heard.
djk202020 said:
I agree with your slant on this problem with one reservation, electricity can be generated by Solar Panels, they get better as time goes by, the batteries to store the power also improves with time, just look at the steps taken in the telecommunications industry.
Hydrogen is the best alternative however it too has it's generation, storage and distribution problems as well, but they are not insurmountable.
As for the rest, I think you hit the nail correctly, smack bang on the head.
GM are already streets ahead, in design, colour and innovation, unfortunately.
The Australian designed product will soon be on your streets, nice looking vehicles and a joy to drive, but once again a gas guzzler of sorts.
Agree with you on the electric thing it is not a dead technology and there are alot of advancements happening. Considering that it is easily adoptable technology for car manf it is a step in the right direction but not an answer to the problem. I had to do a semester long report on hydrogen, electic and methane. Hydrogen just looks like the best bet for the future imho.
I am highly skeptical of the so-called hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is expensive to produce, dificult to transport, and has low energy density. It seems to me that the most practical thing to do is radically reduce the weight of cars to a thousand pounds or less using plastics and composites then use very small combustion engines or electric motors. It is extremely inefficient for people to drive a four thousand pound vehicle a few miles to pick up thirty pounds of groceries.djk202020 said:
I though there was a chance the chinese would be smart enough to use their authoritarian government to position themselves for the future, but nope. They are going down the same dead end the rest of us are.
There is a website in the USA that deals with this phenomenon of hydrogen power for cars, it is at pressent only an additive to a gasoline engine but a step in the right direction. It can save a third of fuel cost per week by installing one of these electrolysis converteres, (using water and electrolysis) to produce hydrogen. www.hydrogen-boost.com they sell the plans, I think.Bro Deal said:
The parts are available through your local electronics store and if your so inclined it can be a home project job to build and install one of these under the hood on the regular car.
I saw an documentary of China's booming ecconomy and the cars are just one small part of the equation, with sales exceeding that of the rest of the world, capitalism grasped with great enthusiasm, as you say a pity too.
Even if you use very small combustion engines you would still be using a non renewable energy source. That is the main problem it is going to run out and we are gonna be screwed well maybe not us but then again I am only 21. Also in that scenario you are asking people to give up a life style and you are asking auto manf to remake a vehicle completly not just the engine and fuel system this would lead to much higer costs. If these small light cars travled as fast as the cars do now there may be alot more auto deaths, I say MAY becasue new materials could be better than steel and alum but things like carbon fiber would be expensive. What about other transportation like ships trains and trucks that have to move frieght and tons of weight? Biodiesel perhaps?
You can buy a hydrogen car right now if you really want it. They are acctualy safer than cars that run on refined oils. Watch a video of a hydrogen car on fire and you can see why.
" Because it is so light, hydrogen disperses and floats skyward when leaked—it won't pool or soak into clothing like gasoline, just waiting to ignite. (Spilled hydrogen won't soak into the earth and pollute ground water either, or cause an environmental disaster like the Exxon Valdez.)"
"when a carbon-based fuel like gasoline burns, glowing hot soot particles transfer the heat to its surroundings—potentially including you. But because hydrogen contains no carbon, it burns cleanly without a residue of hot soot, producing little radiant energy. This means that a victim would have to be practically in the flame in order to get burned."
You can buy a hydrogen car right now if you really want it. They are acctualy safer than cars that run on refined oils. Watch a video of a hydrogen car on fire and you can see why.
" Because it is so light, hydrogen disperses and floats skyward when leaked—it won't pool or soak into clothing like gasoline, just waiting to ignite. (Spilled hydrogen won't soak into the earth and pollute ground water either, or cause an environmental disaster like the Exxon Valdez.)"
"when a carbon-based fuel like gasoline burns, glowing hot soot particles transfer the heat to its surroundings—potentially including you. But because hydrogen contains no carbon, it burns cleanly without a residue of hot soot, producing little radiant energy. This means that a victim would have to be practically in the flame in order to get burned."
We are never going to "run out." Petroleum will just get more expensive and this will force changes due to simple economics. Hydrogen is not an energy source. It is just a means to store energy. Hydrogen is currently generated on an industrial scale by cracking natural gas. The low carbon method to generate large amounts of hydrogen would be nuclear powered electrolysis, but that brings up the question of why should be spend energy to generate hydrogen, more energy to compress or liquify it, and then even more to transport it when we could just use the electricity in the first place.djk202020 said:
Not exactly. The end of cheap oil will change people's lifestyles by itself. And there is already a process of manufacturing change as car makers compete with each other and adapt to changing market conditions. If we look at europe we can see that higher gas prices and regulation has caused them to transition to smaller vehicles than what is standard in the U.S. I think the natural end result of this will be superlight cars.djk202020 said:
As far as the costs go, changing the fuel delivery infrastructure to hydrogen would be extremely expensive. It is far easier and cheaper to use what we have.
But most of the questions about hydrogen safety come from the immense pressure you have to store it at in order to make up for its low energy density. Well, that combined with the fact that it burns, making a lethal combination.djk202020 said:
