One thing I don't understand is why GM isn't promoting its current Chevy Malibu, which is getting rave reviews.
Even ESPN football columnist and respected policy analyst Gregg Easterbrook has praised the Malibu while ripping GM management and Capital Hil flunkies who have screwed up the GM bailout. Scroll down in Easterbrook's latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback column to get his take on Congress and the auto bailout, including an imaginery conversation between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a car salesman.
Here's what Easterbrook has to say about the 2009 Malibu:
"What America needs is midsized regular cars that combine safety, comfort and decent gas mileage. Get everybody into the Chevy Malibu or its equivalent and we'll all be safer, while petroleum demand would drop.
"Can Detroit-built regular cars succeed in the marketplace? Car mags are raving about the Malibu, which is said to offer the same overall manufacturing quality and driving experience as the Honda Accord.
"Four times this year I've rented a car on a trip and each time asked for a Malibu, so I could try one for myself. Each time the rental agent has said the same thing: All our Malibus are out because customers are requesting them. A Chevrolet regular car is a hot product! Maybe Detroit will survive."
Easterbrook then shifts from auto reviewing to his strong suit, policy analysis:
"General Motors just announced a months-long production shutdown at most plants, to clear out a backlog of cars at dealerships. Why isn't this opportunity being used to convert the facilities into 'flexible factories,' ones that quickly change output based on demand?
"The chief advantage Honda and Toyota have over the Big Three isn't their workforce -- UAW workers are hard-working and skilled -- it is flexible factories that use 'lean' production techniques."
If Easterbrook wasn't so busy writing policy books and a football column for ESPN, he'd make a helluva CEO at GM.
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April 24, 2009
Auto design gets modular
By
George
Leopold
Those engineers at the cutting edge of automotive design appear to be taking a page from NASA's Apollo program to land humans on the Moon in the 1960s.
Steadily, the problems of auto electronics and manufacturing are being broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces as complexity grows and development cycles shrink.
There is of course another factor at work here: The entire automotive supply chain is under enormous economic and political pressure to reduce costs while at the same time striving to retain automobile features that will bring buyers back to dealer show rooms.
There were essentially two design choices in getting to the Moon: You could go big, and I mean really big, in your rocket design in an attempt to land a behemoth on the lunar surface (with a really long ladder); or you could build a stack that would get an Apollo crew to lunar orbit so that a spindly yet agile 23-foot high, 25,000-pound lander would take two astronauts the last 60 miles and get them off the surface.
All that remained of the 36-story high Apollo Saturn V at re-entry was the command module at the top of the stack.
It worked every time, including one flight in which the Lunar Module served as a life boat.
Auto designers and researchers are now taking similar approaches in the design of new power trains and future automobiles.
At Argonne National Laboratory, for example, researchers at the lab's Transportation Technology R&D Center are using what they call the Modular Automotive Technology Testbed to put various auto electronics technologies through their paces.
Similarly, an emerging group of green auto technology developers are taking a modular approach in areas like power train development. Adura Systems Inc., which emerged this week (April 20) from stealth mode, bases its new electric power train design on a modular architecture designed to extend the range of buses and trucks to as much as 100 miles.
Adura's chief architecture, Jim Castelaz, will be providing a detail description of Adura's Modular, Electronic, Scalable Architecture in an upcoming technical article.
We invite readers to comment on that article, and to send us other examples of how modular design is reshaping the embattled global auto industry.
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