At a recent breakfast meeting
focusing on the new Obama auto guidelines, one of the speakers was
David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research
(CAR).
Mr. Cole, an engineer by training, told many stories of the
difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration
has sent to save the auto industry. There have been many meetings
during which experienced automotive experts have had to listen to
newcomers to the industry, someone with
zero
manufacturing experience,
zero
auto industry experience,
zero
business experience,
zero
finance experience, and
zero
engineering experience, tell them how to run their business.
Mr. Cole’s favorite story…..
There was a team of Obama people conferring with Mr. Cole,
explaining to him that the auto companies needed to make a car
that is powered by electricity and liquid natural gas (LNG), with
enough combined fuel to go 500 miles without refueling so we
"wouldn't need so many gas stations". They referred to BTU's of
LNG and battery life data they had looked up on some website.
Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk full of
batteries and an LNG tank as big as a car to make it happen, and
that there were
problems
related to the laws of physics that
prevented them from......
One of the Obama folks interrupted and said…
“These laws of physics…who's rules are those? We need to change
that.
[Some of the others wrote
down "laws of physics" so they could look it up!].
We have the congress and the administration. We can repeal that
law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that
problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sort of issues".
