My Next Car

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

There's a new car making a debut on the world's roads. It's a snazzy little roadster that goes from zero to sixty in four seconds and can run at a hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. The cost of operating this little gem is an amazing two-cents per mile.

The roadster is made by a new company called Tesla. It operates off of an electric battery and uses absolutely no gasoline or oil. The current battery has a range of 200 miles before having to be recharged. The cost is still prohibitive to most of us - in excess of $100,000 - but the limited number currently being manufactured have people lined up waiting to purchase. The company is preparing to roll out a sedan model at approximately half the price of the roadster.

So, if all of that is true (and it is), why are the Big Three American automakers still dragging their feet on going ahead with their own versions of the Tesla? Is it that they are comfortable doing things the old way and not eager to make drastic changes to the way they do business? Yes. Is it that they think they know what America wants in spite of massive data to the contrary? Yes. Is it that they have grown complacent and are organizationally resistant to change? Yes, of course it is.

America watched in horror this week as the CEOs of the Big Three flew from Detroit to Washington, DC, in their three individual corporate jets so that they could beg money off of Congress with vague promises to change the way they do business - but without any definitive plans on how that was to be accomplished. We're here and you need to give us money, or we'll go out of business and take our nation's economy down the drain with us. Corporate blackmail. We're too dumb to follow the basic tenants of capitalism and give the country what it wants - so give us some public money to reward our incompetence.

Yeah, right!

Those Tesla's are expensive. But I remember when pocket calculators first came out - they sold for two or three hundred dollars each. My first computer set-up was nearly five thousand dollars. My first digital camera was over two thousand. My first laptop computer was used, weighed a ton, and cost me a little over two grand. The point is that things always start out expensive, but if they fill a public need, they get better and cheaper quickly. Tesla cars will be priced so that everyone can afford one in just a few short years.

If our government is going to hand out money to the auto industry, why does it need to be to the dinosaurs like Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. Their high-flying executives have spent years making bad decisions, and now they should have to pay the ultimate price. Let them go bankrupt, and give the cash to the innovators. Maybe Tesla could take over the GM factories and hire their laid-off workers to make the cars of the future. With some big government backing it could happen relatively soon, and we could all be driving around in pollution-free vehicles for two-cents a mile. What's wrong with that idea?

(And maybe the Saudis could switch from an oil economy to bagging sand and selling it to Lowe's and Home Depot!)

I drive an old car, a 1999 Chevy Cavalier rag top. I am going to keep driving my old car for the foreseeable future. If the transmission goes out, I will have it replaced. If the engine goes out, I will replace that also. Both of those purchases will be cheaper and smarter than making payments on some American monstrosity that will be completely out-of-date and out-of-fashion before I could get it paid off.

Someday I will buy a new car. I hope that it will be an American product made by unionized American workers. But regardless of where it comes from or who makes it, my next car will be a Tesla or something very much like a Tesla.

I'm ready to drive into the future!