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On the one hand, I am disgusted by the Government steamrolling this stuff. Just wait until the people who voted for this find out how much it's going to cost.
On the other hand, I've been disgusted by the complete lack of technological innovation from Detroit over the last 30 years. they have their own economics PhD's also, and certainly they must have been screaming for years that the present business model wasn't sustainable. Other than some new electronic goo-gahs, Detroit really hasn't done much but shape the metal differently in that period of time. Today marks a new "ground floor", and, unfortunately, because of the sins of the past (ridiculous union rules and pay, short-sighted and basically corrupt, take-the-money-and run management, the sorry state of our educational system to name a few), our auto manufacturing design, development, and manufacturing infrastructure is woefully behind.
You can bet that the Chinese are working 24/7 with every engineer they have (and brilliant or not, they have a LOT of them), right now, on how to make these new "2016" cars. Some good I see coming out of this would be:
1. Cheap, mass-produced carbon fiber parts with entirely new large-scale manufacturing methods
2. small, ultraefficient, single-speed/load engines charging up energy storage systems (compressed air, hydraulics, ultracapacitors or batteries) so that you get the "oomph" you need for acceleration and passing combined with great steady-state mileage
If you think "the Chinese can't atually design or invent anything, they can only copy it", think again. When I was a kid, admittedly long ago, but when technological change was MUCH slower, "made in Japan" was an equivalent statement to "junk". That took maybe 30 years (1955-1985) to turn around to the point where Japan's products are now respected as if not the best, among the best worldwide. So, how long is it going to take ten times as many highly motivated Chinese to do this in the Internet era?
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