The Jurassic Park that is the Detroit auto industry as we've known it—the gas-guzzler-building oligarchy that thinks what's good for it is good for everybody—is doomed, bailout or no bailout. It's doomed because too many people have caught on that we can't go on burning oil.
And it's doomed because of its arrogance. The history of Detroit has been a history of disregard for the public good, to say nothing of the environment, since its holding companies in the 1930s bought up and killed the nation's trolley systems.
As for subsidies to the automakers, they have a history, and it's not reassuring. The Clinton administration put $1.5 billion into the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which brought the national laboratories together with the carmakers to try to revolutionize the fueling of cars. The program made some technological advances, but the carmakers refused to use them; as a Rand Corporation consultant wrote later, "the reluctance of the Big Three auto manufacturers to commit to a car that incorporated [PNGV]'s technologies was a disappointment to all who participated in the program. Especially so since some Japanese car manufacturers offered cars with such technologies."
If Detroit gets taxpayer money, Michael Moore has this to say about how it should be used: "The Big Three are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil, and, more importantly, to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones."
Meanwhile, Hawaii, which just put its first native in the White House, is going for another first: to beat the rest of the country in installing electric car recharging stations all over the state. Hawaii plans to reduce its oil dependence by 70 percent by 2030, and Gov. Linda Lingle says that if the innovation boosts market share for electric cars, the Big Three will have to get on the green wagon. "This," said Lingle, "is the preferred future."
