Comments on: CarAdvice Podcast- The car industry with Tom Elliott

By: autostry

autostry — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:26:03 +0000

It seems like a lot of people here don’t agree to the podcast.

By: DesignEngr

DesignEngr — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:50:09 +0000

Not job cuts, but “here have 6 months leave if you want”.
Sounds like a “try before you buy” scheme for finding a new job. Ultimately there will bw more job losses, unfortunately.

By: Wheelnut

Wheelnut — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:56:33 +0000

Radar13 – Whilst Holden have cut back to a single shift the workers will still get paid half their normal rate for the days that they were meant to be rostered on .. which means that they are still on Holdens Payroll which means that they still have a job.

Sure there mightn’t be enough work around at the moment to have 2 or 3 shifts. Yet Holden are retaining their workers for when the market and production picks up again to save them the cost in looking for and training new workers

Because don’t forget next year Holden will start building their new small car so some of the workers that would normally work on the main assembly line can start work on the second production line – which they have just started to install

The workers agreed to the plan because as they say a job at 1/2 the usual rate is better than no job

By: Radar13

Radar13 — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:42:12 +0000

Toms (E and R). Thanks for a great podcast.
We’ve heard today the views of Mr Reuss (thank you Bavarian Missile) that all is well and there have been no job loses. Surely cutting two teams back to share the one shift at Holden in Adelaide is effectively the loss of half those jobs.
General Motors (now Government Motors) of the US will look at disposing of its overseas assets that may be of value and do not directly relate to providing jobs for american workers. Holden Australia fits nicely into this niche. The podcast suggests that the Australian Government may have to buy it, but as others have suggested on many sites, beware the Chinese or Indian buying the companies and moving the manufacturing offshore (cheaper) and retaining the design and development in country. Imaging the future ads for the new Commodore of Falcon praising it as “Designed in Australia”.
As for the future Falcon being a Taurus, I’d hedge my bets on the Mondeo. It’s already right hand drive. Not sure if the Taurus is made RHD at this stage.

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:29:37 +0000

You have to love Michael Moore’s take on GM’s current woes:

“It is a sad irony that the company which invented ‘planned obsolescence’ – the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete.”

And:

“”Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans,” he wrote.

“The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle-class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars?”

By: billyjoebob

billyjoebob — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:22:27 +0000

Are you guys listening to the same podcast I’m listening to?

TomR was the one who asked about RHD cars, not TomE. I think that there’s something there – regardless of what the re-tooling costs might be, they’re an additional cost that contributes to the financial arguments about exporting Australian cars to o/s markets.

But, seriously, if we only sold 50,000 cars to private buyers, then why do we even have a car industry here? If it’s just to support manufacturing jobs, why don’t we build global cars that we can export, rather than local cars we can’t?

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:12:58 +0000

Sorry; it is still there:

“US taxpayers’ dollars should stay within the US and it is not intended for taxpayers’ dollars to go offshore”.

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:09:48 +0000

And yesterday Obama’s own Democratic colleagues in Ohio said:

‘“It is unacceptable to ask U.S. workers to subsidize the exportation of their own jobs,” said Representative Dennis Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, whose district includes Cleveland. “The taxpayers’ investment should be used to protect American plants so that American workers can build the next generation of automobiles.”

And today Obama said that it was not the intention for US taxpayers money to be used to sustain jobs outside the US. That statement was widely reported this morning (including in the Fairfax press; who have now removed it).

By: Bavarian Missile (.)(.)

Bavarian Missile (.)(.) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:47:08 +0000

On the demise of Holden Reuss said a couple of hours ago…

“The Australian arm of the beleaguered company has posted no job losses despite the downturn, Mr Reuss said, with pay cuts taken “across the whole organisation”.

“We have worked over the last 18 months and taken all the necessary steps in the global financial crisis to make sure Holden here in Australia is cash-flow positive, is viable and has a great revenue stream set up here for our new products that we’re beginning to introduce,”

“We are part of the new GM parent company but more importantly we have a future here in Holden that we feel very, very good about.”

He said the company had structured operations in “a very responsible way” sparking a line production with demand, following the industry’s decline by up to 20 per cent in Australia.

Mr Reuss said he had worked closely with federal and state governments, unions and headquarter staff to take important decisions, including the development of alternative fuel technology, and a new small car design due for manufacture in Adelaide from 2010.

He said the company did not expect any job losses in the immediate future.

“We’re very well positioned here for any upswing in the economy and in fact, I think you’ll see this last month we’ve had start to have a little bit of rebound on local demand,” he said.

“We’re in a good place.”

By: Tom Elliott

Tom Elliott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:28:13 +0000

Dear All
Thank you for your comments regarding the podcast.
I realise many of you disagree with my views, but can I just clarify a few points:
1. This interview was done over a week ago, at whcih time I said GM was going into bankruptcy. This has now happened. GM Holden has only avoided this path because of federal govt subsidies. Therefore it is not a profitable standalone operation;
2. re the financial crisis, and you might say I’m talking my book here, it was not caused by hedge funds, but by the poor lending decisions of many banks (of which a great number have now had to be bailed out by the American and European govts). Remember a thing called the ‘sub prime crisis’? nothing to do with hedge funds; all to do with lending people too much money to buy homes they couldn’t really afford;
3. the car industry’s problems, esp in the US, predated the financial crisis by some years. essentially, Americans stopped buying US-branded cars (ie GM, Ford and Chrysler) increasingly in favour of Japanese and European brands. exactly the same thing has happened here in Australia, and there is no arguing with customer preferences in a competitive world;
4. re driving on the other side of the road, this was Tom Reynolds’s (the interviewer) suggestion, not mine. All I did was point out (a) that there are 2 places in recent history where such a change was made (Newfoundland and Sweden), and (b) that the world would be a simpler place for cars if we all drove on the same side (I prefer the right, although I have experience with both);
5. Without federal govt subsidies of the local car industry, a base model commodore (assuming it was even made) would cost over $50,000 per unit. How many people would purchase one at this price point? fewer than is currently the case, that’s for sure;
6. Finally, to survive and be profitable, the car industry has to become more global in outlook and less fragmented. That is why near the end of the interview I said ‘world’ cars like the camry and the cruze are the future to local manufacturing – not because they are amazing cars in themselves, but because their development costs can be spread over hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of units rather than just tens of thousands as is the case for locally designed cars like the commodore and falcon.

Thank you for listening.

Regards
Tom