There comes a time in many a life when an individual must prove to the world they are no longer the student, they have become the master. The transition usually arrives on the field of battle, whether it’s a real battlefield, competitive sports, academia, entertainment or business. In the case of Toyota, their moment of ascension arrived when their products outsold General Motors’ in the first quarter of 2007. Toyota bested The General by a score of 2,348,000 to 2,260,000. Toyota is the new numero uno. But it still has much to learn, if it is to avoid following its old, corpulent mentor's footsteps off the high tower of greatness.
Before Toyota became the heavy weight sumo champion of the world, their corporate samurai wanted to be just like Ford, and then GM. After all, the Americans in general, and General Motors in specific, were the automotive industry. The General dominated the world’s largest automotive market– to the point where the U.S. federal government tried to break up the behemoth by hiving-off Chevrolet. Its products were spread throughout the world, capturing customers in every corner of the globe.
Toyota came to America as representing (for many) a former military aggressor, the enemy. Starting with the Toyopet, they peddled funny little cars that were the subject of scorn, derision and dismissal. Undaunted, Toyota refined its products and process (which allowed for faster model changes). Toyota’s tighter panel gaps, better engines and conservative design helped it establish a beachhead. But it was reliability that set them apart and secured their success.
Enthusiasts may label Toyota’s products “soulless appliances,” but the automaker’s mass appeal lies in this anodyne dependability. While GM, Ford and Chrysler concentrated on style and power, Toyota focused its energies on quality and, thus, reliability. The focus catapulted them to the top.
Flash forward to 2006. Toyota was ranked fourth in JD Power and Associates’ Initial Quality Study (IQS), with only 106 problems per 100 vehicles. Lexus has historically been the number one brand according to JD and the gang. In 2007, just as Toyota sold more cars than everybody else, the company initial quality ranking dropped from fourth to seventh, behind such historically horrid brands as Jaguar and Lincoln. Lexus was knocked from its perch at the top of the IQS mountain by Porsche.
What of the newest addition to the ToMoCo household? Scion has never cracked the IQS top 10. In fact, in 2004, a year after the brand was introduced into the U.S., Scion was ranked thirty-fourth, one slot above Porsche. As stated, Porsche turned it around. So why hasn’t Toyota taken care of the newest addition to his family?
Scion is a spooky echo of GM’s Saturn. Both brands birthed when their corporate motherships were flush with cash. Both brands were heralded as changing how consumers would buy vehicles, with fresh vehicle design, friendly dealers and no haggle pricing.
Saturn has lost is its way, but what about Scion? For a few years, all seemed to be going well, much like Satrun's early days. Scion released cool, unconventional, entry-level vehicles that were highly customizable. Then came the first redesigns.
Gone are the cheeky, interesting shapes of the first-generation xA and xB. In their place: blander, fatter vehicles that seem tailored to an older generation. As TTAC’s Paul Niedermeyer reported, Toyota seems to have learned some not-so-good tricks from GM, managing to ignore and dilute a successful brand’s direction with lazy, “bigger is better” design.
In Scion, ToMoCo also seems to have unlearned one of its better tricks: maintaining model names. Toyota has one of the most loyal consumer bases in the automotive industry (again, due to its rep for build quality). Keeping the same core model names has played a large part in generating and directing this brand loyalty, as most Toyotaphiles simply trade in their old Camrys or Corollas for completely new ones.
Scion has dropped the xA moniker in favor of its all new replacement, the xD. Ignoring the fact that the American psyche is all about getting an "A" (when was the last time you were rewarded for bringing home a D?), Toyota has hampered consumer loyalty to the xA and Scion by dumping a decent model and its moniker for an inferior bloatmobile.
Toyota says its taken dramatic steps to sort out its quality issues. As it’s what they do best, we should see some movement soon. But the company is just beginning to learn that doing just one thing better than anyone else puts you in a vulnerable position. The competition can catch up. Unless they learn the lessons of their vanquished enemies, they will be condemned to repeat them. It looks as if that process is already in motion.
It doesn’t matter if Toyota drops to 20th in the IQS, no matter how many recalls or even what out of warranty service costs: Toyota = quality in many minds and that is reflected in resale prices. Honda is the same way, with beat up civic 4 doors going for far more than they should used. Toyota gets to ride the quality wagon while the domestics are stuck with a reputation for bad transmissions, faulty head gaskets, safety recalls, and poor dealer service support. These are not undeserving, but buying a camcordia does not mean 150K of trouble free driving for everyone. But it DOES mean higher resale value should it start needing repairs, something you won’t get with a Taurus, Town and Country, or Impala.
Very interesting article. Without a doubt, Toyota quality has slipped the last few years – just take a look at the interior of the Yaris and Auris in Europe. You wonder if, in their rush to take over GM, they have taken their eye of the ball…
The same with the FJ, to get the concept to production they cut corners on quality and the quality of the materials used, yet the perception of the american public still remains strong….
This seems to be the case with most if not all their models. No wonder they can create such profits by using cheaper materials (imagine the uproar if GM did it)and having little legacy and healthcare costs. It all counts.
On the other hand though its the usual trap of customers wanting or being perceived to want bigger vehicles, so vehicles grow to give class leading interior space or to shoehorn in the latest safety gadgets. Wish people would look at how Mazda reduced all the size and weight issues with their upcoming B car. very clever.
For Toyota to lose their perception of top notch quality and reliability, its gonna take decades of product decline.
Just like it did for GM.
In principle, I agree with this article, but there are a few points which need to be put into context.
Firstly, Ford won 4 awards in a survey (might have been JD Power) and one of them was with regards to the quality of their interiors. In the same award, there was Audi, who, in my opinion, has some of the best interiors on the market; and yet Audi didn’t even get a sniff of the award. So, pardon me, if I don’t take some of these awards too seriously.
Secondly, remember until 3 years ago, Toyota was making about a 1 million short of GM’s total vehicles and Toyota’s quality and reliability was light years in front of GM’s. It’s only this recent expansion that’s causing the dip.
Back to the article, I’ll be the first to admit, that Toyota have slipped, somewhat and I know for a fact that Toyota’s cars are nowhere near the quality they used to be*. But what we also have to remember, is Toyota cars are still one of the market leaders in terms of quality and reliability. Now I have GREAT respect for Hyundai and how hard they’ve worked to get where they have today. But, have you ever been inside a Hyundai? Now, I’m sure Hyundai interiors are durable and probably will go the distance, but how cheap and nasty do they look?! I recently drove a Euro Ford Focus for company business, and was severely disappointed at the state of the interior. Cheap plastics and the dials looked second rate. So, let’s not forget where Toyota REALLY stand in the rankings.
Another point is that, Toyota have built a shining reputation. Ask a regular customer on the street “When you think of Toyota, what’s the first thing that springs to mind?”. Reliable vehicles. And I reckon, it’ll be that reputation which will help them survive the dip. Recently, the board of directors and Katsuaki Watanabe announced they were going to kill this quality problem once and for all. Toyota aren’t stupid, take away their quality and reliabliity record and what have you got left? Good looking cars? Do me a cheesy quaver!
Finally, if we compare GM and Toyota head on what are the results?
GM and Toyota produce a similar amount of cars each, yet one maker is making profits on each car they sell, the other can’t even give their cars away?
One maker still has a so called “perception problem” while the other is held as a benchmark for quality and reliability.
One maker enforces lean production and a efficiently run plants, the other has the “stack ‘em high, sell them cheap” doctrine embossed in their management’s mind.
If I told you this and asked you to lay a bet which company would survive the next 5 years with no problem whatsoever, who would you go for…..?
* = In 1989, when I was young, my parent bought Toyota Corolla executive. It was one of the last model made in Japan before they transferred production to the UK. If you looked under the bonnet, all the sticker were in Japanese. Anyway, fast forward to 2005, the car is rusting but still going strong. My father now doesn’t have the car serviced because it’s not worth it due to the value of the car. My next door neighbour who’s a Toyota mechanic, examined the car and found out the car had been driving for 5000 miles with 1 litre of black sludge in the engine and no coolant in the system! Theoretically, the engine should have seized up long time ago, but it still kept coming back for more! We put some new oil and coolant in the engine and the engine still purred like a kitten! Now THAT’S a well built engine. True story.
I read somewhere back that JDP’s IQS (and many other of their studies) have a statistical margin of error that’s far bigger than the margin of victory that the winners claim. So it’s not the year to year “victories” that matter, but the long term trend.
Let’s not forget that IQS scores were narrow enough that JDP had to introduce more points to ding the automakers with.
Let’s see how Michael Karesh weighs in on this.
But in my opinion, and noting starlightmica’s point above, ol’ JD’s initial quality survey (90 days!) is pure, unadulterated rubbish!
I say this as someone who owned the same car (1980 Volvo 240) for 21 years — 1982 to 2003 — and 245K miles. Ninety days means nothing. These aren’t the bad old days of cars falling apart or failing to start when new.
BTW, despite all the alleged “woes” befalling Toyota with respect to quality, my two Camrys (’04 and ‘05) have had zero “issues” (except for some weird “stiction” in the steering of the older one when I make a left turn at lower speeds). This last could be connected with my son driving the car about 40 miles on a very rough unpaved road south out of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a road that the Nat’l Park Service discourages using.
One of the major issues never covered by the JDP IQS is the demographic and expectations of buyers. Buick’s IQS scores can only have more to do with the fact that they are judged solely against the crap they were building five years ago and not against other cars on the market. No reasonable person could sit down in an Audi, or Lexus and rate a Buick highly.
The Consumer Reports ratings are probably a more reliable means to identify actual quality issues, since they count failures, but it remains a far-from-scientific study of real quality.
The one area where Toyota schooled everyone is in the “dealer experience”; starting in 1989, Lexus dealers set a new standard for expectations in the luxury car business. Anyone buying a Mercedes or BMW now reaps the benefit of Toyota’s entry into this end of the market.
It seems unlikely they have taken their eye off the ball, since quality is such a basic thread in their corporate identity. Similarly, GM continues to struggle with Alfred Sloan’s idea that they were not in business to make automobiles, but solely to make money. This perverse and wholly American approach to offering a product has similarly been bequeathed on virtually the whole of American business, and we are rife with lowest-common-denominator products and services offered at bargain prices. For all that might be said of Scion, one need only drive the other offerings in their price range to see that Toyota still offers a high level of content even at the mass-market level. As one ponders Toyota’s fall, take an afternoon and drive a Chevy Cobalt and a Scion back to back.
it is hard to compare scion and saturn. saturn promised to fight imports, but all it had was 1 model in 3 variations. the next gen was already opel based derivative. Saturn started to share even exteriors with opel vectra. Can you remember any scion sharing any sheetmetal with any toyota product? can you remember any imported platform for scion? non japanese platform?
new vue is just a daewoo rebadge. japanese will NEVER EVER go the cheapest way. they will actually BUILD the cars THEMSELVES. They are never going the detroit way, because they never do. the only japanese companies that have problems, are the ones that have something to do with USA car manufacturing.. read- Mitsubishi- chrysler. GM- isuzu.
Toyota doesn`t have problems with quality. and now read this-
TOYOTA HAS PROBLEMS WITH NORTH AMERICAN AUDIENCE WHERE QUALITY DEMANDS ARE LOWER AND THUS THEY COULD THEORETICALLY AFFORD LOWER GRADE MATERIALS IN THEIR VEHICLES THAN IN EUROPE. tOYOTA HAS PROBLEMS IN NORTH AMERICA WHERE THEY HAVEN`T IMPLEMENTED 100% THEIR OWN STANDARDS, AND WHERE AMERICAN MANUFACTURING CULTURE HASN`T BEEN ELIMINATED.
tOYOTA DOESN`T SHARE EXTERIORS. THEY DON`T FAKE DIVERSITY, THEY ACTUALLY MAKE CARS.
bEHIND ANY TOYOTA PRODUCT STANDS TOYOTA , NOT OTHER REBADGED PRODUCT .
tOYOTA INVESTS 15B DOLLARS IN R&D TO BECOME A BENCHMARK IN QUALITY.
tHEY ADD NEW MODELS, MODEL CUTTING IS A SIGN OF SALES DECREASE.
Toyota leads the market also in technologies, so even don`t draw parallels to gm. When was the last time a japanese car manufacturer bankrupted? right. never. FAIR GAME.
And toyota outsold poor gm already an eon ago, because gm does false mathematics counting in their production all rebadged opels, daewoos, saabs, etc. Imagine you had to count out the vehicles that are based on foreign platforms. Was pontiac vibe also included in gm share? How many parts in the vibe did Gm construct? ZERO. gm is already far behind toyota.
ditto the worlds strongest economies.
USA- GDP- 13.3 trillion, China- 10trillion. USA- external debt- 10.2 trillion. China-305billion. Gold reserve- USA- 69billion. China-1 trillion.
service/manufacturing distribution- USA- services 78% manufacturing 20% China-services 40% manufact. 48%. NOw who is the superpower? I even didn`t mention japan……..
Now matter how hard you try to fake or simulate, at the end you get what you really have earned. FAIR GAME. Unless you marry these 2 words with detroit, they are destined to an annihillation. Welcome to reality!
lunatics@inbox.lv
even the car mags are printing editorials about ‘why does toyota get a free pass for churning out big gas guzzlers, by selling a few hybrids?’
edgett: I’m no fan of Buicks, but Buick has scored well in JDP surveys for years, and Consumer Reports has also given many Buicks (including the current LaCrosse and Lucerne) top ratings for reliability.
My family and I took a 16 hour road trip in a 2007 Camry LE recently. After thirty-two hours in a Camry, my wife bought a new Accord. Here’s why:
1. We were surprised at the cheap interior fittings. Knobs and surfaces looked cheap and felt cheap.
2. Try a left-shoulder safety check in my 2000 Crown Victoria. You see the lane to your left. Try it in my wife’s 1997 Taurus. You see the lane to your left. Try it in a 2007 Camry. You see the B pillar.
3. We had a 4 cylinder. Try a merge into an interstate slow lane. Lots of noise. Wait for the transmission to decide to downshift. Note that it did not downshift enough. Wait for your sphincter to return to normal.
4. Look at the cruise control stalk for a minute or two. Then laugh. Practise “cruise control by feel” for an hour.
5. After dark, try some talk radio on the AM band. Then make a note: when you have to buy a car, buy one with some sensitivity on the AM band. I do remember, though, that the Camry wipers were really effective at 70mph.
6. During our second day with the Camry, my son and I reached the same conclusion. Driving the Camry is not fun. It is work. Driving our Taurus is fun in a bizarre kind of way. You get to like the firm suspension. You get to, well, find the agricultural noises entertaining. You find the handling with P6’s actually sporty. Driving the Crown Vic is fun. In a bizarre kind of way. It has a personality. A jiggly-squooshy personality. A “get out of the fast lane or speed up–I am not a cop” personality. A ” I can’t reach the pedals and the seat isn’t all the way back” kind of fun. With good tires, you can power-turn the CV in a most engaging fashion–the suspension stays settled, and a strong left leg on the firewall helps you to stay seated and in control. Passengers who have never been in a RWD auto simply cannot figure out how the beast turns with such precision and authority. The Camry, however, is not fun. It does not communicate. It might be on a road. It might be in a turn. Yawn.
After our return to home base, we test drove an Accord, just to be sure. The interior was inviting, in a “thank you for purchasing me, you won’t be sorry. See how I can make a cheap interior look inviting and professional” kind of way. The four-cylinder sounded pretty. The transmission knew what I wanted and needed and gave it to me instantly. The sunroof was quiet and silky. The seats were so good as to be not noticeable. You could see that a team of engineers who liked working with each other sweated the details in the engine compartment. The steering was direct, informative.
If Ford does something interesting with the CV, I shall get another one in about eighteen months. If not, I shall get myself an Accord. I guess I’ll be getting an Accord. BTW, I ride a twenty-two year old Honda motorcycle–a V4 with almost as much horsepower as a Civic. I don’t baby it, yet it looks and performs perfectly. That tells you something about Honda.
Sorry, but I think that it’s a stretch to compare Scion with Saturn as part of some cautionary tale, as they are very different brand concepts.
Saturn was meant to be a laboratory within GM to move the culture away from its traditions and into the Toyota camp of lean production and customer focus, and to make customers associate American workmanship with quality. It has ultimately failed because it did not create the cultural changes within GM that were needed to compete, a failure for which we all now see that the company is paying the price, and because it did not turn customer perceptions about American automotive quality.
Scion is just a gateway sub-brand within Toyota meant to lure in young people. Its goal is to get the kids who might be tempted by Hondas, Nissans, Mitsubishis, etc. to buy a Toyota. Toyota has a long track record of conservative styling; Scion is meant to be a bit more edgy and youth oriented.
Scion was really the byproduct of the continuous failure of cars such as the Echo to skew down Toyota’s age demographics. The Echo was meant to bring in the first time car buyers, but it ended up being most popular with the senior crowd. Automakers want young audiences, and since Toyota was having trouble at the nameplate level, it opted instead for the sub-brand concept.
If you want to measure Scion’s success or failure, the questions that you should be asking are whether the cars are popular with young customers, and whether those sales are making it easier to convert those customers to buying Toyota and Lexus products as they get older. It’s too early to address the latter point; I don’t have the data to address the former point, but I believe that they have had some success with wooing young buyers, although the xB box thing has attracted a lot more grey hairs than Toyota had probably wanted.
jurisb:
When was the last time a japanese car manufacturer bankrupted? right. never.
Nissan would’ve had Renault not stepped in.
And who is it that owns opel, daewoo, saab, etc?
Lexus can rebadge Toyotas, Infiniti can rebadge Nissans, but GM can’t rebadge other GMs because they aren’t built in the US?
KatiePuckrik:
In the same award, there was Audi, who, in my opinion, has some of the best interiors on the market; and yet Audi didn’t even get a sniff of the award.
In my opinion Audi interiors (and everything else) is garbage. So I guess we average out ;)
Flash forward to 2006. Toyota was ranked fourth in JD Power and Associates’ Initial Quality Study (IQS), with only 106 problems per 100 vehicles.
Well, Chevrolet only had 124 problems per 100 vehicles. Taken on a per vehicle basis, that’s an advantage for Toyota of 1.06 problems per vehicle versus 1.24 problems per vehicle for Chevrolet. So, Toyota had 0.18 fewer problems per vehicle than Chevrolet.
If you look at the 2006 vehicle dependability study (three year reliability, which still isn’t long enough), Toyota had 1.79 problems per vehicle versus Chevrolet with 24.1 problems vehicle. That means there is a difference, after three years, of 0.62 problems per vehicle. Doesn’t sound like much to me.
Obviously, if you muliply these numbers by the units sold, the differences will grow. However, I would like to know the margin of error and how many people were surveyed. I suspect the margin is relatively high (what is a problem??) and the number surveyed is relatively low, given the number of cars.
A few years ago, Hummer took a huge hit in these rankings. I later heard that around half of the quality complaints were poor fuel mileage, high road/wind noise, and poor ride quality. That is why I take these rankings with a grain of salt.
Well, jurisb has made some good points. Here are some hopefully good counterpoints.
Of course, he “forgot” to mention the reality of the massive amounts of air,water and ground pollution, and the resultant ill health and deaths of the Chinese population compared to the huge – and expensive – efforts that the United States has put forth for 60 years, really huge efforts over the past 40 years. He “forgot” to mention that in China, you can still “disappear” just as in the prior East Germany with the Stazi, or the Soviet Union or modern Russia, if you disagree with the government about something.
This is not to say that his points are inaccurate – but they are not the “whole picture” either. STILL our massive debt and relatively tiny gold reserves are – disasterous. Plus the
fact that there has been no public account of the Ft Knox gold reserves since Eisenhower was President – what kind of company could “get by” without an accounting of it’s financial reserves for 47 to 50 years?! Ft Knox could be totally empty for all we know.
Incidentally, I looked at some past IQS results. Toyota had 121 problems per 100 vehicles in 2003, 104 in 2004, and 105 in 2005.
Chevrolet had 130 problems per 100 vehicles in 2003, 119 in 2004, and 127 in 2005.
@Sajeev:
By that reckoning then, in a perverse way we might be at 1970 again.
Toyota = GM in the early seventies. They are adopting the attitude that killed GM. “People love us. They will buy anything we make!” Toyota has gone seriously downhill over the last 5 years or so. I twill come back and bite them. Just look how badly 10 year old Toyo has aged. The interiors are faded and the mouldings are discolored and they look tired. The good part is they still run great. But seem to be falling apart around a good running drivetrain.
The JD Power IQS is virtually useless except as a marketing tool for the automakers.
As I’ve said before, the only REAL measure of long-term reliability (outside of niche brands like Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, etc.) is resale values. The market, especially one made up of millions of consumers, is absolutely reliable in this regard.
Which is why Toyota and Honda stand far above the other auto makers.
As for surveys, Consumer Reports long term relaibility measures are about the most consistent and believeable.
Has Toyota slipped? Probably. But it is a difference of degrees, not a complete degradation. They still have a long way to go before they enter Big 2.5 territory.
BTW, the new Scions are ugly.
Re 210delray:
But in my opinion, and noting starlightmica’s point above, ol’ JD’s initial quality survey (90 days!) is pure, unadulterated rubbish!
And if you examine responses closely, like the dopey soccer moms and/or pot-bellied execs who complain about ‘wind’ or ‘road’ noise or ‘harsh’ suspension in their automatic tranny RX8, you realize it’s even more than rubbish…
@partsisparts
My first car was an ‘82 Cadillac Cimarron, which got me moving to Toyota pretty damn quickly. I had two late ’80s Tercels to get me through high school and college. Even with plasticky interiors, they felt rock solid and never broke. I never had to even change light bulbs.
I don’t think Toyota has the same arrogant attitude that GM had in the past. Haven’t we seen them continually improve upon their mistakes? They’ll improve quality once again. They’re smart like that.
@ v65magnafan1:
That said, I moved to Honda and have never looked back, because I sense the passion that they have for economical, high-quality driver’s cars. I have two Civics in my garage (an EX and an Si), as well as an ‘83 VT500 Ascot. My wife has an ‘04 Metropolitan scooter. They are all fun, economical, and reliable. Accords may seem bland to people because they are seen everywhere, but I’m glad you helped to point out that there are vast differences between it and the Camry, both in focus and execution. The manual V6 Accord has to be one of the ultimate out-of-the-box sleepers out there.
I think the author has a wider point than merely pointing out Toyota's slipping quality, which can and most probably will be corrected. Mr. Rush is saying that quality is no longer enough. American consumers moved from domestic products to Toyotas for reliability. But if Toyota assumes that reliability alone can sustain the brand, they are making a dangerous mistake. We are an aspirational people. "Soulless appliances" are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style. I see reason to believe that Toyota "gets it." Lexus' new L-Finesse design language is coherent and not entirely unattractive. Scion unleased Bento box styling on U.S. buyers with success. The Tundra is getting there. And the new Camry, well, it tries to be different. But I also see reason to believe Toyota is vulnerable on the design front. The new xB's gangsta look is wildly inauthentic. And while there is nothing wrong with any of their mainstream models' design, they are bland. Respected, but perhaps not entirely loved. In case you think this is just another enthusiasts looking for a hit of Ben and Jerry's when everyone else is happy with generic vanilla, remember the role styling played in Detroit's heyday. Surely that itch remains to be scratched.
Zarba:
As I’ve said before, the only REAL measure of long-term reliability is resale value.
The wisdom of crowds strikes again.
RF:
We are an aspirational people. “Soulless appliances” are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style.
But we are willing to compromise, and so Toyota has captured 16% of the US market in the process.
I think it’s way early to start pulling the sheet over Toyota’s corporate face. For that matter, it’s a little early for GM.
“Initial quality statistics” are like those made up “competitions” in kindergarten where everybody gets to win. Making a car that will not fall apart for 90 days isn’t exactly an engineering feat (even though in the past the domestic makers seemed to be rather marginal at this task.) The trick is to make a car that will still run strong at 200k.
Incidentally, the author left out one of Toyota and Honda’s other feats that catapulted them to the top of the automotive world, and that was the ability to do more with less. The fact that Toyota and Honda can make cars that will put out the same HP with a 4 cyl that the domestics have to use a 6 to reach is a point in their favor with a lot of customers, including me. Detroit’s standard response always seems to have been to try and shoehorn a bigger engine under the hood, which means they also take the award for “missing the point.”
partsisparts “Toyota = GM in the early seventies. They are adopting the attitude that killed GM. “People love us. They will buy anything we make!” Toyota has gone seriously downhill over the last 5 years or so.”
Sorry don’t see it. That attitude was exemplified and is still exemplified by GM simply not taking a serious interest in market segments like small cars. Show me a huge under served market segment that is simply ignored by Toyota.
That attitude is also recorded and well documented by industry insiders like Iaccoca and Delorean, as well as industry observers like Brock Yates and Maryann Keller and countless others. When I start hearing it from Industry observers that Toyota execs basically told them we don’t care what you think then let me know
When Executive at Toyota are paying themselves lavish bonuses when Toyota is losing money let me know GM and Ford did not go from dominance to the gutter in 1 or 2 years it was a long 20 to 30 year ride of pissing off customers one at a time.
JD Powers doesn’t measure true long term durability because what manufacturer cares how well their cars last say up to 7 or 10 years.
I live in Florida I don’t see Toyotas interiors etc age with time any worse than other brands. I would actually say that generally it is the GM interiors that don’t hold up well to the sun and heat
Sherman:
You have to agree though that driving the 2007 Corolla or the 2007 Camry does not really give the feeling that they were put together with lots of passion for building economy cars, right?
Sherman:
I am not defending GM but simply saying Toyo is not the car co it was as far as quality. Last year they recalled more cars than they built.
Keep in mind quality is percieved. I live in the NY area and have really taken notice that recent Toyotas have not aged well. I am a former Toyota mechanic and one of the things I liked about them at the time was the cars aged very well. Now, they look worn and tired after a few years.
What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar, lower executive type of car. This is a person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them. They are entry level customers or people who want the FX4 or Z71 to run through the mud and laugh like idiots. If you take the same person, driving the same way for 5 years in an Impala vs a Camry, you will see a similarity in reliability.
TheNatural:
July 31st, 2007 at 1:29 pm
What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar, lower executive type of car. This is a person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them.
I don’t know about that, plenty of Toyota owners abuse their maintenance schedules just like Chevy or Ford owners do.
Most people (I don’t recall the survey numbers I read, but it was >75%) don’t even open the owner’s manual of their cars ONCE, much less stick with changing things like air and fuel filters on 15-30k mile schedules.
How someone could spend $15-60k on something and not read the manual is beyond me.
The car market is brutal (pricing wise), and all the popular priced manufacturers have been ruthlessly cutting costs. Street prices of cars have not kept up with inflation. It was well documented that the Camry from around ’94 – ’98 was the pinnacle; it had superb build quality, and such Lexus-like things as double door seals, etc. Toyota has had (almost) no choice but to cut corners.
The big question is whether T.’s cost cutting is more problematical than their competitors. It’s going to take some years to really see.
bfg9k
I understand that there are some Toyota owners that abuse them, however more often then not it is an American brand consumer that has the problems.
I work for a Saturn/Chevy/Toyota dealership franchise. The Toyota customer will 9 out of 10 times have excellent credit and make over $40,000 a year (in central Texas that is good money, not great but good). The Chevy customer wants a car with more horsepower than he has for a credit score. These two different type of people are buying for different reasons and handle their car differently. You can see this in our service department. Saturn customers (which is GM parts just like Chevy) have the same amount of problems as a Toyota, because the customer that buys Saturn is the same kind that buys Toyota. So in my experience GM has been the same as Toyota with like-minded people
“Toyota seems to have learned some not-so-good tricks from GM, managing to ignore and dilute a successful brand’s direction with lazy, “bigger is better” design.”
Lazy? Perhaps Scion is demand-driven. Perhaps Americans demand “Bigger is Better”. Auto companies supply demand.
“Ignoring the fact that the American psyche is all about getting an “A” (when was the last time you were rewarded for bringing home a D?), Toyota has hampered consumer loyalty to the xA and Scion by dumping a decent model and its moniker for an inferior bloatmobile.”
The xA did not sell as well as Scion would have liked. Scion can create a improved xA or all new xD. Those that were not impressed with the xA now will go look at the all-new xD and might find it to their liking while those that bought an xA will still go check out the xD. Maybe the xA was not bloaty/solid enough for the American consumer(?) An “all-new” model from Toyota creates excitement while an “all-new” model from 2.801 creates angst from reliablility concerns.
It will be interesting to see if the all-new xD out-sells the improved xB…The market will decide.
The market has spoken. Design is less important to the masses than perceived reliability. Performance is less important than reliability. Safety is more important than design or performance, but not as important as reliability.
The market has spoken. Design is less important to the masses than perceived reliability. Performance is less important than reliability. Safety is more important than design or performance, but not as important as reliability.
This should be intuitive, should it not? After all, that new car buyer is going to get a reminder of his purchase every 30 days in the form of a check paid to the finance company. The only thing worse than having to pay $350/month for your car is having to pay $350/month for your car and having to shell out a few thousand bucks to replace the transmission/catalytic converter/ac compressor etc. Long after the thrill of acceleration has gone and long after that new car smell has dissipated, those monthly payments remain and if the car is costing the customer money on top of that, you can bet he won’t be happy!
I own a 2006 Scion tC. I was looking for something cheap, trouble free and with a modicum of entertainment. For the most part it has delivered. I have enjoyed the car and the combination of features/price is hard to beat. I have faith in the engine and transmission to last a long time, but I’m not so sure about the rest of the car.
The thing has more rattles, squeaks and noises coming from the interior than a 25 year old Soviet cargo plane and I can’t shake the feeling that the sunroof is going to self destruct one of these days. Above 30 mph it flaps in the wind like one of those sports-team flags you mount on your window and if the car’s body flexes enough you can hear it pop. (I’ve never seen a sunroof on an RSX or even a 1993 RX-7 flap in the wind like the one on my tC) It scares me to think about what it will be like in five years. The dealer has told me “it’s a twenty thousand dollar car, it’s not a Lexus, get over it”.
It also has the absolute worst paint of any new car on the road today. It’s that bad. 36,000 mostly highway miles and it looks like someone went to town with an automatic BB gun on the front end. Maybe those ridiculous looking auto-bras have a purpose after all.
Prior to cutting the check for it, I drank heavily from the Toyota Kool-Aid glass and my expectations were sky-high. It’s even built in Japan, so it it must be extra-special super good. Maybe that’s part reason for my disappointment. But it’s obvious Toyota cut corners in building this thing and the dealer experience has been absolutely abysmal, both sales and service.
If the purpose of Scion was to get me (someone at the upper end of their target demographic) to trade up in to a Toyota, then Scion is a failure. I don’t see my self buying a next-gen tC, especially if it follows the trend of the xB and xD and Toyota has nothing that interests me. Especially if I have to deal with the dealership.
IQS is based on the opinions of the people who bought the vehicle. How come no one quotes the statistics compiled by acutaries who figure the risk involved with vehicle service contracts? (Thanks to some lawyer we’re not allowed to call them “extended warranties” anymore.) Most service contracts are backed by insurers. The more reliable the model of vehicle, the less the risk, the lower the cost of the vehcile service contract, and vice versa.
Whoever said the Accord V6 6-speed was a good sleeper car wasn’t kidding. I bought one for my wife, we love it. Very fun to drive, after 30k miles, the only problem we’ve had was an outer door seal that warped, big deal, it’s rubber and it’s exposed to the elements.
V65MAGNAfan: I wanted one of those soo bad when they came out, but I couldn’t afford a street bike at the time. Now I own a ’01 Goldwing but I’m afraid to commute on it as I see on average 1 accident per week on my way in to work. Honda is as passionate about building bikes as they are cars.
Robbie the Corolla and Camry might not be driver enthusiast cars but how many cars in the small or family sedan category are? As a card carrying member of the I will never own another volkswagen club, I can tell you that a Corolla and a Camry or a Cobalt or an Impala for that matter beats walking. Due to bad past experiences, I absolutely demand total reliability
Partsisparts Toyotas quality may have slipped. its just that I don’t see them as being in the same place as GM was in the 70s. GM never looked over their shoulder at anyone. Toyota has to compete with not only Detroit but Honda and Hyundai.
TheNatural “What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar…person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them….. If you take the same person, driving the same way for 5 years in an Impala vs a Camry, you will see a similarity in reliability.”
Hmmm so when I use to drive a chevy and I had it well maintained how come everything on that car still broke but when I treated my Honda the same way it just kept going and going and going. Don’t forget, many if not most of import car owners are former Detroit iron owners. The ones who maintain their cars well are going to do so whether the car is a Chevy or an import.
If Toyota stopped hiring graduates of the Pokeymon School of Design, they would be unstoppable.
Methinks Toyota is purposely coming out with weird designs just to try and slow their [too] rapid growth. Maybe their less-than-stylish designs are to help 2.801 sell their cars(?)
partsisparts is partially right. Toyota has adapted part of the GM mentality from the 70’s and 80’s. They assume that their processes are the ONLY way to do business. Now that they have developed the vaunted TPS, they will stick with what they know until it drags them down (or bastardize it to justify management decisions). They have become too big to change and have lost the edge and agility they had as a smaller automaker. For an example look at the geographic spread of their auto plants and component plants in the US. The TPS in Japan is concentrated in Toyota city, suppliers and plants working in close proximity.
Toyota still does a lot of things right. It will not happen overnight, but over the next 20-30 years, we will see Toyota follow the same path to self destruction as a new number one beats them at their own game.
Andrew Rush:
In the case of Toyota, their moment of ascension arrived when their products outsold General Motors’ in the first quarter of 2007. Toyota bested The General by a score of 2,348,000 to 2,260,000. Toyota is the new numero uno.
So is the position of “#1” in this case judged solely by sales volume? If we look at a number of any other metrics, such as market value or annual net profit, Toyota has been “numero uno” for a LONG time.
Saturn has lost is its way, but what about Scion?
The reason the xA name was dropped is because it was a low seller and people didn’t really have much interest in that car. Toyota renamed the new model xD so none of the negative stigma of the xA would be inherited.
And why has Scion “lost it’s way” exactly? Scion boasts the youngest average customers out of any car brand in the US. Plus, Scion is mostly about customizability. One reason why Scion cars look so “plain” stock is because that makes them cheap to buy, and also gives lots of options for young people to modify them. Most Scion buyers are very satisfied with their purchases.
If anything is clear so far, it’s that Scion has been a bigger success than Saturn was because Scion has actually achieved the goal that Toyota set out to achieve, which is bring in more younger buyers.
The new Camry continues to sell like hot cakes, and fleet sales are less than 10%. That right there tells you that a huge retail demand exists for the Camry. Whether you like or hate the Camry’s styling, the key point is that it’s got people interested/talking about the car. The old Camry never did that.
Lexus has an upcoming supercar which will do wonders in terms of raising the status and styling reputation of Toyota. The Lexus “F” brand will also interest a whole new group of enthusiasts who may have never looked at Lexus before.
A lot of people on internet boards may consider Toyota’s new models as bland, ugly, boring, etc. etc. but the fact is that Toyota’s models have more effort put into styling that before, and each new Toyota model that comes out sells very well. Styling must have something to do with it, like with the new Camry’s sales.
And then there is Toyota’s leadership in hybrids. When people think “hybrids” these days most automatically think Toyota. This is giving Toyota’s vehicles a rep that they are very technologically advanced and that they are “cool” in a futuristic sort of way.
They assume that their processes are the ONLY way to do business. Now that they have developed the vaunted TPS, they will stick with what they know until it drags them down (or bastardize it to justify management decisions). They have become too big to change and have lost the edge and agility they had as a smaller automaker.
I disagree. TPS is a constantly evolving system, where Toyota has recently introduced some radical changes. The new Tundra’s aggressive styling was given the green light against the wishes of senior Toyota execs. They gave the green light because they understand they must think differently when it comes to the full size truck market in the US. Toyota gave the green light for Lexus to get their own supercar, and for them to get a performance sub-brand. This was again against the wishes of many senior Toyota execs, but was done in the end because they know they must change.
The recent changes to improve quality include hiring lots of new engineers, making more prototypes, making more precise blueprints, and giving bigger budgets for new models.
Toyota is also spending quite a bit of money hiring more stylists and designers.
The beauty with TPS is it’s flexibility. Even with very scarce resources, the system is designed to allow production operations to continue on a profitable scale.
Toyota’s corporate philosophy is fundamentally different than that of American automakers. Toyota’s corporate culture is filled with paranoia, and that is an important point as it makes Toyota full of surprises and able to rapidly adapt and change even if it seems unlikely. Intel uses a similar corporate culture, and for decades Intel has been at the top of the CPU business. They’ve experienced many ups and downs during the last 20 years, but right now Intel stands stronger than ever against it’s competition.
While there are similarities in the types of decisions that Toyota makes to what GM makes or has made, there is nothing, repeat nothing to suggest that TM will go down the road that GM is traveling. TM is nowhere near the place where it has p***ed off 2 whole generations of car buyers. This supreme arrogance that is the hallmark of GM is not even on the long range radar at TM. To suggest it is may reflect more wishful thinking on the part of those who say it than any actual evidence to support it. I would say that Toyota is more acutely aware of the factors that are destroying GM than GM is themselves. There is several orders of magnitude in difference between the way Toyota and GM approach the whole business of designing, building and manufacturing cars for the world’s markets. If you are waiting with bated breath for TM to end up where GM is now I would start breathing again cos it ain’t gonna happen at least not in the short term. I have not seen any indication that Toyota is infected with what Mr. Farrago once referred to as “Grosse Point Myopia” just yet.
I disagree with the premise here. There’s no indication that Toyota has been complacent in any aspect of thier business. They are always looking at ways to cut costs without cutting quality (and/or improve quality without increasing costs).
They also listen to the ordinary people who actually buy thier cars more than they do auto reviewers. Sales of the new Camry are sky-high. Complaints about it’s styling (which, although polarizing, is not boring) or interior quality by reviewers don’t seem to be affecting sales one bit.
I believe the xB grew due to customer feedback as well, which, if true, should translate to increased sales (in a way, the xA and old xB were too close to each other, size wise, so the new xD kind of replaces them both). Lots of features missing in the previous models that were heavily requested (cruise control for example) are now in both the new xB and the xD.
“Mr. Rush is saying that quality is no longer enough.
American consumers moved from domestic products to Toyotas for reliability. But if Toyota assumes that reliability alone can sustain the brand, they are making a dangerous mistake. We are an aspirational people. “Soulless appliances” are not our natural inclination. We want genuine style.
I see reason to believe that Toyota “gets it.”
Lexus’ new L-Finesse design language is coherent and not entirely unattractive. Scion unleased Bento box styling on U.S. buyers with success. The Tundra is getting there. And the new Camry, well, it tries to be different.
But I also see reason to believe Toyota is vulnerable on the design front.
The new xB’s gangsta look is wildly inauthentic. And while there is nothing wrong with any of their mainstream models’ design, they are bland. Respected, but perhaps not entirely loved.
In case you think this is just another enthusiasts looking for a hit of Ben and Jerry’s when everyone else is happy with generic vanilla, remember the role styling played in Detroit’s heyday. Surely that itch remains to be scratched.”
I just don’t see this. (I admit I could be wrong)
Basically the thesis is people bought soulless appliances for reliability, but really, they’d rather have style and something to meet their aspirations, and this is true despite the fact that they bought soulless appliances for their reliability. My take is that when people buy soulless appliances for reliability, reliability is at the top of the list.
I don’t know what you consider to be Detroit’s heyday, but I clearly remember people being sick to death of chrome and tailfins and guady tri-tone paint schemes.
There may have been a time when Americans had a love affair with the automobile, but those times are gone forever (except for the relatively small percentage of pistonheads). For most people a car is a pain in the butt. It’s a necessity, but we really don’t like them. They’re just tools we need to live our lives. The goal is to buy a car about as frequently as one buys a refridgerator, and to give it about an equal amount of thought during ownership.
Supposedly Toyota is considering offering a V6 in the new Corolla, which could end up being a classic big 3 type of decision. That is, if you’re going to make a sport model, just dump a big engine in there. The rest of the car doesn’t matter! It could end up being pretty neat, as I like the idea of a V6 powered small car, but Toyota doesn’t seem particularly committed to the sport crowd anymore, as evidenced by the squirrelly steering and handling of recent Corollas. The last generation of Celica is proof to me that they can make a great handling car, so what’s their excuse?
If they really have given up on people who like to drive, they ought to buy Mazda if Ford goes under. A little zoom-zoom could be good for the company.
By the way, if you hate how the current Camry looks, just wait until the new Corolla comes out. The Japanese model looks fine, but the version that we’re supposed to be getting looks like they tried to fuse the current Corolla with a new Camry. Keep an air sickness bag handy when you look at the new pics. Thank goodness we’re getting the Blade as a replacement for the Matrix, so you can get a tasteful looking hatchback version instead of the frankenstyled sedan.
Is Toyota the new GM? Maybe but it has unique problems all its own.
My first concern if I was running the Toyota circus? Can my dealer body adequately service my burgeoning customer fleet with current facilities and service departments? If not, do I risk losing customers based on lousy customer service?
Secondly, does my vehicle fleet’s resale value hold up as more product turns up on used lots? It’s all good as long as demand outstrips supply but as my government, commercial and rental fleet business expands…
Then. Whatever the relative merit of surveys like the JDP IQS are, here’s the thing: every manufacturer’s products are improving their quality, reliability and longevity. Will my brand’s centrepiece, quality become a “me-too” characteristic? What do I shift to in the future?
If sales do begin to stagnate and then slip, do I pour on the incentives? If so, what happens to the resale value my customers have grown to expect? As this market share game is a numbers game how much room do I have to fall? It took GM 40 years to p*** away half of its market share and it still has around 23-25%. I only have 16%, my grace period may not be quite as long.
Toyota and GM are very different companies and the challenges facing them are different. However, as we’ve seen with the domestics, fortunes can change very quickly once the right conditions are in place.
Local Toyota dealer: worst dealer in town. I’d say they have a ways to go on the customer service front. YMMV, as always, with local dealers.
If you guys are envious of toyotas success, and if your debt-driven country can`t manufacture anything serious and tangible in car field, doesn`t mean you need to pick on toyota. reminds me the skyscraperforums, where any new boxy project in lower manhattan is awesome, while dubai projects are just `another boring tower without application`. by the way, in skyscraperforum you can see the whole american manufacturing paradigm. whenever you hit column for projects that are only visions or canceled, it`s full with us- based scrapers, while hitting `under construction` the whole picture gets non- domestic. detroit is also good at promises, like seattle as well. but when it deals with REAL products it gets….tinier, and tinier, ..and tinier. Toyota keeps their promises. And their mothership doesn`t have a 10 trillion hole in her apron…….
I like the photo of the red Toyopet. Reminds me so much of a baby ’53 Plymouth. Cute in the same way as the old VW Bug. I never recall seeing one “way back when,” but I do remember when the 1966 Corona hit the market.
I don’t suppose any of the Toyopets are still running around somewhere in the US (or at least in nonrunning but restorable condition)?
TheNatural wrote:
“What many people don’t take into consideration for reliability is the type of customer that buys these cars. Toyota is a white collar, lower executive type of car. This is a person that takes their car in every 3,000 miles for an oil change and doesn’t do anything idiotic in their car.
You average American car buyer (Chevy, Dodge, Ford) drive their cars like morons and don’t take proper car of them. They are entry level customers or people who want the FX4 or Z71 to run through the mud and laugh like idiots. If you take the same person, driving the same way for 5 years in an Impala vs a Camry, you will see a similarity in reliability.”
I have to respectfully disagree. My 2nd son’s first car was a Pontiac. It constantly broke – and cost him a fortune (compared to his income) to keep on the road. His second car was an equally old, equally decrepid Toyota Corolla – in fact, we know this car had been TRULY abused because it had several college stickers on it – it was a $500 clunker, just like the Pontiac. The ‘yoda lasted 5 times longer than did the Poncho, and in fact took both our sons to California from Michigan and back (to do habitat for humanity houses/have a road trip as brothers).
Your comments imply that American car buyers are “stuuuuupid” in fact, and I disagree. I disagree, because more American buyers are going to Toyota and Honda (“the reliable two”) all the time, and abandoning GM, Ford and Chrysler at the same time.
You don’t have to be a brainiac to know how bad GM cars are. Even my Newfoundland dog knows how bad GM cars are. Let me explain. My wife went shopping and I sat on the grass near the entrance to the mall last summer. I noticed the dog “glaring” at certain cars – her hear literally snapping around to glare. I started to take notice of what she was glaring at, as people slowed down to turn into the parking area.
Chevrolet. Oldsmobile. Pontiac. Cadillac. Chevrolet. Buick. Saturn. “GLARE” – EVERY TIME.
Toyota? Nope, just a happy Newfy. Honda? No reaction. Ford? Nothing. Dodge? Nope, just a lick on my face ‘coz she felt it. Subaru? Nope, just pant pant pant.
Another Chevy? “GLARE!” It was hilarious.
Hey let’s bring back a good edit to this, shall we? My last comment should read “her head literally snapped around to glare” – sorry for the typo.
jurisb wrote:
“If you guys are envious of toyotas success, and if your debt-driven country can`t manufacture anything serious and tangible in car field, doesn`t mean you need to pick on toyota. reminds me the skyscraperforums, where any new boxy project in lower manhattan is awesome, while dubai projects are just `another boring tower without application`. by the way, in skyscraperforum you can see the whole american manufacturing paradigm. whenever you hit column for projects that are only visions or canceled, it`s full with us- based scrapers, while hitting `under construction` the whole picture gets non- domestic. detroit is also good at promises, like seattle as well. but when it deals with REAL products it gets….tinier, and tinier, ..and tinier. Toyota keeps their promises. And their mothership doesn`t have a 10 trillion hole in her apron…….”
I’m with you, man. We Americans should bring all of our troops home, merge with Canada (and all of that nice tar sands – enough oil to run the two nations for hundreds of years), protect our coal reserves (enough energy to run our nation for another several hundred years), and whenever any of the other countries in the world cry out for help – you know, like World War I, World War II, Korea, Bosnia (where we defended Muslims) and Qwait (where we defended Muslims from other Muslims) and so forth, we should just say – defend your own selves, spend your own damn money and send your own troops to fight. We’re busy paying down our debt, instead of defending INGRATES. You know, ingrates who never paid off promissary notes for monies we lent THEM 55 years ago in WWII.
Maybe we should start demanding OUR money back with userous interest – then we could pay off our debts.
BTW I love my Toyota. But when I went out to buy a new pop-up camper, I made sure to buy one made in Michigan – coz we need all the help we can get in my home state.
Competition is a GOOD thing for Detroit – if they would learn to use it to their advantage. Like, learn how to build competitive cars well. GM had the perfect chance with NUMMI (50/50 JV with Toyota) and the “not invented here” syndrome killed any progress they could have made.
So, GM could change direction – if it wanted to. But it’s the management who are intrenched in their ways, and they are responsible for the downfall of GM. Likewise other US industries.
The transplant auto factories prove something – American workers can do just as good a job as any other workers. The problems with US manufacturing boils down to the executives, not the actual workers.
“Try a left-shoulder safety check in my 2000 Crown Victoria. You see the lane to your left. Try it in my wife’s 1997 Taurus. You see the lane to your left. Try it in a 2007 Camry. You see the B pillar.”
They’re probably taking cues from the universally praised BMW 3 series sedan. Having the b-pillar a few inches back, the coupe feel much airier and nicer.
I attribute more of Toyota’s rise to a steady hand on the marketing than on vehicle quality. I’ve had enough direct experience with Toyota’s cars, going all the way back to when I first saw a few hit my hometown in the early 1960s, to have a continuous view of their progress. Quality is not a value I ever associated with the brand or its products. I did accept their basic reliability premise, which is not the same as quality to me. But the marketing has been superior to any domestic carmaker’s. Once Toyota got firm traction in the US, they marketed the company over the products. This was important because establishing the right perceptions about the corporation gave buyers a reason to enter a relationship with Toyota, rather than just doing a transaction. The jingles, the slogans, the feel-good emotion was all around Toyota. The specific vehicles were almost incidental in their promotion. The print ads were about cars and trucks, but the more environmentally persistent marketing in broadcast put the company front & center. Apple, Nike, 3M are examples of US companies that grasp this. GM, Ford and Chrysler are not. Certainly, driving a Toyota has not been persuasive in terms of getting me to buy a car. I couldn’t imagine living with any of their products, so far, except possibly the 1st gen xB.
During the same decades Toyota was marketing itself instead of its cars, GM’s “Mark of Excellence” disappeared and there was no marketing whatsoever to boost perceptions of GM. Ford only did it with the F150 “Built Ford Tough” campaign. Chrysler neglected the corporate marketing completely. GM marketers might argue that they promoted the divisional brands, but they would be wrong. The closest would be Chevy’s “Heartbeat of America” campaign. Pontiac lost performance, Olds lost everything, Cadillac whithered until the post 2000 comeback. But the truth of the matter is, you’re doing business with GM, not Chevy; Ford, not Mercury. Chrysler, not Dodge. The products tanked for awhile, but corporate marketing was absent to manage the consequences.
It’s no mistake that BMW’s image emerged unsullied from such sorry cars as the 528e, the 3 hatch, the Bangle bungles, even the breakdown-prone 2002. The corporate brand perceptions gave people a reason to maintain their relationship with BMW.
Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence in my ownership history that American cars have a quality problem, initial or otherwise. I’ve always maintained that if you buy the competitive American cars, there is no practical difference in reliability and quality, and reliability may tilt in favor of US makers.
Not counting used cars, here’s my to-date *domestic* new car reliability experience:
1984 Tempo, 4 cyl, 5 speed manual (wife): 150,000 miles with nothing but routine maintenance and never a breakdown.
1984 Jeep CJ7, 4 cyl, stick: 110,000 miles; radiator replaced at 90,000 miles, no breakdowns.
1993 Jeep Wrangler, 6 cyl, stick: 135,000 miles, no breakdowns, routine maintenance only.
1993 Ford SVT Cobra, V8, stick: 85,000 miles; no breakdowns, performance modified several ways.
1994 Ford Mustang GT convertible, V8, stick: 115,000 miles, no breakdowns, routine maintenance only.
1996 Ford SVT Cobra convertible, V8, stick: 101,000 miles; performance modified but engine stock; no breakdowns, routine maintenance only.
1997 Ford Thunderbird, V8, automatic: 65,000 miles, no incidents, routine maintenance only.
1998 Lincoln Makr VIII LSC, V8, automatic: 85,000 miles, no incidents, routine maintenance only.
1998 Ford SVT Contour, V6, stick (wife): 104,000 miles, no incidents, routine maintenance only.
2003 Mercury Marauder, V8, automatic: 65,000 miles; no incidents, routine maintenance only.
2006 Cadillac XLR-V, V8, automatic: 22,000 miles so far; no incidents, routine maintenance only.
2006 Cadillac CTS-V, V8, stick (wife): 10,000 miles so far; no incidents, routine maintenance only.
I’ll also mention that there was a 1996 Corvette LT4 convertible (V8, stick) in the mix which I bought used at 22,000 miles and sold at about 120,000 miles. The service records prior to my ownership showed routine maintenance only. For the 98,000 miles I drove it, I made one Opti-Spark distributor replacement (known issue), and one intake manifold gasket replacement (known issue), and at 110,000 miles replaced a fuel pump. Otherwise, just routine maintenance and no breakdowns.
I don’t know a single import car owner that had fewer problems with a vehicle in the same class as any of these. In fact, everyone I know who owns a German car that competes with our Cadillacs, our prior Lincoln, my Corvette, has had far *more* problems. I’ll also note that every one of these domestic vehicles I’ve listed delivered compression test numbers for all engine cylinders within 2% of original spec, even those with over 100,000 miles.
I don’t baby my cars, I do use synthetic oil, and I attend to the basics.
Really, Toyota did put pressure on the rest of the industry with respect to initial quality, and the combination of steadily competent marketing along with people’s aggregated experiences with the cars back when defect differences were substantial, won them a front position. But today, the quality differences in terms of incidence of defect are not meaningful to the point of being a rational influence on purchase. The statistical differences within the top 50 are small, and your own experience may seriously deviate.
As for whether Toyota will dissipate its hard-won position, history suggests it will. Big seldom preserves agility and commitment. We’ll see. It might not be brought down by eroding quality. More likely by blandness, steady cheapening of product to meet financial objectives, and the general insularity from market that organizational bulk tends to breed.
Boeing has proved that in an industry where size has advantages, that a giant can recover. GM is trying to prove the same. IBM, DEC, Microsoft all have, to varying degrees, suffered from the debilitating consequences of mass. Microsoft is flush with cash and can reinvigorate itself. DEC is gone. IBM is now more services than hardware and has a fraction of the influence on its industry it once had. The two companies on the current scene that will most visibly struggle with success are Google and Toyota. Google’s product interface is looking mighty tired suddenly, but this is a company focussed on the back end, not the presentation. Toyota’s cars have aesthetically progressed, over the decades, from ugly to homely to acceptable to bland, with recent attempts to distinguish themselves looking mighty ham-handed.
Eras of dominance get shorter and shorter. Toyota won’t have 70+ years to dominate like GM. Like Microsoft today, looking for a way to transfer its desktop dominance to a web world, Toyota and Google face their struggles with success and transition flush with cash, and a continuing ability to generate profits.
But just as GM was slipping even as the original Olds Toronado looked like a domineer’s statement, and DEC was about to slip into irrelevance even as it was hosting DECWorld on the QE2, Toyota will be tipped into a decline during a moment of undisputed success.
Phil
213Cobra:
Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence in my ownership history that American cars have a quality problem, initial or otherwise.
It’s a good thing that personal experience and reality are two completely different things. Whether you’ve seen it or not, in the past 20 years there HAS been a dramatic quality difference between American and Japanese cars, a difference which continues to exist today, although to a smaller extent.
The most recent two Camry redesigns both took content and quality out of the vehicles in pursuit of cost reductions in my view. The Scion redesigns are also steps backwards. I think that in it’s attempts to be everything to everyone Toyota is indeed making some of the same mistakes GM made over the years, but so far the score card of major badly handled disasters at Toyota is short compared to GM’s.
Glenn 126– China of course is a big polluter, but the biggest polluter is still usa, because their coal burning powerstations( approx. 400 year reserve) is the cheapest way to generate energy. That`s why USA refuses to sign Kyoto protocol.Looks like they squeeze blood out of the stone in every sector of economy, but at the end- loses everybody. do you really expect japanese banks to write off your debts? after the `fat boy ` you don`t stand a chance……….
China is now a larger polluter than is the USA, jurisb. Just saw in the net news this morning that toys are being recalled because of lead paint – toys made for Fisher-Price in China. So as I said before, it is the elite in this country – the USA – and elsewhere – which are selling us all down the river. You think you’re immune in whatever country you’re in? Guess again.
As for “how much the US pollutes” – well, it’s fascinating to watch the rest of the world trying to work themselves up to the standard of living that the US enjoys, isn’t it? In other words, we Americans are doing exactly what “everyone else” would be doing in our position. We’ve worked very hard for 220 plus years and are reaping the benefits of a good standard of living, somewhat based upon what our forefathers did. You can’t just conjure buildings and infrastructure out of thin air, now, can you?
Not forgetting that America put emission equipment into place in factories starting in the 1950’s (catalysts), reduced car pollution starting in 1963, and put catalysts on cars in the autumn of 1974. Europe, just for an example, didn’t start putting catalysts on SOME cars until 15 years later, after Germany’s forests were dying and Greece’s antiquities were literally melting from acid rain. France, and the UK, for example, had to be dragged kicking and scraming into the catalyst age with cars. But worse yet is diesel car pollution – tiny particles which get into people’s lungs and cause heart attacks, other medical problems.
Now we have a small segment of the ultra-rich elite and power-crazed elite – not just in the auto companies – who have been exporting jobs from our country, and allowing 20 million illegal aliens to stay in order to depress wages – and this would be the average person’s fault HOW?
As for our power stations, why don’t you come look at the USA some time and see how clean the air is (excepting the LA basin – which had air pollution from the days of the Indian camp fires, I might add).
I can tell you from my 9 years living in the UK that the air pollution is worse there than the US, and I’ve been back on “holiday” and it still is far more filthy than anywhere in the US on average. I also have read reports stating that most of the filthiest air polluted cities – are in CHINA.
I would be the first person to say that we Americans typically drive vehicles way too large. But “it’s a free country” – and people can choose to buy what they can afford. Wow, what an amazing concept! Of course, they have to live with the consequences of driving solo in SUVs to work, right? Like in social costs and gas costs. As for my wife and I, we carpool in my Prius, which doesn’t make me a green-freak.
In fact, I don’t believe the hype coming from the Gore camp of hypocrite elitists (living in huge mansions demanding that the peasants live less large so there is more energy for the worthy people). The CO2 fantasy is just that. Either that, or those Martians are driving way too many SUV’s solo to work, my friend, ‘coz the Martian poles are melting at the same rate as Earth’s.
It’s called natural cycles of the sun, folks. It was a mere 30 years ago that these scientists claimed we were all going to die in a huge new ice age. I was there, I remember it.
These are the same climatologists who can’t figure out next week’s weather with any accuracy, never mind next year’s hurricane season. Why should anyone pay them any mind with regards to “global warming”? Ignore them, they’ll go away.
But still only use the energy you NEED simply out of good stewardship.
Why not go onto a Chinese web site and berate THEM instead of Americans?
I wont buy a Toyota because all the dealers have the attitude that they are the best and if you dont play their game you can get (beep)ed. Enpires come and go and so many of you think Toyota is a godlike entity that can do no wrong. Maybe for now, but never say never.
Some people just do not get it about Toyota and the North American market. THe USA is such a different place than it was 30 years ago, the shift in population demographics have a great deal to do with Toyota rise in the USA. It is a shame that GM deicided to all but totally ignore the changing demographics of the east and west coast of the this country.
In my neck of the woods Toyota has a base of loyal customers that have been toyota fans for well over 30 years. You see the “rest of the world” are now in the USA buying cars from that company, Toyota. The same company that has been selling them excellent car and TRUCKS since the 1950s in such places as Latin America, Africa, India, the Middle East, and even Europe. For these folks Toyota is the GM that have never let them down, never sold them junk. Toyota has a history of selling excellently built autos to poorer folks the demanded a RELIABLE automobile. Toyota has tradition of building auto that will last for 20 years of service and cost little to own over their life time. When GM was selling products that they designed to last only 5 to 6 years Toyota was building a world-wide dominance in rock-solid products.
Guess what? Today those “other” people make up a sizable portion of the USA auto market and they WILL buy a Tundra over an f-150 or Silverado. Toyota knows this better than GM because GM still thinks all truck buyers are “good ole boys.
Today GM is like a fat out of shape boxer that has been smoking a pack a day for the last 10 years. This guy like to still think of himself as the champ even though he has been knocked out in each one of his last 10 fights. He is dreaming that he can go back into the gym today and train really hard. The problem is while GM is dieting to loss weight Toyota is in the Gym buildig more muscles.
In Omaha, the long-time exclusive Toyota dealer can’t even keep its keys and keyfobs straight.
When I accompanied a co-worker to this dealership to help him get his “new” year-old Corolla home, the salesman was untangling a mess of keys and keyless-entry fobs looking for the right ones for his car. They found both sets of keys,but after finding one fob by aiming at least two dozen thrown in a heap at the car until the horn beeped, they said they could schedule the car back in for the programming of a new second fob “sometime next week”.
How am I to trust this bunch with something as complicated as a hybrid drivetrain?
My son bought a Scion last year, not from “our shit doen’t stink because we’re Toyota and always have been”, but from a mega-dealer who started out with, and still has, a Chrysler dealership.
He has no complaints, so far.
Jurisb,
There are many reasons the US did not accept the Kyoto treaty, but coal wasn’t one of them. A significant reason, reported at the time but seemingly lost since, was that Japan and the EU would not accept the US position that CO2 contribution should be regulated in net terms rather than gross. That is to say, the US wanted credit for the carbon banking of its vast forests. We also have the land to use further forestation as a mitigator. Japan and the EU, feeling at a disadvantage on that measure, refused to negotiate the point. Also important to our opposition was that leaving developing countries unregulated meant that the “problem” wasn’t being addressed globally.
It was also clear that the hidden agenda of the EU and Japan was to use Kyoto as drag on the US economy, which was outstripping both in every way during the long 1990’s boom.
Now, let’s stop nonsense about CO2 being pollution. It is part and parcel of every breath you exhale. The idea that climate change is induced by human activity is deeply flawed, but it has been taken up by the regulation-minded who simply can’t abide what they regard as an excess of free will. If climate change alarmists were really serious about the atmosphere’s carbon content, they’d be funding a massive effort to put carbon sequestering facilities at power generation plants first. If they really cared about the idea that climate change is driven by atmospheric content, they’d be going after methane sources with as much zeal, given that methane has about 7X the greenhouse potential as a same unit of CO2. But then they’d have to go after the two largest global sources of greenhouse gas: flatulent termites and livestock. Going after transportation is political, not effective. It will take decades of attacking carbon emissions from transportation to accomplish what could be done in one decade or less via carbon sequestering.
So, let’s understand that anthropogenic climate change is not real. Some inconvenient facts: The cryosphere in South America shows no evidence of global warming. Outside of peninsular Antarctica, the rest of that continent is accumulating ice. Recession of Alpine glaciers is well below what was witnessed in previous warm periods. The oft-cited point of index for alarm, the year 1850, roughly coincides with the end of a natural 300+ year cooling trend, so of course there’s been warming since. And then there’s the problem that planetary warming is simultaneously observable on Earth, Mars and Uranus, corresponding to a cyclic rise in solar output. The list of inconvenience goes on. The fact is, climate on Earth is always warming or cooling. Why does 1850 — just after the end of a multi-century cooling cycle — define normal?
So, let’s stick to real, toxic, pollution. The kind that the US was the first to regulate and reduce in a serious way. We’ll never be done cleaning emissions from combustion, but our progress has been immense. Tailpipe emissions are 99% cleaner than 40 years ago. In Los Angeles, each year the air is cleaner than any of the previous 40, despite the metro area supporting many more people and vehicles. The US now generates a dollar of GDP with less than half the energy needed to do it compared to 1973.
As for your prior comment about US manufacturing: Just as manufacturing displaced agriculture as the main economic activity as part of economic maturation, services similarly displace manufacturing as the dominant activity as an economy matures. But our economic expansion and sheer size mean that the portion of our economy derived from manufacturing is nevertheless huge in absolute terms. In fact, while the rise of services at the expense of manufacturing is theoretically considered a one-way street, the US increased its manufacturing sector during the 1990s, and it may again.
Despite not signing on to Kyoto, the US is steadily more energy-efficient relative to its economic output. Reforestation continues to mitigate carbon contribution, if you care about that. And on most measures of environmental cleanliness, we’re cleaner than any other industrialized producer country.
The simple reality is, your choice of car, truck or SUV will have no effect on the temperature of Earth’s climate, now or later. Vespa to Escalade, you can decide how much of what you earn you wish to allocate to energy for moving around. Each time you replace a vehicle you can be confident that a newer one in the same class will be cleaner and more efficient than the last.
And I can’t help but point out that an American SUV is not only twice as efficient as similar vehicles were 35 years ago, but also that an American SUV is as or more efficient than a Ferrari, Veyron, most AMG cars, V8 Ms, as well as Porsche, Range Rover, Toyota/Lexus, Mercedes and LaForza SUVs, to name a few of the thirsty conveyances shipped to our market from carbon-pious countries doing most of this moaning.
Phil
213Cobra / Phil
Wow, I am going to have to borrow your writings and disseminate them to friends, hope you don’t mind. I’ll be pleased to refer back to this website and your good self.
I wish I could have said it 1/10th as well, kudos.
Glenn 126,
Thanks for your compliment. Once posted, these writings are on the web, so borrow all you want.
Phil
Now, let’s stop nonsense about CO2 being pollution. It is part and parcel of every breath you exhale.
That’s akin to arguing that isn’t possible to die from alcohol poisoning because a couple of glasses of wine can be good for one’s health. Try surviving in a chamber filled with CO2 and insufficient oxygen, and get back to us about how it went.
Too much CO2 is not good for the environment, because the earth functions when these elements are in balance with each other. It’s the imbalance created by emissions that is the problem, and explains one reason why there is a general consensus among scientists that climate change exists and that it poses a problem.
Pch101,
Well, we’ve been through this on another thread. The fact is, there is not a consensus among climate scientists nor atmospheric scientists that the carbon content of our atmosphere is either significantly out of balance, nor that climate change is anthropogenic.
Sure, put me or any other person in a high CO2 atmosphere with Oxygen declining and CO2 rising and you get into an Apollo 13 situation. That’s not even remotely what we have at a global level. No one from your camp has been arguing toxicity until now, but I suppose no alarmism should be surprising. And nothing in even the worst projections suggests CO2 toxicity. So let’s not go down that path.
The question is whether man-induced carbon release is significant enough to cause climate change. And then whether any such change is significant enough to worry about. No one has answered why 1850 should define normal, especially when it roughly corresponds to a the end of a long cooling period. No one among the anthropogenic alarmists has responded to more recent data that shows warming on Mars and Uranus exactly corresponding to ours. The Uranus data is relatively new, observed since Al Gore et al declared the debate “over.” Three planets directly correlating increased solar output and this is ignored as being irrelevant? Multiple parts of the world showing no sign of warming and this is ignored. Projections that assume the present trends will persist and no environmental factors are corrective? Evidence of greater warming in the past, and this is dismissed? In science, we call this a “temporally and locally restricted view.”
We do not live in a static environment, just one that is dynamically narrowed within a range of life support. It gets warmer or cooler all the time. Sea levels change. Some places benefit, others pay, and it goes both ways depending on the direction of variance.
What’s normal about 1850 as opposed to, say, 1300 or 750 or 11,000 BC? It’s just the beginning of human weather record keeping. Macro patterns indicate that we’d be warming now even if we had the population and carbon footprint of humans at 1000AD. Oh, come to think of it, around that time, it was warmer and mankind’s footprint was vastly smaller. Hmmmmmm….
Science should be data driven, but it is in the inference that understanding is made right or wrong. Does climate change exist? Absolutely! You get no argument from me. It’s just that we aren’t the reason. Climate changes with or without us.
More to the point, man’s carbon footprint will peak then fall. If we stay committed to wealth generation, birthrates will fall as living standards improve everywhere. And wealthy societies become progressively more efficient at energy usage relative to economic output. If you believe carbon is a problem, start installing sequestering systems in stationary locations beginning tomorrow. Plant trees, lots of them. Stop eating meat. Transportation isn’t the big lever, it’s just the political one that will keep us unwashed down on the farm.
Pollute less? Use less energy when possible? Sure. Lots of other reasons to do that. We don’t need regulation for it though, nor social browbeating. And we sure don’t need politically-motivated science panic. The market will take care of it as technical alternatives surface to viability. We’re already on the trend. So it will take another 30 – 50 years to peak out. It’s going to be OK.
Drive what you want.
Around 1890, 1,000 horses a week kicked the bucket in New York City. Sometimes they were left where they keeled over for a few days. Horsesh*t in the streets cultivated disease. Diptheria was rampant. Cholera was a threat. Life expectancy was under 45.
We ain’t going back.
We don’t control the Sun, and we don’t seriously affect the insulating properties of our atmosphere. CO2 is presently .038% of what we breathe. A year of volcanic activity can easily overwhelm anything traced to us. The annual contribution to that miniscule level stands at about 96% natural emitters, and maybe 4% us. Of that 4% annual emission, less than 1/3 derives from all transportation sources. Private automobiles are just a fraction of that. Rolling stock isn’t the place to start, if you take this anthropogenic alarm seriously. When I see alignment between data, conclusions, solutions from the Gore/EU alarmists, I’d have at least a basis for discussion. When I see the alarmists alter their own habits, at least I can admire thier conviction. No, buying carbon credits doesn’t count. Yes, you must give up private jets, buy a frugal car and tear your house down to 2500 sf or less. Your pool better be solar heated, and I want to see solar panels on your roof; plus triple-insulated glass, thermostat at 80deg in the summer and 68 in the winter. Walk the talk so I can see your conviction. So far, we have Chicken Little conclusions derived from incomplete and politically-filtered data which then lead to panicked action in one of the least impactful but politically expedient vectors of action, if you believe the Chicken Little conclusion in the first place. I’m not buying.
Phil
The fact is, there is not a consensus among climate scientists nor atmospheric scientists that the carbon content of our atmosphere is either significantly out of balance, nor that climate change is anthropogenic.
That is absolutely and utterly false. There is no truth whatsoever to that statement.
Here’s a fact: The only credible scientific organization that has taken a position against climate change is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. That’s it.
In contrast, the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Astronomical Society, National Academy of Sciences and numerous others concur with climate change theory.
This is veering well off topic, but if you are going to make arguments such as this, I want you to provide some salient data that shows this debate that you claim exists. One organization and the occasional paper do not a “debate” make.
The only debate is among laymen — mostly American laymen — on the Internet, not among scientists who actually know what they’re talking about.
Is so. No it’s not. Is so….Geeze.
Organizations are different than individuals. Organizations are intrinsically political. The groupthink of organizations obscures broad disagreement underneath them by members of the community who do not agree with the vetted view.
The number of scientists that opposed the Kyoto treaty’s interpretation of available knowledge and the prescribed response exceeded the number that went on record supporting it. Since then the politics of global warming have driven dissent underground. I have enough personal contact with scientists who are climatically and atmospherically focussed to see the dissent where it lives.
Previous posts have cited a mere tip of the online iceberg of dissenting views. You persistently revert to the logical fallacy of attacking the source rather than responding to the information and arguments. Credentialism isn’t convincing, because of the politics associated. Google is a good start. And here’s just one of a vast array of gateways to some of the information the anthropogenic advocates and Gore geeks prefer to ignore, for undermining their fixed view. There are myriad countervailing data points represented.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/
Phil
I’m sorry, but that’s a whole load of obfuscation.
You claimed that there is a “debate.” I’d like to see evidence of this debate.
The groupthink of organizations obscures broad disagreement underneath them by members of the community who do not agree with the vetted view.
In other words, you can’t prove your point, because it’s pretty obvious that scientific organizations overwhelmingly endorse climate change theory, while only a single one supports it. (And that one organization has a vested interest in seeing fossil fuels get burned.)
Previous posts have cited a mere tip of the online iceberg of dissenting views.
Previous posts listed articles that the poster claimed argued against climate change, even though the articles and their authors actually agree with climate change.
The only debate is here, in places like this. There is no substantial debate among the scientists themselves. If you are going to make a statement, it’s up to you to prove it. Generalizations about an alleged “tip of the iceberg” and conspiracy theories are not worthy rebuttals, and only support the position that the debate is not occurring.
If there is an iceberg, you should be able to dive in deeper and show it off for all to see. Otherwise, we should take these non-peer-reviewed “articles” for what they are — a small ice cube melting in a vast sea.
I was referring to *my* posts where you never responded to the information cited.
Sure I can prove there’s a debate — there’s an avalanche of countervailing evidence and inference of available data all over the web. Go look at it. You know how to use a search engine. I already pointed to just one site that is a compendium of globally-sourced countervailing data, and points of view that are by no means exclusively American. There are European scientists there too.
There is no substantial debate among the scientists you cite. Trouble is, that’s a subculture of academics. It’s not universally representative. And don’t tell me majorities count. Science has been wrong at various points of history, only to be corrected by further science. As I wrote before, I’ve been following climate science for 40 years. I wasn’t convinced during the global cooling scare — turned out I was right — and I’m unconvinced about this climate change being traceable to my driving.
The warped politics and enforced groupthink of the anthropogenics regarding climate change is plainly evident throughout the site I mentioned, which again is a compendium, not an individual’s view. But more blatantly, in the last few months, data that shows Uranus is evidencing higher solar output from our Sun adds a third planet yielding verification that “global warming” is a systemic phenomenon. Earth + Mars + Uranus. Now, normally, scientists would assimilate new information and at least question whether their prior conclusion is wrong. But not here. No, the anthropogenics won’t even acknowledge *any* new information that casts doubt on their hasty conclusions.
No one believes our computer modelling of global climate is anything more than a feeble approximation of all the factors affecting climate. The alarmists set aside historical deviation from their models. They haven’t established why 1850 should be considered a reference for normal.
I’ve already proved my point that there’s a debate. Scientists aren’t afraid to assimilate and understand real phenomena that undermine flawed predictive models. But what we see from anthropogenics is fear, groupthink, dogma, ossification of view, and censorship.
By the way, Toyota has yet to build a vehicle that impresses me.
Phil
Sure I can prove there’s a debate
And yet, you won’t.
Your “evidence” is an elaborate version of “trust me.” Apparently, the scientists who agree with you are too frightened to speak or have apparently all fled to some distant planet where computers are not available, as very little evidence of such opposing work exists. The iceberg has left the building.
The only scientists who remain here on Planet Earth are the hundreds who have written peer-reviewed papers that support the climate change argument, and who belong to mainstream organizations such as the ones that I have cited. Apparently, they are all part of some climate change Orwellian mind meld that forces them to make up data and prevents them from disagreeing with one another.
That’s the sort of thing you hear from the folks who believe that the moon walk occurred on a Hollywood back lot. I go back to one basic observation — any theory that requires a fervent belief in a conspiracy and unspecified facts is not much of a theory.
On another note, I’ll go back to JurisB’s point:
China of course is a big polluter, but the biggest polluter is still usa, because their coal burning powerstations( approx. 400 year reserve) is the cheapest way to generate energy. That`s why USA refuses to sign Kyoto protocol.
Obviously, I am concerned about climate change, but I think that you miss the point. The problem with Kyoto is that its two-tiered policy of allowing countries such as China and India to comply with lower standards only encourages more offshoring and, consequently, job losses in western nations. If China continues to spiral into an environmental basketcase with minimal regulation, then companies will flock there so they can pollute freely, thus making the global situation even worse.
I’d prefer to have no pollution at all, but of course, that’s not a realistic choice. Given a more realistic dichotomy, I’d rather have a company operate in the USA with a modest level of emissions than have it relocate to China where it might produce ten times more emissions. Emissions need to be attacked on a global level with a single standard for everyone, so that there is no incentive to operate in regulation-free havens where they can pollute far more and with much greater impunity.
There are reams of postings at the site I noted, where the debate is alive and well. And each one of those postings in the compendium leads to more.
I’m not asking you to trust me, on my personal contacts. The people in question have a variety of reasons for not wanting to participate in this kind of forum. I respect that. But overall, I and others find it common to get a more nuanced private point of view even from scientists who believe climate change is in part induced by us. The politics of the issue are truncating expression.
I agree with you on China.
Phil
There are reams of postings at the site I noted, where the debate is alive and well.
Your “source” is funded by the Western Fuels Association. Patrick Michaels, who runs the site, receives contributions from the mining, oil and gas industry.
And again, one guy does not a debate make. The number of scientists who aren’t in the pockets of industry who dispute climate change is small.
“Debate” implies widespread disagreement. This disagreement does not exist in the scientific community in respect to climate change.
If you’d like, I’ll provide you to a link to the Flat Earth Society website. I do hope that you realize that the existing of the website is not evidence that there is a “debate” among scientists about whether the earth is shaped like an orb…
Robert, I hope you can archive this discussion, it’s a real humdinger.
Hey, aren’t we talking about Toyota here?
Again, logical fallacy of attacking the source rather than dealing with the facts and arguments. That site does not represent one person’s view. It is a compendium, with widely varying sources. Following any several of them leads to an unfolding expanse of dissent.
In any academic environment of relevant scientists, you can find evidence in person-to-person interaction that the debate over climate change causal factors is alive and kicking. Only in Al Gore’s mind is it “over.”
Again, new information continues to cast doubt, yet anthropogenics fail to process new data. It’s just another form of dogma.
Phil
86er,
Yes, we were talking about Toyota. My prior point was that the role of Toyota’s marketing is underestimated in their market rise in the US. The cars aren’t that exceptional. Honda is more deserving if it were only about product and quality. Toyota has had mediocre but reliable product with some of the most consistent marketing of all the mass producer brands, for over 20 years.
Phil
Again, logical fallacy of attacking the source rather than dealing with the facts and arguments.
If you believe that, then it’s interesting that you’d like TTAC. One of the basic premises of this website is that it has more credibility than do those the glossy car mags because unlike them, TTAC is not dependent upon handouts from the automotive industry.
It’s easy to see the linkage here. Scientist bought and paid for by the mining and oil/gas industries says stuff that said industry wants to here. No surprise there.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of scientists don’t agree with Mr. Michaels or his small editorial staff. But you’d like to claim that the existence of his website proves that there is massive debate, despite the fact that almost nobody engages in it.
False logic, all around. Again, “debate” is equivalent to widespread disagreement. There is no such widespread disagreement. Very few people with credibility in the sciences agree with Mr. Michaels. You’d like to claim that there is some sort of massive gag order that prevents them from speaking, yet it’s hard to imagine that being true when the only guys who seem to hold the contrary position are tied directly to the producers of fossil fuels.
The logical fallacy of attacking the source undermines one’s debating position and argument logic regardless of what appeal TTAC has. TTAC has no more intrinsic credibility than an ad-monetized car magazine. That is to say, this community can be wrong too, and when it is, the alleged credibility of the audience doesn’t make wrong correct. Similarly, nothing about being funded by a biased source prevents a researcher from being correct. Many of the car reviews here are as subjective and personally biased as anything in a car industry ad-supported publication. Perhaps more so because reviews here are almost never supported by objective data. They are impressionistic, and often flavored by an automatic bias in favor of some manufacturers as well as against others. That doesn’t mean TTACers don’t as a group tend to know more about automobilia than most aggregated audiences, but there’s no indication that this group is any more objective than the average, either.
You don’t think there’s any funding of anthropogenic alarmists by governmental parties and elites that are funding an intended outcome? If you don’t see this, you are not paying attention. Brush funding and organizations aside and examine the facts and the reasoning. The facts and the reasoning — including facts that continue to pour in which anthropogenics choose not to assimilate, do not support anthropogenic cause for climate change.
Debate is debate. “Widespread” has nothing to do with it. Science has repeatedly found itself vulnerable to being proved wrong when “widespread” was equated to “certain,” in matters of conjecture and projection of incomplete understanding of current phenomena.
I already said that majorities are not convincing, so why cite what you believe to be a game of numbers? This is not persuasive. Once again, Michaels operates a compendium, not a singular blog. The sources of dissent and dissenting data are numerous.
Phil
We’re going waaaaaaay off topic, so this will be my last post on this particular thread about climate change. (If another article is authored about it, we can rough-and-tumble there.) But anyway…
TTAC has no more intrinsic credibility than an ad-monetized car magazine.
The old adage in investigative journalism is to “follow the money.” Your posts haven’t convinced me that this rule suddenly no longer applies.
It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Michaels is in bed with the fossil fuels producers, which makes his positions suspect. But even if he is sincere, that doesn’t change the fact that most scientists do not agree with him.
You don’t think there’s any funding of anthropogenic alarmists by governmental parties and elites that are funding an intended outcome?
Governments would be far, far better off if climate change was not a problem. If climate change was a myth, we could keep doing what we do and not worry about it — that would be a win-win for virtually everyone. The last thing that any politician wants to tell his constituents is that the party is over, that sort of pessimism just doesn’t get very many votes.
The threat of climate change is going to force massive lifestyle changes down all of our throats. I, for one, am not exactly thrilled about living in a world with more bus rides and less horsepower — even a lefty like me has his moments of hoonery — but we need to face the music and get used to it.
Debate is debate. “Widespread” has nothing to do with it.
Of course it does. The Flat Earthers clearly believe that the world isn’t round, and dedicate some effort to making the claim. But that doesn’t mean that there is a “debate” about it, it just means that a few looney-tunes make a lot of noise that most people who understand science tend to ignore.
Time and time again, it becomes clear that virtually every scientist who disputes climate change is paid to make the argument. It is also clear that there are very few of them. These two facts alone make it obvious that the debate doesn’t exist.
The only reason that the Bush administration likes to pretend that there is a “debate” is to sow seeds of doubt about something that is generally accepted by those in the know. It’s just an extension of the propaganda tactic of the “Big Lie” — keep restating a falsehood often enough so that the unknowing masses begin to believe it.
Journalism and logic are two different things. In logic, perception of credibility is pushed aside and both sides of a debate have to compete on the merits. “Follow the money” might be worth knowing, but it doesn’t make one party right or wrong. “Follow the money is, however, used by lawyers to psychologically manipulate juries. In prosecution (too often, not much different from journalism) there is a preconceived outcome the prosecutor is working toward. Motive is always cited, but it is more emotional than logical. Motive is really a suggestion, not a fact, and alone doesn’t prove guilt, wrongdoing nor bias. Energy-sponsored science is fully capable of being correct. Your silence on the undermining data is consistent with the behavior of anthropogenic believers. It’s not so different dealing with religious fundamentalists.
That the world is not flat is empirically provable. We have no debate between conjectures on that. Climate change itself is empirically observable and even provable, but the contention that it is anthropogenic is not. This is a conjecture and one for which its proponents have blithely dismissed every dissenting, undermining data point as irrelevant because they say so. That’s not persuasive. We have a continuing debate between conjectures: one side says they read the available evidence as the cause is human. The other side says both the evidence and the reasoning are insufficient to draw that conclusion and the conjecture isn’t actionable.
Bureaucracies and the politicians who are inclined to regulation always coalesce around phenomena that can suggest crisis, whether or not the crisis is real. A substantial portion of western liberal polity is elitist (I say this as a disappointed liberal) and deeply irritated by personal freedom and the tendency of individuals to ignore elites. The Greens and many Democrats in the US would love nothing better than to punish Detroit, saddle the power companies, throttle oil, herd you to public transit and make you drive 55 in a 30 hp car. But they won’t, because people are smarter than that in the aggregate, and the personal transporter — the automobile — is going to be gradually engineered out of the problem.
One of many overriding facts: We have empirically observed planetary warming simultaneously on two planets in our solar system that have atmospheres, and empirically-measured increased solar reflectance from at least one gas giant. When this warming trend peaks, a future generation of people who can’t see beyond their locally and temporally restricted reference will peg that moment to “normal” and the cooling alarm will sound. Can’t wait for the bleating demanding the return to the carbon-emitting internal combustion engine! Perhaps Toyota will make it the cornerstone of their illusory environmentalism then.
Phil
213Cobra, if an overwhelming majority of scientists think that there’s no case for anthropogenic global warming, why didn’t they show up at the IPCC and say so?
Why don’t they publish? I mean, publish where and how it really counts as science?
And don’t say “there’s an avalanche of countervailing evidence and inference of available data all over the web.” The Web is evidence that Sturgeon’s Law, “99% of Everything is Crud” applies to Information Theory.
A tiny sliver of the web is edited, fact-checked or subject to critical review. The rest of it is just out there… way out there.
I’ve repeatedly been told that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, to go look at this web site or that web site and I find essays using stale, distorted and skewed data, all sourced out of a very few “scientists” who mostly have their hands in the pockets of the carbon companies.
Now, it may be that a lot of very sincere, very smart and very hard-working scientists are wrong and that we have nothing to worry about for one reason or another. However, we’re running a global atmospheric experiment (to wit, how much CO2 can ol’ Mother Nature take?) in a laboratory that also doubles as our home. We’d be smart to curb our hubris and our appetites for carbon and reduce our risk.
213Cobra, by the way, the IPCC report DOES notice and consider increased solar activity. They have reasons for believing it accounts for just 10% of the warming phenomenon. Just because some web site with an agenda tells you a bunch of conspiratorial scientists with a social agenda are ignoring it does not mean they’re ignoring it.
Also, FYI, I’m dying to get “herded” onto public rapid transit. There isn’t any kind of decent service here and I’d rather sit and read the paper on my way to work than sit and stare at some Hummer’s ass, waiting for the light ahead to go green so that I can crawl forward two more blocks and find mysel sitting and staring at that Hummer’s ass again. When I drive my car, I want to enjoy the experience, not just endure it.
Services- is not a logical development of a country, it is a sign of a decline of the country. japan doesn`t quit manufacturing. Are they underdeveloped? Latvia is almost all service driven? would you call it a superpower? Countries that have reached limits of their industrial engineering capabilities, eschew it ,giving job places to services. people work in dvd rentals , because factories where they could have worked , are simply closed.And it is wishful thinking, that US manufacturing has moved to Asia. It has mostly died out ,because of LACK of PRODUCTS, quality problems, and obsoletness.
And your american cheapness of manufacturign is felt ewerywhere- starting from Folgers coffee and endind with paper quality of fashion magazines. I still dare to declare, that lower demands for the products( the mixed nations who have no expertize in highly finished products), is what has allowed USA for many years to sell uncompetetive products in the United states, while selling the same products in europe causes major problems.
And those who accuse Toyota Auris of being cheap, have you really seen it in real life?
I know, you wish Toyota had slipped in quality, as an bitter revenge for your car branch extinction. yes they have slipped, but only where US customers not -too -picky eye has allowed it.
And yes your country has sweated a lot and forgrd the greatest achievements, but last 20 years have given us a witness of fat ( services) driven economy overtake serious business of manufacturing( muscles). While last decades your japanes competitors with their hands were polishing the precise fit of their every new product, they launched. Americas business was running on fat ( low added value, non -durables).
And I have no expertize in global warming, ( I am just 20 years old), but you could check on average how many temperature records have been broken in last decade, and then ask yourself, where have you gotten that insignificant temperature increase that causes el nino effects over Atlantic.
The whole blunder of American manufacturing is….is…is……………..Superminimal -Input Syndrome in tangible engineering.
If the only dream- place where you can see stars is Dollar banknote, means the God has scattered Andromeda nebula and others…..uselessly.
Kixstart,
if an overwhelming majority of scientists think that there’s no case for anthropogenic global warming, why didn’t they show up at the IPCC and say so?
First, I didn’t ever say a majority of scientists disagree with anthropogenicism on climate change. (Although if you claim a majority for that side I have to point out that while Al Gore cited some 2,000 scientists, most of whom are not climate or atmospherically specialized, nearly 9X that number signed a petition stating that climate knowledge was not sufficiently sophisticated to warrant the actions in Kyoto.) I said majorities aren’t convincing for their existence. I don’t know or care which side has the actual majority. I only care who’s correct.
I can’t say for sure why more dissent isn’t published through the IPCC. But I am sure that part of the reason is that dissenting from the view of the IPCC is a little like dissenting with the Vatican, trying to discuss the point that the existence of God or the Holy Trinity cannot be proven. The IPCC , like a prosecutor, worked toward a preconceived conclusion.
And don’t say “there’s an avalanche of countervailing evidence and inference of available data all over the web.” The Web is evidence that Sturgeon’s Law, “99% of Everything is Crud” applies to Information Theory.
No kidding. An avalanche of information arguing anthropogenic cause to climate change is also available. To be fair I suppose you have to assume 99% of that is crap too. Sturgeon doesn’t take sides.
I’ve repeatedly been told that anthropogenic global warming is a hoax, to go look at this web site or that web site and I find essays using stale, distorted and skewed data, all sourced out of a very few “scientists” who mostly have their hands in the pockets of the carbon companies.
I’ve already explained why this is irrelevant if the data and reasoning taken by such people is sound. I don’t believe the science is a hoax, but the political use of it is.
However, we’re running a global atmospheric experiment (to wit, how much CO2 can ol’ Mother Nature take?) in a laboratory that also doubles as our home. We’d be smart to curb our hubris and our appetites for carbon and reduce our risk.
And that experiment gets run for us every time there is a spike in volcanic activity. My answer to the point of being prudent is this: Fine. If you’re serious about reducing carbon emissions, lets not start with transportation, instead immediately start installing carbon sequestering at every fossil-fuel-burning generating plant in the US, and elsewhere. That’s something we can actually have an impact with within a decade. Mobility is essential to prosperity. Let’s keep mobility while the car gets engineered out of the equation.
the IPCC report DOES notice and consider increased solar activity. They have reasons for believing it accounts for just 10% of the warming phenomenon. Just because some web site with an agenda tells you a bunch of conspiratorial scientists with a social agenda are ignoring it does not mean they’re ignoring it.
Some solar astronomers believe their (IPCC) accounting underestimates the role of solar output, and their reasoning for the 10% is a wing-it number. Mounting evidence suggests solar variance is the 1st order instigator.
I have no argument with a scientist who says, “I know my climate models are feeble and this isn’t a proven case, but my best judgment tells me we have a climate change problem that is induced by us and we must change some things to avert a catastrophe.” That’s what I hear in private from climatologists who are on the anthropogenic bandwagon. That’s not nearly the same as “’the debate is over’ and you’re getting curtailed because we’re gonna use this panic to regulate you.”
Most anthropogenics admit their computer climate models are far from an analog to the actual climate and the factors that influence it. They just work with the best they have. It’s a feeble start, and the political users of selective science would have much more credibility if they admitted the element of doubt.
The IPCC hasn’t answered simple questions:
1/ Why is 1850’s climate defined as “normal,” when man has been present for cooler and warmer periods?
2/ Why do you have confidence in computer models that can’t explain prior warm(er) periods when human carbon contribution was nil?
3/ Why should we believe the same community that predicted global cooling 30 years ago, with the same certainty?
4/ With mounting evidence that the solar system is in a warming phase, why don’t you re-evaluate your data and conclusions in light of new information?
5/ Why do you underplay the role of water vapor as a greenhouse gas, as well as the role of methane?
Phil
Massman has been trained in their government-controlled schools to defer to the majority (groupthink)…It is quite apparent here.
Not many people can comprehend that science is not a popularity contest…Always looking for WHO to believe rather than WHAT to believe.
Al Gore is a classic example of someone who drove themself crazy because he could no longer keep his lies straight (The Human brain’s ability to memorize fades with age. The Brain works best as a concept-integrating device). Good that he invented the Internet before that happened.
Jurisb,
Services- is not a logical development of a country, it is a sign of a decline of the country. japan doesn`t quit manufacturing. Are they underdeveloped?
In fact services are a logical development of economic maturation, when seen as a percentage of economic activity. Like Japan, the US hasn’t quit manufacturing, and retains leadership in several areas. But outside of manufacturing, Japan is underdeveloped in significant ways that keep the standard of living of individuals well below what you’d expect from their GDP. Japan has nowhere near our distributional nor financial markets efficiency, ability to provide high quality housing, nor are they commensurate with our level of economic mobility. The US hasn’t quit growing food either, even though the rest of our economy grew faster. In fact, we were the major generator of the green revolution and still the prodigious producer despite seeing agriculture decline from 80% of the workforce engaged there to 1% in a century. We won’t cease manufacturing, but what we manufacture will change over time.
And your american cheapness of manufacturign is felt ewerywhere- starting from Folgers coffee and endind with paper quality of fashion magazines.
Every culture puts its stamp on what it makes. The US is the progenitor of mass manufacturing, logical for our challenge of creating a new and huge country quickly, and assimilating the flow of people to it. Our whole business ethic has been to make material wealth more accessible to everyone. We created the world’s first majority middle class. Folger’s Coffee makes perfect sense and many people like it. It doesn’t matter that you or I don’t. They sell a lot of coffee for a reason. Japan is a craft culture that came late to mass manufacturing. Same is true for some European countries. European cars have over their history not had the long-term durability of simpler American iron that was made in larger quantities and available less expensively and this was in part due to craft cultures of France, Italy, the UK. Germany is a blend with a true industrial heritage. For us, material access is vital. It’s always amusing to see Europeans come to the US, stunned by how affordable cars are here, along with most other things. Many aspects of material quality of life we Americans take for granted are not within reach of Japanese, Chinese and Europeans of similar economic standing. But there are other compensations. The world isn’t (yet) homogenized. Every culture has its own priorities.
The paper quality of some US magazines is a reflection of greater migration to recycled stock, as well as the faster movement of media audiences from paper to the Web here. Some high end magazines are printed on par with high-end Japanese and European magazines, but not more than the market requires.
American manufacturing is market-driven, not government protected, with a few mild exceptions. Under competitive pressure, every American automotive brand is producing superior product to 5, 10, 20 and 30 years ago. Boeing is the largest aircraft maker and it’s not a government enterprise, unlike its Euro counterpart. But the US’ competitive advantage is in creative output, design, software, imagineering, entertainment, technical services, business services, aerospace engineering and fabrication, energy services, data services, etc. A service economy isn’t just fast food. It is real muscle too. What we need and undoubtedly will have is a continuing mixed economy. I’d like to see American consumers take more responsibility for the viability of the US automotive sector, but overall we’re moving to a higher-order knowledge economy that is more creatively driven than process driven, though the older endeavors will remain big parts of the mix.
Phil
Wow, while I’ve been away, there has been a lot of fascinating conversation about global warming (which does relate to transportation, which does relate to Toyota…)
Maybe I’m just a simple guy with an IQ of 127, but it seems to me that if the simplest explation fits, that is the one to use.
We know that Mars and Uranus AND earth are having “some” warming each. We know that the sun has hotter and cooler “cycles” and that we are in a warming “cycle” right now.
Why are scientists even getting their undies in a bunch about “how the car is destroying the world”? It’s not even science. It’s supposition on their part.
The answer is that a certain number of elitists (Gore, et al) want to keep their standard of living up to where it is and lie / manipulate the “peasants” of the world to keep a lower standard of living so there is more for them. Doesn’t that answer make the most sense?
It’s obviously un-PC to demand that China and India stop growing economically, so these elitist hypocrites want to destroy the middle class in their own nations. So they make up this Bullfeathers to (hopefully) convince us to give up modern civilization and “cut back.”
It’s all fairly simple, and sad.
Phil, you should give a modern Prius an open-minded try. Or a Honda Civic Hybrid. (I sense you prefer Honda – they are equally good cars to Toyota in my mind – perhaps once I’ve had one, I’ll prefer them to Toyota – I’ve only had one Toyota, and that is my 2005 Prius).
I look at efficiency as a positive thing because it’s less wasteful. It’s kind of like the latent engineer deep down in my soul, doesn’t like waste. I work at a place which sells collector car insurance. One of my customers, and owner of a Model A Ford, once told me “my A gets 25 miles per gallon and it is 1928 technology – there is no excuse for modern cars not getting 50 miles per gallon”. I could not disagree – and his comment planted a seed in my mind. Within a few months, the 2004 Prius came out.
Mid-sized instead of subcompact, the new car obtained about 4 miles per gallon better than did the prior Prius, rode better, cost the same, was safer and was a highly flexible hatchback. So, I went to look and was taken by surprise. What I’d considered a “science experiment car” by Toyota had matured into a viable car.
I bought a 2005 Prius after waiting 9 1/2 months, and have steadily obtained exceptional mileage – approximately double the mileage of my wife’s mid-sized V6 car with broadly similar performance, more luggage flexability, and an equally nice ride. The technology is phenomenal. The fact that I’m recapturing some kinetic energy is fantastic, in my book.
You might consider the hybrid cars such as Prius or Civic IMA the earliest iterations of what will become the future of the automobile, or a bridge to the future of the automobile (be it hydrogen fuel cell/hybrid or full battery powered). I certainly do.
Give a Prius a try, with the idea that – why NOT use 1/2 the energy of a broadly similar car to do the same work? Plus the absence of shift-shock (mild as it may be on modern cars) will start to spoil you if you switch to a Prius or Civic. I always feel slightly annoyed in my wife’s Sonata with conventional drive; shift, shift, shift. How archaic! Plus I feel wasteful when I put on the brakes – all that nice energy – being wasted by conversion into heat instead of captured!
Like it or not, folks, Toyota are right – hybrids are going to be in “everything” on wheels within a decade or so. Honda are coming around to this realization, but are less convinced. But they’re convinced enough that I’ll make a prediction.
Companies NOT on the hybrid bandwagon within a decade will fall by the wayside permanently, and hybrid-centric auto makers will rule the day.
Glenn,
I’ve driven a current-production Prius. The car is under-tired, squirrelly in the rain, numb handling, but seems acceptable for a town runabout. Except that’s not my driving pattern. In the past 3 months, I’ve seen three Priuses shiny side down on the freeway. One of these rollovers happened within my line of sight and I stopped. I talked to the driver a bit. He was dumbfounded how quickly he lost control during an evasive hard stop.
If I want a hybrid, there is a perfectly fine one in the form of a Ford Escape Hybrid. It’s made here, so my money stays here and in circulation all the way back to HQ and Ford’s largely US supply chain. I also haven’t seen a single Escape Hy wheels up since they’ve been introduced.
A parallel hybrid is unnecessarily complex. I’m watching GM’s progress on the Chevy Volt and its series hybrid scheme, using a small gasoline engine as a generator to recharge the batteries after the plug-in charge is used up. All the motive power is via electric motors. Simpler, more elegant, sensible. We’ll see if GM can keep it on schedule.
But I agree: Efficiency is desirable. If you reject anthropogenicism in climate change, there are good reasons to mitigate fuel consumption quite apart from global warming. In my next vehicle buying cycle, I am expecting the range of hybrid vehicles to broaden.
Phil
Hi, Phil
Wow! I have never seen or heard of a Prius ass over teakettle, but see SUV’s regularly greasy side up in the ditch here in Michigan, especially in the winter time. I suppose that Toyota needs to add Vehicle Stability Control onto the Prius – mine has it and it only kicked in once in 2 1/2 years (in the winter time). Actually, I was pushing it a bit to see whether it would do anything! I guess I’m a pretty conservative driver most of the time. My boy racer days are long done.
I was impressed with the Civic hybrid, but this car can’t (yet) be had with VSC. I suppose the center of gravity is somewhat lower than the Prius, and the handling is probably better, which compensates.
Good luck with the Escape hybrid if you buy one. I haven’t spoken to anyone with one, but have not read or heard of any horror stories. Have two colleagues with Highlander hybrids, spoke to the one (who came to me for advice since we’re friends and also since she knows I bought a Prius) and she now wants a Prius instead of her Highlander hybrid. (Her decision after having the Highlander for a year or so).
I agree that GM’s Volt is not necessarily the best idea. Toyota had to spend their OWN money – not taxpayer money (Clinton gave away tons of money to the then big 3 to develop hybrids – but was too busy getting hummers to think of forcing their hand and then demanding they build them!) My point is – Toyota spend their OWN MONEY in developing a hybrid – as did Honda – and these two systems seem to be the most logical at this point in our technological evolution. Nothing like using your own dough-ray-me to bring clarity to thought, is there?
Cobra213, with regards to the global CO2 saturation experiment, we do not run a version of that experiment every time a volcano erupts. Volcanos release little CO2 compared to the masses of gases and dust they emit that are believed to contribute to cooling:
SDSU on Volcanoes
As to the climate scientists who seem to be telling you, privately, that they have some sort of reservations about the solidity of the science, I guess experiences differ. The people I’ve talked to who have knowledge in this field are split between, “We’re so screwed” and “people will hem and haw until it’s too late and then we’ll be so screwed.” They express no reservations about the solidity of the science at all.
Finally, I don’t see why you’ve never been impressed by Toyota. Toyota has built several vehicles that impress me. The Prius, for a start. Excellent fuel economy through remarkable technical innovation (regenerative braking! A/C entirely electrical! Coolant siphoned into a thermos when not operating!). More remarkably, in spite of its complexity, it offers good reliability. You can watch Chevy’s Volt program all you like but Toyota, Honda and even Ford have good parallel hybrid vehicles on the road, NOW, at reasonable prices.
Luther, it is certainly true that science is not a popularity contest. However, I look to people trained in the field to evaluate the work of their colleagues (which they do) and to say, “yes, your theory is clear; yes, your evidence makes sense; yes, your evidence supports your theory” or to punch holes in their colleagues’ work (while there’s not as much glory in that, it’s probably more fun and less work).
If a panel of 2500 scientists can be gathered to hammer out a broad agreement on climate, I’m going to respect their work and take notice.
The only populatiry contest or cult of personality revolves around Al Gore – specificially fuelled by the reactions of people who hate Al Gore and reject the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming because of their hate of Al Gore or fear the policy implications of recognizing Anthropogenic Global Warming an, so, hate Al Gore for bringing it to people’s attention. People spend an inordinate amount of time cutting down Al Gore.
And, so what? Al Gore isn’t a climatologist. Al Gore did not discover the existence of greenhouse gasses, nor could he compute the energy balance of the atmosphere with different concentrations of GHGs. Al Gore’s contribution has been to bring considerable attention to the work of people who research GHGs and climate and to shine a spotlight on a potential problem. Al has never claimed to be a climatologist – or even a scientist – and he always refers to the work of others. He listens to experts and respects them.
To point out that Al Gore’s electric bill is large or that Al Gore has ridden in a jet tells me nothing about the science.
Al Gore can commute to Cannes by private jet or a team of dolphins harnessed to a rowboat; either way I don’t care about Al Gore and, when it comes to the science involved in Global Warming, neither does practically anybody else. Personally, I had heard about GHGs and the potential for anthropogenic global warming long before I even heard of Al Gore.
And, if your “before he invented the Internet” was meant to be ironic, that would be inappropriate. Al Gore never claimed to invent the Internet. He did say he took the initiative to create it, from the foundation of work being done for DARPA and that is entirely true and Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf both agree to this.
And, finally, Luther, I’ll thank you to stop using the phrase “maggot classes” as what appears to be a reference to government workers. I know some; some are friends or the children of friends and most of them are hard working, creative and thoughtful. Like any other group, some are not; that’s the luck of the draw. All work at tasks that our elected representatives have, collectively, decided is work worth doing and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing but dignity in that.
Glenn,
I think you must have misread my prior post. I think GM’s intent to build the Chevy Volt as a series hybrid is a much better idea than current parallel hybrids. You can use a small liquid fuel engine turning at a constant speed when necessary, to simply charge the batteries as the plug in charge is depleted.
My impression of the Prius is that its driving characteristic is less benign than merely numb, and just a bit short of evil-handling. You can’t get in trouble as quickly as in, say, a ’70s Jeep CJ5 (that was the short wheelbase) with the V8 option and bald tires, but it’s more likely in a crisis to leave you suspended by your seatbelt than an Impala, Taurus or a Fusion.
Toyota is subsidized by the Japanese government in myriad ways. I see no indication that the Volt’s development has been financed by anything other than GM’s own, scarce, funds.
Ford, by the way, also spent their own money developing its hybrid powertrain, but that doesn’t intrinsically make a design better. Overall, I think the series hybrid reflects much clearer thinking for building two-technology vehicle. And I’ll anticipate push-back about Ford licensing some hybrid technology from Toyota: What has been lost by the anti-Detroit media, from the initial reporting on that story, is that the agreement was a license swap. The two companies developed their technologies independently, but gravitated to similar implementations. The two companies were bound to sue, but cooler heads prevailed and they negotiated a licensing swap instead.
Phil
Kixstart,
Cobra213, with regards to the global CO2 saturation experiment, we do not run a version of that experiment every time a volcano erupts. Volcanos release little CO2 compared to the masses of gases and dust they emit that are believed to contribute to cooling:
Well, what I actually said was “that experiment gets run for us every time there is a spike in volcanic activity.” I didn’t say, “every time a volcano erupts. Volcanoes spew some CO2, but they also frequently start massive fires, which does release carbon. More to the point, they release something much more greenhousey — methane. Yes, volcanic activity also obscures some radiation due to increased dust. My point was that lots of events alter the composition of the atmosphere, not just us. A spike in the termite population will too. It’s a mix within a window, not static in its precision.
Your personal contact with climate-related and atmospheric scientists seems to be different from mine. Can’t comment on that.
Al Gore’s contribution to this has been to apply demagoguery and politics to what ought to be an investigation. I think the science will continue to be debated, and should. But it is premature to move the issue into the political arena. The idea of anthropogenic global warming is in the political arena propelled primarily by people who made up their minds without evidence, because they see that if they can induce enough fear and panic, they can move public support in the direction of their prior agendas. The greens have hated the car for decades. Public policy mavens have been mass transit darlings. Both became rabid anthropogenics at the first suggestion of observable phenomena, because they saw the idea as key to ramping political sentiment. Europe looks for any way it can to slow American economic progress. Most content generators in media dislike the car as well, and their business model and personal egos demand crises, so this is an easy way to create a few and keep feeding them. Much of the Left has ongoing guilt about the success of capitalist societies, so they see anthropogenicsm in climate change as a way to throttle mass personal freedom, markets and materialism. Not to mention they hate the fact that the mainstream culture ignores them.
The demagoguery in “An Inconvenient Truth” is unconscionable. The resulting premature politicization has regulation-minded governments all over the world entertaining all sorts of wacky ideas that will impoverish many, truncate improvements to quality of life in many poor areas, drive investments into dead-ends and away from productive use, and — most likely — to no affect at all on the intended objective.
If you believe man’s activities cause climate change, then pin that belief to immediate beneficial action. Planning on revamping the transportation fleet — and human habits — over the next 30 years is not a good bet IF you actually believe it’s us and it’s urgent. This is the smoking gun of insincerity (or superficiality) among anthropogenics. If you really think we have to slash carbon, start with the greatest impact the soonest: sequestering at fixed location power plants. Immediately start planting 1 billion trees. Advocate nuclear power. Let’s build solar collection farms on vast tracts in the dry southwest. Get wave power online. More solar. Stop building big houses. You’re really a believer? Dismantle or close off any portion of your house over 2,500 s.f. We can solve carbon release faster if we start with things we can do at fixed locations. Mobility is essential to prosperity. It’s the attack on the private automobile that blows the credibility of anthropogenics in the political arena, for that is the nexus of regulation, ideology, agenda, manipulation and insincerity. It’s also the subject over which you’re most inclined to be faced with a “the debate is over” mindset, disconnect between urgency and solutions proposed, and willingness to leave poor people behind.
There has been a lot of data generated by climate investigation, but the rush to judgment is unwarranted, and the parties rushing to judgment are proving willfully hardheaded about reconsidering their interpretations of prior data, as new data that casts doubt becomes known. Demagoguery does work all too often, but it’s not credibility-enhancing. Al Gore and people like him have destroyed any chance of an intellectually-honest investigation into cause of climate change, and concomitantly rational human action, if any is needed.
Phil
Well, obviously, everyone’s entitled to their opinions, but the Touring Edition of the Prius is a tad more “able” in the handling department than is the “standard” version.
Here’s an interesting road test (page 2) which talks about the Touring Edition handling.
http://alternativefuels.about.com/od/vehiclereviews/fr/07ToyotaPrius_2.htm
I’ve noticed the Prius (non-Touring edition) is a little blown around in 25+ mph side-winds, but this is easily explained.
Relatively soft suspension. Extremely aerodynamic (don’t know why but I ‘ve found in the past that very aerodynamic cars don’t care for side winds – the Prius is no exception). Light weight. Relatively high side profile.
Cobra213, volcanic spike or no – same difference. Warming GHGs are overwhelmed by cooling effects (principally dust and the sulfur compounds).
As to demagoguery and Al Gore, it is you who is looking at a scientific problem through a political lens.
If one believes the problem is considerable, why should one not speak out about the problem now? Al’s actions with regards to AGW would be the same whether he was running for office using AGW as his issue or seriously concerned about the problem. Since I think the problem’s serious, I don’t care what Al’s motives are. I’d be concerned with or without Al’s involvement. I’m happy that some others ARE concerned because of Al’s involvement. People who dislike Al will choose to believe Al is doing this solely for political gain (since he gets no press for anything else and this is far from a done deal in public opinion, it’s hard to see how Al will ride this to the White House, nor can I see where his ego needs the gratification, he’s already won the popular vote once).
More pressingly, even if we begin to cut emissions dramatically, total atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise for some years. The crisis is upon us now. Why would we wait 10 years to start thinking about what we might do to combat the last 10 years of GHG increases? We probably should have done something about this years ago.
If we decided to swap all coal plants for nukes – how many years before the first nuke comes on-line? How many nukes can be online in the next year after that? And the next? How long before the last coal plant is closed? How fast could we ramp up nuke production? Or nuclear fuel production?
In fact, some of the reports I’ve looked at suggest really mundane things we might to do mitigate GHG increases, especially with methane, which climate scientists are sometimes accused of ignoring. None of the recommendations even seem particularly onerous (like sequestering methane at landfills and we could then burn it to turn it into a less potent GHG – CO2).
The transit aspect of CO2 reduction policy has less to do with guilt or a conspiracy to destroy the American way of life than with the fact that SUVs and cars are simply some of the low-hanging fruit. If we can encourage people to car-pool, use mass-transit or just switch to a smaller vehicle, we get CO2 savings the first year – the first minute. In fact, conservation savings are often like that. Fluorescent lights, more efficient furnaces, more insulation, they all have an impact today and without a long-term compromise in life-style (for the most part – savings in the long run).
It’s really a pity to think of coercing people into reducing the size of their car or car-pooling because they’ll save money doing it! Go look at Edmunds; SUVs cost on the order of a buck a mile; a Prius is about half that. A casual glance out the window at the rush-hour freeway suggests where we might get some emissios savings. Car-pools are the exception, not the rule and SUVs and pickups are usually heavily burdened by the driver, his cell-phone and, maybe, his lunch. 5000 lbs or more for 200 lbs of payload? What a waste.
Need I point out that a significant, immediate reduction in the demand for oil would also cause a drop in the price of oil? This reduces our trade deficit and reduces the amount of money we’re shoveling into the hands of despots and terrorists.
Now, I don’t know where you get the idea that Leftists are troubled by our material wealth and consequently determined to destroy it. I’m active in the local Democratic Party and I don’t know anybody like that. Maybe you should meet some actual liberals and see what they’re really like.
I see you’ve got the old walk-the-walk objection. No one like this when it involves the word, “chickenhawk,” of course.
I live in an 1800SF house and I commute three miles (when the weather’s good enough, I bike or walk). We bought a car in 1986 and put less than 75K miles on it in 18 years. Yes, we have had other cars in the interim, also retired with low miles. No SUVs, just some reasonably-sized car (we have a minivan).
Could we have more? Yes, actually, we’re pretty well off. However, I wouldn’t move. My short commute has meant more time with the children (I could even go have lunch with them in the school cafeteria from time to time, when they were little and it was still cool to have Dad come in and eat school food, this fades after 4th grade).
Could everybody else live this way? Certainly not in the foreseeable future; sprawl is a fact of life, we just have to find ways to mitigate its effects. Maybe we must reduce it in the future. To survive.
Kixstart,
Looking at the political consequences of manufacturing crisis from willfully selective science is not demagoguery, it’s just analysis of what happens when an agenda is advanced by conjecture disguised as science. It’s the non-rational frothing, panic-inducing alarmism that constitutes the demagoguery. We all have to live in the political world, and the economic consequences of bad politics, too. Al Gore’s demagoguery is in his sensationalism, selective use of facts, non-sequitur assembly of data, irrational leaps, and omission of countervailing information that undermines his demagoguery. “Truth” rattles through much of the inventory of propaganda techniques used by Nazis, Facists, Yellow Journalists, and Communists of yore. Gore should be ashamed of himself. More to the point, he is self-aware after 2000 that he is polarizing. If Al Gore really cared about convincing people, he should have hired a more neutral presenter for his film, and constructed a more credible case. But no. His ego, and his hope the topic could return him to relevance mandated otherwise.
By the way, I say this as a lifelong Democrat who has been active in the party. Many Democrats are not Leftists. When I comment on the Left, I am not by way of extension commenting on Democrats as a whole. But some, even many, Democrats will be found in that net.
You believe “the crisis is among us now.” I, and many others, do not. Demagoguery, and blatantly false declaration that “the debate is over” are being used to try to browbeat the unconvinced into accepting an action agenda that we don’t believe is necessary, that we think is harmful, and that doesn’t make sense as the first response if you actually do believe climate change is anthropogenic.
SUVs, cars, trucks are not the low-hanging fruit if you believe carbon emissions must be mitigated now. Sequestering carbon from fixed location plants can be undertaken now. If the political energy expended on the false impact of transportation regulation were instead redirected to giving power companies incentives and subsidies to immediately engineer sequestering, you’d make far more rapid progress on your agenda to mitigate human carbon contribution to atmospheric content.
Carpool lanes has been shown in numerous studies, including over the last 15 years in the San Francisco Bay area, to boost emissions of all types, reduce actual incidence of carpooling behavior and increase congestion, which reduces overall fuel economy. And in a matrixed society, it doesn’t work for most people. And let’s understand that if carpooling were boosted, the 8 passenger SUV could be a nicely efficient vehicle.
1990s SUVs and trucks will be in the auto fleet for the next two decades. Changing the fleet is the slow road to you vaunted carbon reduction. It’s going to happen anyway, because every generation of vehicle, type to type, is more efficient, and new technologies will accelerate that trend. The market will be making the adjustment for you. It doesn’t need premature intervention and the unintended consequences. There is also no domestic benefit whatsoever to compounding the problems of US automakers who have a bigger transition to make. There is only harm in this. The car is already on its way toward reduced, and eventually benign, carbon contribution.
As I have written consistently, there are good reasons to burn less oil, including economic and reduced levels of real pollutants. But we can move power plants off oil, move home heating off oil. Bank carbon and plant trees. Liquid fuels are for the forseeable future needed for mobility. Mobility is the last place to target, for mobility is essential to economic prosperity, economic freedom and occupational choice. If people want to shift to smaller, less fuel-consumptive vehicles for their own reasons, great. The price of fuel will move some in that direction. We don’t need the regulators to force us down a path before the engineering, and individual preferences, catch up.
You are living your convictions, so I take seriously that you are convinced climate change is anthropogenic, and that you believe this requires individual action. So we disagree on the debated topic, but I respect your position. As a person of profile, I don’t have the same respect for Al Gore (nor most celebrity sympathizers to his position), as he does not have the personal follow-through.
As an automotive aficionado, I’d love to see fewer pickups and SUVs on the road, for the same reason I despised the rise of the van in the 1970s. But frankly, neither I nor anyone else knows where to draw the line regarding whose need is legitimate, and whose is vain. I do know, however, that many people who have trucks can also afford a second small car, but if everyone indulged that, there is environmental cost to the additional manufacturing. But the market, including changing psychology and tastes, eventually pared the full-size van market back to its natural core, and the same will happen to SUVs and pickups. If not, it will be because those vehicles are becoming efficient enough for the difference between them and a car not to matter to the consumer.
If the US builds carbon sequestering at fixed sites now, we can use coal to reduce oil demand while we develop solar and bring modern nuclear online. If the market is allowed to work, technology will reduce the impact of private transit at the rate it can. I have to laugh at politicians who erect a wall in 2020, with a steep slope to climb after that, patting themselves on the back that they’ve done something constructive. Again, stupid response spurred by demagoguery and informed by the classic state of ignorance of the media politician.
Already, a group of Chinese climatologists have modeled and made the case that global cooling is our looming threat:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N3/C1.jsp
I can’t wait to see how Gore, Pelosi, Clinton, et al, and the anthropogenic alarmists spin their response to that, if a trend line of data comes to support the idea.
Phil
Cobra213, I’m in 100% agreement with you on carpool lanes.
Outside of that, I appreciate your comments and I read the Chinese paper (not the CO2Science summary) with interest but I’m not in danger of turning into an AGW skeptic. Shall we agree that it will be interesting to see if the Chinese projection works out?
For anyone interested, have a read – here
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=c5e16731-3c64-481c-9a36-d702baea2a42
This article came from a reference, here
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57043
Glenn,
Obviously, I’m with these guys. The first article’s quoted content is consistent with the private conversations I referred to in earlier posts. The second article amply illustrates how badly liberal politics degrades science until it decomposes into a form of religion, with the usual accomplices of dogma, cencorship, character assassination and retribution. Not that the Right isn’t guilty of the same thing on other issues, but it always seems to be a more poisoned and infected with totalitarian insistence on the Left.
Phil