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Comment It's not about ability it about contract standards (Score 1) 431

Companies like Apple source from China but they have extremely rigorous specifications and quality control processes. They can afford to reject batches of output that don't meet their standards. Chinese companies aren't beholden to OTHER PEOPLE's requirements so they are free to churn out cars of any quality they like. Whereas their Chinese customers may be happy to be able to purchase a crummy car that looks nice and falls apart, that might not fly in the US. It could, if they want to displace GM but they can only do that but undercutting massively the price. Moreover EVERY car company has understood for decades that they have to make cars WHERE they sell them if they plan on making large numbers of cars. Volvo has always been a small company. So again, they can afford to make a small number of units and ship them.

It's the service, parts and dealership network that will matter. If they fall apart it's one thing, if they fall apart and you can't get them repaired for 6 months because there's no parts, that's another.

Comment Economic break even point is too far off (Score 1) 377

The added cost pushes the economic break even point past the effective product life once you factor in the average additional cost of $4,000 at 140K miles to replace the battery pack, which is what many units are experiencing. Moreover there are a few all gas or all diesel cars out there just as small that can get 45-50mpg so the difference in economic value is even more stark.

Plug ins - aka all electric cars of course suffer from the same problem. For example Smart Car makes a small number of all electrics. They cost nearly $26,000. And contrary to their claims, the tax credit in most states is $2,000 not $7,500. And my state charges an extra $100 just to register the car. They're still debating how to screw owners into paying an additional tax to cover the gas tax. And so it goes.......

Comment Well when this goes toes up (Score 1) 158

AT&T and Verizon can pick over the corpse. That's a near certainty. Sprint will be $54 billion in debt with a shrinking customer base and nothing but the same disasters on the horizon of pretending to 'integrate' two absolutely incompatible networks. It's as if Sprint is run by the Federal government or the Soviet Union.

Comment So they win then (Score 1) 234

You've given them what they want. I have no doubt that IBM and others are fully moving to the point where there are zero US employees except for the top layers of management. US employment for IBM is somewhere under 85,000 vs 400,000 (including contractors) world wide. There are more IBM'rs in India than any other country. The largest IBM sites are in India.

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