Could the lender insist that Auto industry bailout money be used to Re-design, and build a car for the future?

Question

Canada has an extensive auto industry, one of the historic mainstays of the economy after natural resources. Fuel prices will eventually increase again -- one 'incident' in the Persian gulf could boot up energy prices. With this in mind, it seems sensible that future auto design should focus on fuel efficiency. Canada is a leader (or at least was) in R&D, and home to many cutting edge techno-industries (or at least was...). Why not design a rustproof, high efficiency flex fuel car.
Retooling would cost a fortune, but bailouts ain't cheap either. What do you think?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

This is so easy, but so few people want to change...the carmakers already know how to make cars that run on natural gas, and they have for years. I own 3 of them; 2 made by Ford in 1999 and 1998, and 1 made by Dodge in 1996. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful in North America (I paid 79 cents a gallon here in Utah last week), plus it's cleaner for the environment, too. Hey, they know how to make them in Canada, too, at a place called GFI. Sorry, got no more details than that regarding GFI. Honda makes the Civic GX right now, but doesn't sell many. The problem is that there aren't many places to fill up right now, and you can't go all the way across the country on natural gas yet. It actually wouldn't be all that difficult to put in natural gas pumps, because there are pipelines all over the country already (many homes are heated by natural gas) and it's available. We would need some incentives to get it going more quickly - tax credits subsidies, etc. It CAN be done! Probably won't move forward until gasoline goes sky high again, but hey, it's out there and proven to work. It's a great idea to lean on the automakers a bit to move things along if they want to stay in business. I hope it happens...

Source(s):

www.NGVamerica.org
www.cngprices.com

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

LNG sounds promising. We do have lots of the stuff. Does sub zero weather pose a problem ?
This is a problem with propane.

Answer 2

Problem with cars of the future is getting people to buy them.
Not everyones car needs are the same.