I was just in the Motor City this week where I not only visited Ford's Michigan Proving Grounds and Science Labs, but test drove a Focus fuel cell car, at about $1 million a copy. But the highlight of the trip was when I test drove Wavecrest Labs (www.wavecrestlabs.com) battery-powered smart coupe (imported from Europe). They removed the gasoline engine and replaced it with NiMH batteries and a controller unit. The electric motors are in the wheel hubs.
Talk about a ride! I thought I was putting the car through its paces until my host, the Wavecrest engineer in charge of the computer control system that manages the torque of the motors, got behind the wheel. He's an amateur race car driver and a former Ford engineer. It was a truly white knuckle experience and this car isn't even up to its full potential yet.
I asked him, after my heart rate returned to normal, why he and his colleagues left car companies like Ford, GM and Chrysler to work for a small start-up. He told me that there's a deep mode of depression around Detroit, where sliding market shares and a lack of vision, has forced the termination of many promising programs. Of the eight hybrid electric programs announced by the majors in 2001, six have been canceled.
The Wavecrest engineer told me that he's excited to finally work on such a groundbreaking project, and so are the other people working at the company.
It's clear that with the exception of Ford and its Escape Hybrid program, that the majors have lost the initiative and it will take a miracle for them to regain it. There's lots of talent there, but they are being stifled by a 10 day mentality, as an old Detroit hand explained to me over a 4 hour dinner just a mile from the Pistons/LA game.
He said that the majors are driven by their 10-day sales figures, unlike the Japanese who are driven by JAMA -- a government-controlled industry group that can take a far longer perspective on sales.
Until US carmakers can take a longer view, Toyota will continue to dominate in advanced vehicle technology. That might be a pretty broad generalization, but it seems to explain much about the malaise in Motor City.
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