Zane Safrit

Now it's tight credit markets hurting US car sales

Add tight credit to the lists of reasons why American car makers are failing.  So, let's sum up the reasons why American car makers are failing:

* employee health care costs

* employee pension costs

* tight credit markets

Now, the first two weren't issues when cars were being sold. So, by default, they can't be issues when cars stop being sold.

Tight credit markets aren't hampering foreign car makers. Foreign car sales in February either fell half as much as American car sales or rose to record heights. For those that fell, Toyota, it's on the heels of 3 straight record setting years of growth, unlike American car makers whose records of sales the last 3 years have, ahem, been in the other direction.

Nor do car buyers today ask about pension and health care costs of the car makers' employees. No. They ask about...mileage and quality. It can't be tax credits. Hybrids, all made by foreign car manufacturers until this year, no longer receive that pitiful tax credit of 2%. However, SUVs, if used for a business, can receive immediate tax credits of up to 80% of the purchase price.

And they still don't sell.

Maybe, just maybe, the real reason American car makers sell fewer and fewer cars is they make more and more cars that fewer and fewer Americans want to buy.

Update: Sales of the smallest cars are up 33%; sales of SUVs are down 29% (even with the huge tax credits, possible). USAToday.

GM's 20-MPG hybrids aren't getting any traction.

General Motors and Chrysler are betting that their 5,500-pound, eight-seat S.U.V.’s — long the scourge of environmentalists — can be reformed as hybrid models, albeit ones getting 20 miles to the gallon.

Giving a four-wheel drive Tahoe a gas-electric hybrid engine raises fuel economy for city driving to 20 miles a gallon from 14.

“To this point, the G.M. hybrids aren’t getting any traction at all,” said Mike Omotoso, a senior manager with the research firm J. D. Power & Associates.

Where do you start with a reply?

Here's one:

Norway's Think Global AS, plans to sell here in the US, an electric car that gets 110 MPG. - Online WSJ. Link from Newsgang.

GM can't get there from here:

"We cannot get to 35 miles per gallon with anything resembling the current product portfolio, or with anything resembling current technology," said GM (GM) Vice-Chairman Robert Lutz. -BusinessWeek

Take your turn at bat

You can never hit a home run if you don't take your turn at bat. Better to go down swinging, than sit in the clubhouse. - Me.

Checkered by failure...

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919) 

Just breathe...

You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another. Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, What I Know For Sure, January 2004

Increasing your chances for sales success

Each failure to sell will increase your chances for success at your next attempt. - Og Mandino

Creativity in the long term

Innovation drives entrepreneurial successes. Small business owners crave people who can think creatively. But right now, your public school system is slowly removing every creative program from its curriculum. They have to, because creativity does not fit into the multiple choice standardized test that spells life or death for their funding.

What's the solution? A complete remake of our basic culture and education system to put creativity back into our society. ETA: 30 years. I'm game. Are you?

That's the stated goal of the Northwestern Creativity Project, my local incarnation of the Oklahoma Creativity Project. They gave the estimate of 30 years to reach that goal. There's also a World Creativity Forum, so I'm sure you have a parallel group in your area. We're working together to build events that promote creative thinking. Since we happen to be a bunch of camera nuts, we're doing a photography workshop first.

What does a photography workshop have to do with building a better workforce? It has to do with thinking long term. Our key speaker, Mike Klemme, explained it this way:

I am, in fact working on a "creativity workshop" in Tulsa that will be marketed to Europeans. We will be bringing in budding photographers/CEO's etc. and teach them how to "see" with a camera and to expand their creative thinking abilities. ... I would like to "practice" this format at your event if possible by showing how to use the camera to see things differently and how that ties into entrepreneurism and the ability to find opportunities by looking at things from all angles.

While that's a great explanation (and an idea I support) photography isn't the key here. The key is to get involved in some project, any project, promoting creative thinking in your community. I'm betting the payoff is a lot shorter than 30 years.

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- Guest Author: Becky McCray writes about small business and rural issues at Small Biz Survival, based on her own success and failures.

Be comfortable being misunderstood

Bezos: When we pioneered customer reviews, it was incredibly controversial. I got letters from publishers saying, "You don't understand your business. You make money when you sell things. Take down those negative customer reviews." We’ve never done anything of real value that wasn't at least a little bit controversial when we did it. But if you want to be a pioneer, you have to be comfortable being misunderstood. From the interview: Reading the E-Leaves with Amazon's Bezos.

I think he's on to something. Amazon's revenue grew 38% last year.

Make Rail Fun; Make Rail Green

From Annie Mole's blog about London's Underground Tube Blog:

If being green is rewarded with playfulness, fun, empowerment and some kind of status for doing it and if we see simple little things that we can all do, I think green initiatives will have a much greater chance of success.

You'll see from my cube that I wondered if anyone was talking to the rail companies and TfL about all this. How could people who didn't use the Tube be encouraged to use it when we all know what a hot smelly rubbish and overcrowded form of transport it is? Could my Oystercard usage give me discounts off my residents permit parking or car tax / MOT?

I have no idea what an Oystercard or MOT is. Still the point is universal. Make it a wow experience to go green. Make it fun, add a swing at Amtrak stations, Lord knows on Train 6, the San Francisco Zephyr, the delays could be spent doing something fun. Add a presentation in the club car on how each passenger is reducing their carbon footprint, make them proud, create some status for their role as passengers in lowering carbon emissions. Give 'em a handout or badge or something to show their friends how cool they are for riding Amtrak, being green and reducing their carbon footprint.

I blogged that Rail is the Future in coming decades. But the driver for that growth was negative: rising gas prices, rising air fares, horribly unpleasant air travel experiences. Why not incorporate some positive motivators for going green?

You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. They will drink if it tastes good. Same with going green. You can bring us to look at  measures of carbon footprints and dire predictions for our future. Or you can make going green in our personal lives an adventure, a wow, personally rewarding, an experience we can share with others...

Guest Author: Becky McCray

This makes me very happy.

More than happy, really, it makes me delighted to introduce you to the guest author, Becky McCray.

Ever since I met her, I've been a big fan of Becky McCray  and what she's doing with her blog Small Biz Survival. I'm trying to be concise, here. But her voice is authentic, her care and passion for small business and for small towns and for rural economies is real and strong and dedicated. She's an excellent writer. She's a risk-taker. And she's one of the rare people who meld the obsessions and technologies of web 2.0/3.0/blogosphere with the day-to-day challenges of growing a small business, growing it in a small town and growing it in a rural area. She's got a great big heart. Her fans are numerous. And if that's not enough...when she's not blogging and running her own retail business, she's out fixing fences and fence posts on her cattle ranch. For me, that's near the ultimate for bridging worlds. And she does it smoothly and smartly every day, every blog post, every tweet.

Her first guest post is today: Creativity in the Long Term. Here's how she ends it:

The key is to get involved in some project, any project, promoting creative thinking in your community. I'm betting the payoff is a lot shorter than 30 years.

See. She's smart, articulate, has the long-term vision and remains practical: Get involved in some project...

I hope you enjoy her posts as much as I do. And don't wait for her posts here. Go read and subscribe to Small Biz Survival.

10 More Reasons Why Twitter's Going to Grow

Despite some pains of growth, Twitter's going to continue to grow. Here's Robin Bloor's post 10 Reasons Why Twitter Rocks. I'd have to agree.