At long last, car manufacturers are seemingly running out of excuses and being forced to admit that it's not PRODUCTIVITY but the PRODUCT that's the problem. As one of your Dagenham interviewees pointed out, 'overcapacity' simply means that insufficient Europeans are attracted by the PRODUCT on offer. Could someone at Dagenham - or Longbridge for that matter - please tell us why, for example, the latest generation of long-range, fast and low maintenance alternatives to the Internal Combustion Engine are still so resolutely being given the King Canute treatment here in green-minded and overtaxed Europe?
ZERO EMISSION, ZERO-PETROL-TAX electric cars like the 120 mile-per-charge Nissan Altra, the 150 mile-per-charge GM EV1 and , oh yes, the electric version of Tony Blair's Chrysler Voyager 'people carrier' ( how appropriate...) are currently only being produced, publicised and driven in the USA where, perversely, low petrol prices, still less than a pound a gallon, mean that demand is fairly subdued.
But let's do the 'math' this side of the pond with petrol here at roughly 3 times the US price-levels: it costs around £1.50 to put a 120 mile charge into these 80-90 mile-per-hour family-sized electric cars - compared to the cost of around four gallons of petrol this offers a saving of around 10-15 pounds for every 100 miles driven. So why I wonder - but frankly NOT MUCH - do we have this apparent conspiracy of silence? Isn't it about time carmakers, politicians and, above all, the media started talking urgently about these 21st Century alternatives to that Infernal relic of the Industrial Age - the Internal Combustion Engine? Yes, we are indeed looking for a DIFFERENT PRODUCT!!!
(Footnote/update April 25th: according to this week's headlines, Ford/Dagenham maybe about to close completely. As always all the (repeatedly discredited) industry experts continue to blame everything and everyone except the product and themselves...)