All that aside, I can’t get over the numbers: $39.5 BILLION! $30B from the American government and $9.5B from the Canadian government is going to GM. That is a ridiculous amount of money! In a very anti-capitalist move, these governments are taking over a crippled business that is $172 Billion in debt. Why? Why is it so important that GM be saved? They made poor business decisions that led them to this mess, why should the government be bailing them out?

The employees? GM employs 243,000 people. That is a lot of people! GM employees more people than all of the people who lost their jobs in Ontario since October 2008 (234,000). If all of these people lost their jobs on the same day, tough times would certainly fall for many, concentrated in particular regions of the Canada and the US. Times are already hard, GM going under would definitely make times much harder.

But, imagine this: $39.5 Billion divided by 243,000 is $162,551 per GM employee. What if all of that money was not to go to saving a dying relic from another time, but it went to programs, grants and loans for education, re-training and small businesses. What if it went to the individual employees that stand to lose their jobs, in ways that encourage these individuals to get creative, better themselves, and find something productive to do. What potentials could these individuals realize if they were given such opportunities?

It saddens me to realize, we will likely never know.

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• Passing on Innovation Led to Bankruptcy for an American Icon?

Almost prophetically the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? was broadcast on TV the night before GM officially filled for bankruptcy. The documentary details the story of the EV1, GM's electric car that was released in 1996. While GM did produce the EV1, they did little else to bring the innovative car to the market place. There was little or no promotion.  They didn't let people buy the EV1, leasing was the only option to procure the vehicle. They even put A-list celebrities such as Mel Gibson through lengthy questionnaires prior to letting them lease an EV1. in 1999 when GM stopped production of the EV1, they pulled all of the EV1s on the road and destroyed them, an action that was made possible by their lease only policy.

GM put an inferior battery in the first edition of the EV1, even though the owned a controlling interest in a company that had a patent for a  far superior battery invented by Stan Oshinsky . Sadly GM only released 200 second generation EV1's that included the superior battery, and later GM sold it's shares to Cheveron/Texaco who were free to suppress the innovative technology.

When GM squashed the EV1 they choose greed over innovation. This was a massive mistake. Our world is riddled with massive problems, and GM had a solution to a hand-full of them, and tossed it in the garbage, to the detriment of the company's profits,  it's some 250,000 American  employees, and most importantly the greater good. The EV1 was positioned to help with:

• The pollution problem
  

  LA Smog

• Dependence on foreign oil
  

  Desert Storm

• Rising gas prices harming industry and families
  

  Rising gas prices

Innovation should not be squandered! Google did not earn $22 billion last year because they choose to ignore innovation. Innovation brings greater wealth than clinging on to old ideas ever will. Seems to me that GM learned this the hard way... well, lets hope they have learned this!

In the documentary Wally E. Rippel, a research engineer, points out that there is still about a trillion barrels of oil in the earth. "At $100 a barrel, that's $100 trillion of business left in the ground". The fat cat oil companies have so much to gain from prohibiting new technologies from taking over our current consuption of oil and gas, and they have the power to make it happen. Their pressure on the government, and the car companies, including GM, ensured that the EV1 would not survive. Under these pressures GM chose the gas gusseling Hummer over the EV1. Ironically now, GM owes over $1 million for every Hummer on the road.

There are many lessons to be learned here. Lessons that are not new. Lessons that we all learned back in grade school from Dr. Seuss and Sesame Street. Mainly: greed does not pay in the long run.  Society and technology will continue to innovate and progress as we move into the future, because it has to.  Our population is growing, and our resources are finite. We have to come up with innovative ideas to survive in the long run. Setbacks such as the demise of the EV1 only slow progress and innovation, to the determent of our future generations. I hope the governments inheriting the remains of the once mighty American company will have the foresight and wisdom to remove this hindrance on progress and revive the Electric Vehicle project.

You can watch all of Who Killed the Electric Car? for free on youtube in 10 parts, starting with the first here:

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• A little GM math