Los coches ecológicos
Por Joan Vila, profesor de Energía de la UdG (EL PERIÓDICO, 29/12/08):
La crisis de la economía ha puesto sobre la mesa la importancia del coche eléctrico. El ministro Miguel Sebastián tiene en mente el desarrollo del coche eléctrico en España y aprovecha el hecho de tener que ayudar al sector del automóvil para introducir el proyecto.
Pese a que el precio del petróleo sigue bajando, las tensiones en el mercado de los combustibles volve- rán a aflorar cuando la economía mundial se recupere. Por otra parte, la salida de la crisis actual se hará con parámetros de ahorro y trabajo, lejos…
When the Cars Go Away
By Bill McGraw, a columnist for The Detroit Free Press (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 13/12/08):
This week, as Washington has tried to decide whether to rescue the automobile industry, Americans have wondered what it looks like when a giant automobile company goes under. The answer can be found in Detroit.
In the summer of 1956, the once-mighty Packard Motor Car Company closed its doors. Its headquarters and chief production complex still stand here, though, and their slowly decaying remains serve as a symbol for the fall of American manufacturing in general and the degradation of the auto industry in particular. The Packard plant…
A Bridge Detroit Needs
By Carlos M. Gutierrez, US secretary of commerce (THE WASHINGTON POST, 11/12/08):
Congress is debating the future of the American automobile industry. With our economy in crisis, this is not a time for ideology; it’s a time for pragmatism and common sense. Amid daunting job losses and unprecedented fiscal challenges, the economy cannot sustain a body blow to one of America’s most significant industries without giving it a chance to restructure.
The Big Three automakers directly employ nearly 250,000 Americans. Overall, the industry accounts for roughly 5 million jobs. The failure of the U.S. auto industry would have ramifications far beyond Michigan;…
‘Match point’ salvado en Nissan
Por José Antonio Bueno, socio de Europraxis (EL PERIÓDICO, 09/12/08):
El sector de la automoción español está en un momento extraordinariamente delicado, tanto que enviar a 3.500 trabajadores al paro durante un máximo de 75 días laborables puede entenderse como un paso de gigante hacia el entendimiento. A pesar de la dureza de la noticia en términos absolutos, la transformación en Nissan del expediente de regulación de empleo de la modalidad de extinción a la de suspensión es una excelente noticia, al menos en la coyuntura actual.
Nos jugamos muchísimo en esta y en otras negociaciones que se es- tán sucediendo en…
La tercera revolución industrial llama a la puerta
Por Jeremy Rifkin, asesor de la Unión Europea y de varios jefes de Estado de Europa. Es presidente de la Foundation on Economic Trends [Fundación sobre Tendencias Económicas] en Estados Unidos (EL MUNDO, 01/12/08):
Los fabricantes europeos, norteamericanos y chinos del automóvil están pidiendo a sus respectivos gobiernos que acudan en su ayuda con una inyección masiva de fondos públicos y advierten de que, si las ayudas no son inmediatas, podrían verse abocados a la quiebra. Mientras hay quienes apoyan que se les preste ayuda porque temen un revés catastrófico para la economía, otros sostienen que habría que abandonar a las…
For Detroit, Chapter 11 Would Be the Final Chapter
By Spencer Abraham, a former United States secretary of energy under President Bush and a former United States senator from Michigan. He is the chairman and chief executive of the Abraham Group, which advises energy and investment companies, and is a board member of Occidental Petroleum (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 24/11/08):
Many commentators and members of Congress have declared that the best hope for the Big Three auto companies is to declare bankruptcy. Airlines have gone through bankruptcy and adjusted, after all, so why can’t carmakers?
This comparison is appealing, but flawed. Almost every carmaker that has ever gone bankrupt has disappeared…
Let Detroit Go Bankrupt
By Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 19/11/08):
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
I love…
¿Hemos hecho todos los deberes?
Por José Antonio Bueno, socio de Europraxis (EL PERIÓDICO, 11/11/08):
Pasan los días y se acumulan las malas noticias en el sector del automóvil. La lista de expedientes de regulación de empleo crece sin aparente freno. Los temporales pueden entenderse como mal menor en tiempos de crisis; los definitivos constituyen pésimas noticias pues no está claro que esos empleos lleguen a recuperarse algún día.
Tras el primer impacto por el aluvión de malas noticias cabe la reflexión y la autocrítica para ver en qué nos hemos equivocado y, sobre todo, qué se puede hacer todavía.
La crisis de ventas existe, no hay duda,…
This green subsidy for car makers is just a disguised corporate bail-out
By George Monbiot (THE GUARDIAN, 07/10/08):
While all eyes were fixed on the banking bail-out, a bucketload of public money was quietly sloshed into the pockets of another undeserving cause. Last week, George Bush agreed to lend $25bn to US car manufacturers. It’s a soft loan, which will cost the government $7.5bn. Few people noticed; fewer fought it. The House of Representatives approved the measure by 370 votes to 58. The great corporate bail-out is spreading like the plague.
It has already crossed the Atlantic. Yesterday European car makers demanded that the EU hand them €40bn ($54bn) in cheap loans to match the…
No Need for Speed
By Kent A. Sepkowitz, vice-chairman of medicine at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08/09/08):
Speeding is the cause of 30 percent of all traffic deaths in the United States — about 13,000 people a year. By comparison, alcohol is blamed 39 percent of the time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But unlike drinking, which requires the police, breathalyzers and coercion to improve drivers’ behavior, there’s a simple way to prevent speeding: quit building cars that can exceed the speed limit.
Most cars can travel over 100 miles an hour — an illegal speed in every…
An Energy Policy We Can Stick To
By Andrew S. Grove, chairman and chief executive of Intel Corp. from 1987 to 1998 who now serves as senior adviser. A longer version of this column appears in the current issue of the American magazine; much of the work for that article was based on collaboration with Robert Burgelman of Stanford Business School (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/07/08):
Energy independence is the wrong goal.
Oil, like all other goods, flows toward the highest bidder. Consequently, talking about “independence” in a global economy ruled by market forces is a contradiction.
As national policy, we must protect the U.S. economy from interruptions in the supply of…
Siphoning G.M.’s Future
By Roger Lowenstein, the author of While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the N.Y.C. Subways, Bankrupted San Diego and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 10/07/08):
Who shot General Motors? The company’s stock is at its lowest level in 50 years, and its market valuation has plunged to $5.9 billion, less than that of the Hershey candy-bar company. The automaker is weighing yet another round of layoffs — and maybe even a fire sale of venerable brands like Buick and Pontiac.
General Motors once manufactured half the cars on the American road, but now it…
Ahora, en la crisis, se lleva el blanco
Por Vicente Verdú (EL PAÍS, 21/06/08):
Cuando el porvenir se pone negro, los coches se pintan de blanco. La ecuación vale tanto para aquella crisis de la energía en los años setenta como para la que ahora vivimos y seguiremos viviendo.
Todos los coches, en su origen, fueron completamente negros, como las cacerolas, los teléfonos, los paraguas, las máquinas de escribir y las locomotoras del pasado. Sólo el júbilo de los años cincuenta norteamericanos del siglo XX cubrieron las carrocerías de cromados y cromatismos, combinaciones bicolores o monocolores basados en una escala feliz inspirada primordialmente en los helados.
Pero esto sucedió en Estados Unidos…
Only stiff rules will drive car makers to see past the petrol
By Iain Carson, a business writer for the Economist and co-author of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (THE GUARDIAN, 04/06/08):
The government is in a deep hole over cars and carbon emissions. The doubling of the oil price in the past year has seen petrol prices soar to around £1.20 a litre. Ministers are fretting about a planned 2p increase in fuel duty this autumn and about their earlier decision to impose big increases in car tax for gas guzzlers. The scope of the latter is so draconian that humble family cars will be caught in…
We have the technology to make driverless cars a reality
By John Baruch, the former head of the cybernetics department at the University of Bradford (THE GUARDIAN, 16/01/08):
The headline of your article on the development of the revolutionary Boss car implied that its driverless feature was a mere afterthought (All-new Cadillac will cut out carbon emissions - and driver, January 10).Driverless cars are not an afterthought: they would make the biggest impact on our lives of any of the current technologies: an end to 90% of vehicle accidents and deaths, the removal of parked cars from our streets, acceleration of hydrogen fuel for vehicles, the merging of private and public…
Tiny Car, Tough Questions
By Anne Applebaum (THE WASHINGTON POST, 15/01/08):
If you haven’t done so already, meet the Nano, possibly the most significant new car of the decade: Small, cute and snub-nosed, it fits four people and a duffel bag, has a single windshield wiper, travels at 65 mph — and it’s all yours for the princely sum of $2,500, roughly the same price as the DVD system in your neighbor’s Lexus and about half the price of the cheapest cars on the market.
Even better, at least for the philosophically minded, the Nano comes with its own moral conundrum: What happens when the laudable, currently fashionable…
Un sector en efervescencia
Por José Antonio Bueno, consultor. Socio de Europraxis (EL PERIÓDICO, 13/12/07):
El sector del automóvil, como avanzadilla de la industria mundial, está inmerso en un profundísimo cambio que afecta a tecnologías, combustibles, lugares de fabricación, naturaleza de la propiedad- e incluso el método de cálculo del impuesto de matriculación. Dejando a un lado las continuas evoluciones tecnológicas que nos llevarán a coches movidos por pilas de combustible alimentadas por hidrógeno, repletos de electrónica y con permanente interacción con su entorno, recordemos algunas de las noticias más significativas del 2007.
El 14 de marzo, Cerberus, una agresiva firma de capital riesgo, compró Chrysler.…
A velocidad de bicicleta
Por Florent Marcellesi (EL CORREO DIGITAL, 22/09/07):
En los años setenta el ecologista Iván Íllich escribía no sin malicia: «El socialismo ( ) no puede venir a pie, ni puede venir en coche, sino solamente a velocidad de bicicleta». Casi cuarenta años después, no se le habrá escapado a ningún exégeta que el socialismo ha quedado malherido en la carretera y, sobre todo, que el coche continúa su marcha triunfal. Así, en esta enésima y tan cosmética edición del ‘Día sin coches’, Europa cuenta con un automóvil por cada dos habitantes, estadística que hará peligrar la justicia mundial y la supervivencia humana…
Las alternativas al petróleo como combustible para vehículos automóviles
Por José Antonio Bueno Oliveros, ingeniero. Consultor estratégico (FUNDACIÓN ALTERNATIVAS, 01/06/07):
Son muchos los estudios que alertan del agotamiento de las reservas de combustibles fósiles. Además, desde el año 2003 el precio del crudo ha roto todas las resistencias históricas y la combinación de desequilibrios entre oferta y demanda con tensiones geopolíticas, aderezada con una creciente especulación estructural, hace que no se vea un techo claro a su precio.
Por otro lado, el continuo deterioro de nuestra atmósfera debido a las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero, como el CO2, parece acelerar los ciclos climáticos y está llevando a las sociedades avanzadas…
One every 30 seconds
By Michael Schumacher, a member of the Commission for Global Road Safety and a former F1 driver who has been seven-time world champion (THE GUARDIAN, 23/04/07):
Each year 1.2 million people are killed in road traffic crashes worldwide, most of them in developing countries. By 2020 the total could have doubled. Worst affected are children, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. Road accidents are the number one killer of 10- to 25-year-olds.Yet much of this loss of life is preventable. In the industrialised countries, road casualties have been falling for three decades. We are becoming ever more sophisticated in designing road safety systems.…
