The Future of Detroit Can Be Seen in Brazil
July 31st, 2008
Recently, I wrote about the Big Three Auto companies and how they need to change, and change their product lines if they wanted to stay “big”. Since those columns there has been even more evidence that these companies are struggling to keep up with current realities. Additional plants have closed, the production of trucks has been dramatically lowered, the projected number of vehicles to be sold this year has been lowered and now Chrysler has gotten out of the leasing business because the resale value of the big vehicles leased has plummeted.
Earlier in the year I wrote several columns about Brazil and how it will be one of the countries leading the world with economic growth, vision and innovation. It is a country that leads the world in smart use of ethanol. It is a country that has a sustained rate of economic growth and a country that seems to be finally realizing its potential as being the country of the future.
A good friend sent me a video about a Ford plant in Brazil that shows what the new and future auto manufacturing plants of the world can and will look like. It is interesting that this Ford plant is in Brazil and not in the U.S. Brazil is in the stage of becoming a new model country for manufacturing while the U.S. is stuck in institutional constructs of the last century. The good news is that Ford has found a new way to manufacture cars. The bad news is that it has to do it outside the U.S. at least for now. Unions, politicians and auto executives must all realize that in order to embrace the future, in order to survive and thrive in the Shift Age, they must all let go of holding on to the way things used to be. We can’t lament the ‘used to be’, we must embrace the future.
Here is the video, courtesy of the Detroit News: http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189
When I was driving the roads in Brazil earlier this year, I had been struck by the number of cars on the road with the Ford name. I now know the reason why.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
The Wreck of the Old 97 in 2008?
Dear Wayne,
You report,
“Vaclav Havel never did choose to stand up and pull the ’stop’ cord on the train!â€
But, Wayne, the colossal train is adding cars and accelerating its speed as it proceeds down the track. There is no engineer on the train. Everyone has gone below to stoke the furnace so that the train goes faster and faster. Where it will stop, or how, nobody knows. Conventional wisdom indicates the track is clear ahead and without an endpoint. Widely shared and consensually validated thinking assures everyone on board this train that we can add more and more cars to the train and continuously stoke its furnace with fossil fuels so that the train can keep going at an increasing speed as long as we have fuel to keep the train going. There are no limits to the speed the train can achieve, no limits to the number of cars the engine can pull, and no end to the railroad track. Everything is going as planned and will continue without interruption indefinitely.
Wayne, if this train is a metaphor for the ever manmade global political economy, could you help us understand how magical thinking, arrogance, pyramid-type schemes and greed are governing the seemingly endless growth of the global economy and how the unbridled increase of the leviathan-like global economy cannot be sustained much longer by a relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth?
And what of the ’stop’ cord on the train, Wayne? I can see it, but cannot yet see how pulling it will do any good because there is no engineer in control. Do you think Vaclav Havel could see that the engine room must have been empty for a long time?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
August 9th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Very nice.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Viva La Evolucion ;)
September 13th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
The reason the automobile manufacturing is taking place in Brazil (amongst other non-US locations) is because manufacturing labor is cheaper there. The problem the Brazilians have in the long run is that the cost of manufacturing labor will continue to fall in the long run due to the pressure of automation, so much so that even the Brazilian economy will not be able to sustain it. Unfortunately to see the future of Brazilian automobile manufacturing one should actually drive the streets of Detroit and look at the abandoned infrastructure as well the depressed population who continues to live there. The future of Brazil is actually on the streets of Detroit.