Car Companies need Fed Money
On the campaign trail for the Presidency, Barack Obama met with several U.S. automaker executives this week according to detnews.com. Obama asked them “what would be the one or two things the federal government can do that would be most constructive in this race against time for U.S. autos?” General Motors Chief Executive, Rick Wagoner, told Obama that “U.S. automakers need government aid in researching new energy technologies and making them affordable enough to market.” Wagoner said that there needs to be money for research for biofuels, batteries, and other technology to take away from our dependence on gas. He also feels that there needs to be incentives and aids given to us, the consumer, in order to make these cars more affordable, and that the government needs to help companies to retool their assembly lines. The Ford CEO Alan Mulally was at this meeting as well.
One area that Obama and the executives disagree about is that Obama has argued in favor of allowing California and other states to impose greenhouse gas emission standards. The automakers say that this would cost the companies billions of dollars. Obama also feels that there should be even higher fuel efficient standards than were put into place in the industry last year.
Barack Obama has proposed $150 billion over 10 years for developing new energy technologies, but the breakdown of money has not been given, so the automakers do not know how much goes to them. He feels strongly that with this funding, it could jumpstart the energy development and soon there will be even more energy efficient cars being made.