GM Closing Down Ontario Plant

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
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I would like to know (if Canada is such a great place to invest) why GM isn't retrofitting the plant for self-driving or electric cars. If the factory is producing vehicles no one is buying and if GM wants to get "ahead" of producing future vehicles, why not here? Are the plants that are closing in the U.S. also producing vehicles that no one wants to buy? Just wondering why they're being closed. Are they inefficient too?


It's all well and good to say that electric vehicles are cars of the future but the infrastructure isn't there yet and will take awhile before it is and HUGE investment by someone.....and since this government is so excited by making sure investing in Canada is a no-go, I'm certain that the taxpayers (i.e. government involvement) are going to be stuck with putting the infrastructure required and you absolutely know how that's going to come out - just like everything else the government gets involved in - $1,000,000's of dollars more than required to ensure that they're "trusted" friends get their share of the loot. After all, not only will those vehicles require electricity; the electricity will have to be produced somehow and as demand increases, no "windmill" or solar panels will be sufficient to provide the electricity required - oops, guess we'll have to use NG or Oil!!! So the demand for fossil fuels won't be going anywhere soon!!


But maybe I'm being cynical …..


In the meantime, fueled vehicles will still be required and will be for the long-term.


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POOR Dixie Cup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


You should go back and read the assorted crap Hoid has written about electric TOY cars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Only an eccentric few Cdns want electric TOY vehicles!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Such machines are alright for govt civil service union Hogs and other such privileged workers who know where they will be living and working for the next decade or two and they can therefor match their machine and its limited range to their daily commute!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



But for most Cdns who are so often on the move- an electric Toy does NOT have the RANGE to be useful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Twenty years ago Statistics Canada told us the average Cdn had THREE MAJOR CAREER CHANGES in an average life!!!!!!!!!


I guess that frequency of career change has INCREASED since then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Meaning people NEED to be more mobile and flexible than ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And a COSTLY electric Toy car with limited range and awkward refueling capacity will NOT cut it for most Cdns!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



To many Cdns are getting dumped out of one industry and having to START OVER AGAIN in another industry- from the ground up!!!!!!!!!!


Owning an electric Toy car means that if your job changes you may not have the range to commute with it any more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


In addition- the private sector - already over taxed by LIE-berals- will have NO REASON to offer up chargers to its workers- in fact a lot of private companies do not even offer parking to employees so they certainly will not offer up cheap access to electric Toy chargers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is in sharp contrast to Wynne-bag LIE-beral efforts to make chargers available either cheaply OR FREE to civil service union Hogs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


LIE-berals wsnt to see fast chargers available at govt offices and LCBO and other such public buildings- so how long before LIE-berals offer FREE ACCESS to chargers as a work place perk to always GREEDY civil service union HOGS??????



Half of Torontonians live in rented accommodation and there is NO CHANCE that hard pressed and rent controlled landlords will spend the money to install fast chargers for electric Toys!!!!!!!!!!



LIE-berals have already spent MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in a botched effort to make electric toy chargers available to their union Hog pals!!!!!!!!!!


Consider the LIE-beral MESS thus far:






Here is an article illustrating yet again that LIE-berals are not clever enough to run a chip truck at a profit- not even if you gave them the chips for free! With some comments of my own in brackets):

Ontario's electric car charge station 'screw up'

By Jenny Yuen. Published: January 28, 2018. Updated: February 20, 2018 10:59 PM EST

Filed Under: Toronto SUN/ News/ Ontario

Delays in installation. Complaints of broken machines and bad customer service.

(Its a nice thing to be right: I have said before that LIE-berals would offer up electric vehicle charging stations free or cheap to their pals- and how about that- the first batch went into the MaRS building that was at the centre of a LIE-beral spending and waste scandal a while back! And more at the Manulife Centre as well. Oh, and there are privately owned electric chargers in Metro Centre and at the TD Bank towers down town! Great- just MORE Hog entitlements that WE get to pay for but are not allowed to use! And its not as if bankers or insurance companies need a LOT MORE of our money now is it?)

Two years after Ontario’s Liberal government introduced a province-wide program to expand electric vehicle use, the program is being called “a screw-up” by some users and “a failure” by those in the electric vehicle industry.

(Electric car makers have a vested interest in seeing cheap, reliable chargers made available for public convenience car makers calling the LIE-beral program a “failure” is a damning indictment!)

Called the EVCO program — Electric Vehicle Chargers Ontario — the Liberals announced plans in 2016 to spend $20 million on a network of 500 charging stations for electric vehicles across the province. The goal of the network was to “enable EV drivers to travel between and within cities,” boost electric car sales and “fight climate change.”

“By investing in charging infrastructure that is fast, reliable and affordable, we are encouraging more Ontarians to purchase electric vehicles, reducing greenhouse gas pollution and keeping our air clean,” then-transportation minister Steven Del Duca said at the time.

(Yes- LIE-berals had previously speculated it would be a good idea to instal charging stations outside LCBO and govt offices- but the optics are not so good- tax payers would be unhappy about seeing civil service Hogs getting wonderful tax subsidies to buy electric vehicles and then getting MORE tax subsidies to charge their ride while at work or while picking up their plonk at the LCBO! It just wouldnt look to good in this time of soaring debt to be giving Hogs too many freebies at tax payer expense- LIE-berals will have to wait till after the election!)

But instead of the reliable, affordable network of charging stations, just over half the charging stations (55%) that were supposed to be constructed by March 2017 have been built, 55% of the new charging stations are concentrated in downtown Toronto and the GTA — which is already saturated with charging stations — instead of on provincial highways between cities where the Liberals said they were needed.

(LIE-berals SAY a lot of things- but reality dictates that electric car owners generally only commute to work with their costly machines- they MUST stick to known routes so that sudden traffic or weather trouble does not strand them some place too far from a plug- this is the great flaw in electric cars- refueling time- often in an hours long wait- is hugely awkward! The number of electric cars travelling between cities will remain SMALL for many years to come!)

(Nor do LIE-berals want to discuss the drastic reduction in range that results from cold weather affecting batteries and LIE-berals also refuse to talk about the further reduction in range that comes from running headlights, windshield wipers and especially the heater/defroster in cold weather! Electric car battery range is set in warm weather under ideal conditions that to often do not exist here in Canada- statements about electric car range are as reliable as LIE-beral promises! Who wants to be stuck on 401 after one of those big winter pile ups that block the road for hours- with your heater OFF and you freezing because your battery is running low and cops are sending you on some long detour- miles away from a car charger?)

According to customers, government-funded charging stations frequently sit unused, the government lacks the ability to track how often or whether they are used and some users complain those in service are frequently broken and in disrepair.

(AS with so many other issues that LIE-berals “fail” to track- the reality is that LIE-berals DO NOT want to know the answers! LIE-berals are PRETENDING to care about the environment for political reasons and promoting electric cars that nobody except some eccentric millionaires will ever buy suits LIE-berals fine!)

Paul Raszewski, founder of the Toronto Electric Vehicle Association, says the EVCO program has been a “screw-up” ever since the Ontario government awarded the 57% lion’s share of the contract – worth $11.4 million – to KSI, a relatively unknown Mississauga green energy firm.

“Since then, there have been a lot of delays installing those locations. Some of them still have not been completed and those that have, there are issues with them,” Raszewski said.

(So- should we assume that KSI is owned by LIE-beral pals of the same sort that got snow plowing contracts even though they did not own equipment suitable to plow our roads in contract specified time frame? Or is this simple incompetence- of the sort on display with that pedestrian bridge built upside down in Pickering- by a contractor who had never built a bridge before? Its not as if LIE-berals have never made such mistakes in the past- one has only to think of all the steel bridge girders made for 401 highway over pass work and then discarded because unskilled contractors screwed up the welding! Or the Nippissing highway bridge that buckled in a few months of use- after being built by a Spanish company that had never worked in a frost heaved zone before!)

“They’re not being serviced properly, some of them are malfunctioning and when people call the number, they say they’ll respond within 48 hours and when someone’s stuck out there with no charge — in -41C weather — obviously members are very upset by that. The government is not responding, so I guess they’re putting their tails between their legs and not commenting on it. I think they now know they screwed up.”

(Ah- we do enjoy quality work in Ontari-owe- just look at the success of Presto- the TTC pass card readers- critics warned when rhe system was chosen- that it was the most expensive and unreliable and least proven system available- but LIE-berals knew better- and now installation of Presto readers has been “suspended”!)

And it didn’t make sense, Raszewski said, for the province to put 55% of the new EVCO chargers within the GTA and 45% outside without data to prove more downtown chargers were even necessary.

There is already a saturation of privately-operated chargers downtown, he said. Where chargers are actually needed are along stretches of highway outside of the Toronto area and in apartments and condos.

(I suggest that most of the comment about where charging stations are needed is crap! Nobody really knows where new chargers will be needed because nobody knows what will happen to the electric car market in coming years! Certainly, the next govt of Ontari-owe will have bigger fiscal problems to deal with than fussing over electric cars- meaning LIE-beral subsidies killed off! Ontari-owe is the most indebted sub national entity on the planet- only the PIGS- Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain are more broke than Ontari-owe! Who killed the electric car? LIE-BERALS DID- with their insane tax and spend madness! The next govt will NOT have money for frills!)
 

Hoid

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 15, 2017
20,408
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I would like to know (if Canada is such a great place to invest) why GM isn't retrofitting the plant for self-driving or electric cars. If the factory is producing vehicles no one is buying and if GM wants to get "ahead" of producing future vehicles, why not here? Are the plants that are closing in the U.S. also producing vehicles that no one wants to buy? Just wondering why they're being closed. Are they inefficient too?


It's all well and good to say that electric vehicles are cars of the future but the infrastructure isn't there yet and will take awhile before it is and HUGE investment by someone.....and since this government is so excited by making sure investing in Canada is a no-go, I'm certain that the taxpayers (i.e. government involvement) are going to be stuck with putting the infrastructure required and you absolutely know how that's going to come out - just like everything else the government gets involved in - $1,000,000's of dollars more than required to ensure that they're "trusted" friends get their share of the loot. After all, not only will those vehicles require electricity; the electricity will have to be produced somehow and as demand increases, no "windmill" or solar panels will be sufficient to provide the electricity required - oops, guess we'll have to use NG or Oil!!! So the demand for fossil fuels won't be going anywhere soon!!


But maybe I'm being cynical …..


In the meantime, fueled vehicles will still be required and will be for the long-term.
This is a good point and in fact GM and other makers have closed operations before only to reopen here, so I would say its a possibility.

The problem will be with the Trump tariffs which are not going to last beyond Trump himself, if even that long.
 

Decapoda

Council Member
Mar 4, 2016
1,682
801
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I would like to know (if Canada is such a great place to invest) why GM isn't retrofitting the plant for self-driving or electric cars. If the factory is producing vehicles no one is buying and if GM wants to get "ahead" of producing future vehicles, why not here?

Do you have any idea what a $50 per tonne carbon tax is going to do to any auto plant, regardless of what their cars and trucks run on? No manufacturer in their right mind would consider Canada as a viable location for their industry with the current gaggle of useful idiots in power, and any manufacturers looking to restructure will be looking at Canadian operations as the first place to cut. I suspect this is only the beginning of the exodus of manufacturing, industrial, and resource development companies that will undoubtedly be leaving this country for greener pastures (pun intended).

This should be regarded as a celebration and a huge victory for Trudeau and his supporters, and for anyone drinking the global warming cool aid. It is exactly what all the punitive government tax policies and bureaucratic red tape is trying to accomplish. I'm not really sure why people are complaining, this is what we voted for!!
 

Decapoda

Council Member
Mar 4, 2016
1,682
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This is a good point and in fact GM and other makers have closed operations before only to reopen here, so I would say its a possibility.

I wouldn't hold my breath, and I certainly wouldn't be banking my future on it. But cross all your fingers and your toes too, if it makes you feel good.
 

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
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This is a good point and in fact GM and other makers have closed operations before only to reopen here, so I would say its a possibility.

The problem will be with the Trump tariffs which are not going to last beyond Trump himself, if even that long.


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POOR HOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Muddled and misleading as usual!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Trump is merely the public face of the Tea Party types who want United States to go back to 1930`s style isolationism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


There are a lot of Yankees who do believe the world is better off closed out and that means the tariffs will probably continue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


After all- look at the Chretien LIE-berals who campaigned and got elected on a promise to do away with the GST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


And then decided it was to useful to kill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



And look at the way Russians and Chinese are confronting the west militarily in various places!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Trump is right that putting sanctions and tariffs on them will limit their military abilities!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


As for NATO Slackers like Canada- either you stand with Yankees or you are against them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Tariffs on Canada may not end in your life time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Jinentonix

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 6, 2015
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Olympus Mons
I know new business models confuse people, but seriously?
The 40 year time you mention is simply your own estimation of when something you do not understand could possibly occur.
It is in fact here and now. Those jobs that are getting cut are real, and GMs restructure is necessary.
I didn't say 40 years, I said 2040. Maybe you should learn to read and/or comprehend what was written before responding to it and acting like some uppity f*ck about it. The year 2040 isn't my estimation either, it is the estimation of the industry. Go read the news instead of pulling "facts" out of your ass. In fact, the day before I posted that I was watching a program concerning autonomous vehicle technology. The kind of "day" you described where all the cars are autonomous and shared is what the year 2040 was in reference to. Too bad you're too goddam stupid to understand context, even when it comes to what you post. Pathetic.
 

Jinentonix

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 6, 2015
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Olympus Mons
2040 is when electric vehicles are expected to become dominant; not when they are introduced.
Oh for f*ck sakes, another goober who doesn't understand context. Seems reading and comprehension issues are a real problem among the leftoids. GO read what I was responding to. Jesus Christ it's like clueless dumbf*ck central in here today.

It wasn't about electric cars, it was about autonomous cars.
 

coldstream

on dbl secret probation
Oct 19, 2005
5,160
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Chillliwack, BC
It's no accident or surprise this announcement came in weeks after agreement in principle was reached on MCA-FTA. Once GM was assured its nonunionized, unregulated assembly plants in Mexico would not be stuck with tariffs for vehicles imported to the American and Canadian markets they abandoned their workers and communities. All these plants in North America were quite capable of being transitioned into any vehicle and consumer strategy GM could devise for the domestic market.. they were just less profitable than that provided by gouging Mexican labour.

See if Donald's good to his word and sticks GM with tariffs on imports. Of course a deviant and dissolute character like Justin wouldn't even think of NOT rolling over and getting stiffed. The whole thing is part of a devolutionary process. Henry Ford realized that he had to build a North American Middle Class with good wages as well as a reliable automobile to prosper. GM is under the impression they can impoverish that segment and still have a market for their cars.
 

spilledthebeer

Executive Branch Member
Jan 26, 2017
9,296
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Well GM announced that they will be stopping production of the Chevy Volt due to lack of sales . They are going to focus on trucks and SUV’s that people want and are buying .




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Yes................it is ODD that even though General Motors has just chosen to kill off its Chevy Volt plug in hybrid vehicle........the news HAS NOT STOPPED LIE-berls from trumpeting the "good news" about their electric Toy cars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Even the admission on Nov 26/ 2018 by Elon Musk- that all the bad things people were saying about Tesla Motors this year were TRUE has not stopped the LIE-beral fixation with electric TOYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Tecumsehsbones

Hall of Fame Member
Mar 18, 2013
60,375
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America First!

Russia Second!

Saudi Arabia Third!

Canada. . . well, someplace down there with Jamal Khashoggi. Behind Eritrea, South Sudan, and California.
 

White_Unifier

Senate Member
Feb 21, 2017
7,300
2
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It's no accident or surprise this announcement came in weeks after agreement in principle was reached on MCA-FTA. Once GM was assured its nonunionized, unregulated assembly plants in Mexico would not be stuck with tariffs for vehicles imported to the American and Canadian markets they abandoned their workers and communities. All these plants in North America were quite capable of being transitioned into any vehicle and consumer strategy GM could devise for the domestic market.. they were just less profitable than that provided by gouging Mexican labour.
See if Donald's good to his word and sticks GM with tariffs on imports. Of course a deviant and dissolute character like Justin wouldn't even think of NOT rolling over and getting stiffed. The whole thing is part of a devolutionary process. Henry Ford realized that he had to build a North American Middle Class with good wages as well as a reliable automobile to prosper. GM is under the impression they can impoverish that segment and still have a market for their cars.

What do you have against Mexican Christians? And what do you have against poor Canadian Christian consumers? With friends like you...
 
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Danbones

Hall of Fame Member
Sep 23, 2015
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America First!
Russia Second!
Saudi Arabia Third!
Canada. . . well, someplace down there with Jamal Khashoggi. Behind Eritrea, South Sudan, and California.
You forgot Texas in there now with California...and the south Sudan...geeez!
:)
mexico isn't the only direction migrant refugees are coming from.
 

Hoid

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 15, 2017
20,408
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What was the point of the big nafta redo again?

To keep manufacturing jobs in North America?
 

JamesBondo

House Member
Mar 3, 2012
4,158
37
48
I'd like to be able to buy a Canadian built pickup truck. Sadly, no one makes them anymore.

That pisses me off. Anyone else?
 

White_Unifier

Senate Member
Feb 21, 2017
7,300
2
36
I'd like to be able to buy a Canadian built pickup truck. Sadly, no one makes them anymore.
That pisses me off. Anyone else?

I'd like to buy Nunavut-grown oranges too. But the fact of the matter is that it's preferable for each state to specialize in what it does best, export it, and import what others do best.
 

JamesBondo

House Member
Mar 3, 2012
4,158
37
48
I'd like to buy Nunavut-grown oranges too. But the fact of the matter is that it's preferable for each state to specialize in what it does best, export it, and import what others do best.

You saying that Canadian couldn't build a good truck? You obviously never owned a truck. They are better than Toyota can make.