Top auto supplier CEO: Government too focused on electric vehicles, "ignoring" other technologies

Last year, there was this dishonest headline over at The Detroit News: White House has 'no desire' to run GM. Yeah right. There is untruth in the actual article, however: The Obama administration has "no desire to run an auto company on a day-to-day basis," despite a GM restructuring plan that would give the Treasury Department a majority stake in the company, a White House spokesman said today. I called bs on that claim: "How is holding more than half the company stock not indicative of control? In addition, if in fact the government had no desire to run the auto company, what's with the "day-to-day basis" suffix? Doesn't that by itself change the meaning of the statement? It indicates to me that the government just wants to make the big global decisions (make more hybrids, smaller cars, yada, yada) and leave the day-to-day operations to the company. In essence, they would be the brain handing out directions to the peons that would then have to simply carry out orders. I'm just sayin'." More evidence that it was not true via The Detroit News: BorgWarner CEO: Government too focused on electric vehicles

...BorgWarner chairman and CEO Tim Manganello told the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars that policymakers were focused on electric vehicles "ignoring" other technologies.

"The U.S. government is going a bit too far in trying to dictate the powertrain technologies of the future," Manganello told auto industry insiders. "It's difficult to compete globally when governments try to pick the winning technologies and the direction changes from administration to administration."

...The administration hasn't shown a lot of interest in other technologies, like clean diesel, he said.

Manganello noted if diesels had a 33 percent market share, the United States could save 1.4 million barrels of oil a day -- more than the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia. He lamented the government was "ignoring" diesel and that it was "swimming upstream against the U.S. government that's focused on electric vehicles."

The end result of Obama's push for the Volt is a car that costs 2 1/2 times more than other cars in its class: