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Its an oldie but a goodie 2

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged billgates funny gm on by (updated 4164 days ago)

Its an oldie but a goodie

Reshared post from +Amir Abbas

GM response to Bill Gates Hell Funny

Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated:

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon..

In response to this comment, General Motors issued a press release stating:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash………Twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single ‘This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation’ warning light.

I love the next one!!!

7. The airbag system would ask ‘Are you sure?’ before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the ‘Start’ button to turn the engine off.

#billgates #GM #funny
image and story credit: FB


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A year ago this week, the third to last Space Shuttle mission, STS-133 finally launched… 1

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged generalmotors gm Google+ iss nasa r2 robonaut2 on by (updated 4677 days ago)

A year ago this week, the third to last Space Shuttle mission, STS-133 finally launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a delay of almost 4 months to address technical issues.

On board the shuttle was a crate containing a Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot co-developed by +NASA and engineers from +General Motors. What makes R2 different from other robots like Honda's Asimo is that it was designed to do actual work alongside humans both on the International Space Station and eventually in factories here on earth.

That means it is a lot stronger than Asimo which can do some fancy dance moves, but can't lift much weight.

In October 2010 when I was working on product and technology communications for GM, I went down to Florida to support some media events in conjunction with the original planned launch date. The second R2 prototype was being used to demonstrate the robot's capabilities. You can see most of the demo in this video with NASA engineer Nicholas Radford.

A few days ago, the crew on board the ISS finally powered up R2 and began the testing of its control systems in micro-gravity. http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/16/2802290/nasa-robonaut-human-robot-handshake-iss

#robonaut2 #r2 #iss #nasa #generalmotors #gm

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Two of the top engineers in the US auto industry will both be retiring on April 1….

This entry was posted in cars and tagged 2013FordFusion derrickkuzak engineering ford fordfusionstory generalmotors gm Google+ tomstephens on by (updated 4688 days ago)

Two of the top engineers in the US auto industry will both be retiring on April 1. Ford announced this morning that group vice president for global product development Derrick Kuzak will be leaving after 34 years with the company. While CEO Alan Mulally has received much of the public credit for turning around Ford in the last five years, in the auto industry a plan is only as good as the products that roll off the assembly line.

Kuzak is a soft spoken engineer that doesn't have the flash of Bob Lutz but he certainly has the product development chops and understands where the investment needs to go create best in class vehicles. Having spent a number of years at Ford of Europe he was familiar with the products there and what the market was looking for and when Mulally brought him back to Dearborn to lead the ONE Ford effort, he knew exactly what to do. He assembled a great team and like Steve Jobs at Apple he saw what needed to be cut and what should go forward. Hopefully the team he assembled will continue to execute the plan in the coming years.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, General Motors announced that chief technical officer Tom Stephens is also leaving. Like Kuzak, Stephens wasn't typically the public facing voice of GM, but he spent his entire 43 year career in the engineering ranks at GM. After Lutz retired in 2009, Stephens succeeded him as vice chairman responsible for global product development before moving into the new role of CTO a year ago.

Both men helped lead their teams through tumultuous times in the industry and they will be missed. Let's hope their successors have the same kind of vision about where to go in the next decade.

Check out Kuzak talking about global product development and the new 2013 Ford Fusion in the video.

#derrickkuzak #tomstephens #ford #2013fordfusion #fordfusionstory #gm #generalmotors #engineering

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Back in 2007, Cadillac unveiled a 2.9-liter V6 diesel intended for the European market… 1

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged cadillac cars diesel gm Google+ on by (updated 4736 days ago)

Back in 2007, Cadillac unveiled a 2.9-liter V6 diesel intended for the European market CTS. The company was seriously considering bringing it to the US market as then Cadillac general manager Jim Taylor told me in late 2007 http://www.green.autoblog.com/2007/12/11/we-may-yet-see-cadillacs-new-2-9l-v-6-diesel-in-the-us/

They even showed the diesel V6 in the original concept version of the CTS coupe at the January 2008 Detroit Auto Show http://www.greenfuelsforecast.com/ArticleDetails.php?articleID=427

Unfortunately the financial melt-down and bankruptcy put the kibosh on both the V6 and the 4.5-liter light duty truck V8 diesel. Both engines however are ready for production and could be revived. I suspect that GM will look at how well the upcoming Cruze diesel does before making a final decision.

#diesel #cars #cadillac #gm

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The death of John Smale on Saturday was a missed opportunity by several outlets to…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged auto_business cars gm Google+ on by (updated 4742 days ago)

The death of John Smale on Saturday was a missed opportunity by several outlets to examine the negative impact that he had on General Motors during his tenure as a director and chairman of the board. Smale is best known in the business world for being the former CEO of Proctor and Gamble but like many high ranking executives in American business he served other companies as a director.

The extended obituary published in the Detroit News (written by AP reporter Dan Sewell) only mentions his GM role in passing in the opening paragraph while the brief piece on Autoblog focuses on Smale replacing Bob Stempel as Chairman and helping to bring GM back from the verge of bankruptcy. As chairman, Smale probably had little to do with the actual slashing of costs and spending at GM but he nonetheless had a huge impact on GM in another way and it wasn't good.

Smale was responsible bringing Ron Zarella, one of his former P&G colleagues to GM to institute brand management. Brand management was a totally bungled and wrong-headed approach to building and selling cars. At P&G Smale and Zarella found a way to sell the same products under multiple different brands and get away with it. Unfortunately this approach doesn't translate to the car business and resulting in such an unappealing car lineup that despite growing discounting, GM's market share continued to shrink throughout their tenure and consumer's attitudes to GM plummeted.

GM's lineup didn't begin to improve until Bob Lutz joined up and Zarella left in 2001 and even then it took several years to demonstrate that the company could build interesting vehicles. Even then, the company's problems were so deep seated that time that they couldn't earn enough to avoid bankruptcy in 2009. Perhaps if the company had focused on great products and a pared down brand lineup in 1992 instead of waiting more than a decade, that fate might have been avoided.

#gm #cars #auto_business

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