As the big three North American automobile companies, Chevrolet, Ford and GM, with caps in hand, look to be given a much needed injection of cash, are we not ignoring a possible enormous way forward. I’m in no way a financial expert, but even I know that letting these big three companies collapse, would have a profound effect on North America, of not the world. Many people say, that we should let them flounder, after all “Why pump money into a financial black hole”, they say. That may or may not be the case. There’s no real way of knowing if this cash injection will give the companies enough of a breather, to allow themselves time to turn their companies around.

With the global markets suffering similar bad times, there has been a welcome side effect and that’s the plummeting price of oil, which has seen petrol prices here in Canada, fall from about $1.30 a litre to around 70cents. This lull in the price of petrol, and the auto companies desperate need for tax payers money, isn’t this the perfect time, to force the automobile manufacturers to make some serious inroads into making cars that are not reliant on petrol. Think of what one of the big three manufacturers could do if they took something like a Tesla and turned it into a full production car. Yes I know the Tesla is a $200,000 piece of car, but that’s because it has a relatively small production run, but at least Tesla seem to be solving some of the real issues with making an electric car. They claim the Tesla can do a 200 mile round trip on a single car, and it’s no secret Jeremy finds them amazingly fast, albeit an apparent couple of shortcomings, but Tesla isn’t on trial here. They have an amazing car, with some rough edges that need smoothing, but it’s far an away the most exciting electric car so far.

What if…. as part of the big bail out, Tesla were also to get a cash injection, in return for any patents/trade secrets they have for their electric marvel. The big three then get their cash infusion and the patents/trade secrets are then licenced to the big Three, in return for a royalty on each car sold using the licensed technologies. Tesla gets the money they need to build the cars many people have put a sizable deposit on, they also get a stack of cash to use for further R&D which the big three also have an option to licence. The big three get a kick up their backside to actually deliver some new cars that break their reliance on petrol and hopefully this will result in the big three making cars, people actually want to buy.

I know this is a pretty simplistic view, but I think it’s at least adds some validity to handing money over to the big three, instead of just throwing it into a money put.

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