Failure to Launch

November 17, 2008

Automakers must be allowed to fail if they are to succeed. To date they've been supported just enough to muddle somewhere above the line of failure. But failure at least allows concrete recognition that the current model does not work. Creating the possibility for new models, new incarnations of the existing companies, growing room for the emerging companies. There is a sentiment that in the thirty five years since the '73 Oil Embargo the Big Three haven't been able to respond effectively, and that government efforts to protect the auto industry are part of the reason they remain chained to a model that doesn't work. Like parents rescuing teenagers from the troubles they get into, bad grades or brushes with the law, so that they can't mature and grow to meet their potential. The auto industry continues to not work because it isn't allowed to fail.

There are vibrant solutions waiting to be born. The death of the Big Three as we know them could create room for new life, just as the death of old, diseased trees opens the forest canopy, letting light in for new trees to grow (to include seedlings from the old: Saturn,the Volt, all the management and labor talent trapped in the diseased model). But the opportunity would also exist to plant the seedlings that will perform going forward, the startups: Better Place, Aptera, Tesla, Fisker, Venture Vehicles, ACPropulsion.

It's time to get the thirty-something Big Three out of the house.

Photo: akiruna on flickr