interview > white > clip: white 4

White 4 (0:50)
Topic(s): Auto Industry / Efficiency
User Comments

Video Transcript

The problem with the auto industry for a hundred years has been that, you know, the tyranny of the sunk cost, the tyranny of, look, this is techn- you know, internal combustion engine technology is technology that we've bought and paid for; we understand it, we know how to make it work, it's incredibly efficient, essentially in terms of cost, it's been radically cleaned up since the 1970s, it's kind of, you know, kind of remarkable what they've been able to do. I mean, these engines are clean, they're efficient and they're cheap. And so the new technology that would be even cleaner, has to get over this very big wall of, of the sunk costs and of the, the effort that's gone into making the vehicle what they are. It's tough. It's tough. And it's hard for a company like GM, which is struggling just to get to break even, to kind of see how that works from an economic point of view.