The automakers have a powerful marketing organization. It controls demand, at least up to now.

The automakers have been selling speed, acceleration, and power since the beginning of time. This is in spite of the fact that you can't go any faster thant the car in front of you. For most of us that's about 35 mph. If a bailout is enacted, automakers should be required to change their marketing strategy to one of effiency, safety, greeness and ease of repair. .

Why can't steering, gear shifting , turn signals, wipers, and lights be controlled by a computer game control-like device?

Why isn't automobile design modular? Why is it necessary to remove the power steering unit, the alternator, and possibly the radiator to replace the water pump or the timing belt? Why isn't the water pump driven by an electric motor anyhow so that it can be mounted anywhere?

The automakers are albatrosses that don't deserve my taxpayer dollars. They should not be saved, they should be replaced. During my career as and electrical engineer, if I had designed any product using automaker technology, I would have been thrown out on my rear so hard that I would still be on the first bounce.

If the government should be so foolish as to bail out the auto industry, then it should require experienced technology experts be seated on the automaker's boards. I'm thinking of executives from corporations like Intel, AMD, Infineon, Cisco, and Google. While the automakers have stagnated, Silicon Valley companys have developed products that are cheaper, smaller, and vastly more powerful every year!

The design of the internal combustion automobile engine in the even the newest cars is not basically different from the engine in a Model T Ford. In the same time period the computer industry would have evolved ten times over.

Automobile engine valves are still driven by mechanical linkages, camshafts, and timing belts. Timing belts have to be replaced every 60k miles (old fashioned push rods lasted longer). Why haven't the automakers developed computer controlled valve timing? That's a natural! It offers many ways to improve efficiency and greenhouse emissions. Why haven't the automakers developed new types of valves oriented to electronic control?

Skill, knowledge, and technology are developed by the "hands" that do the work . When we outsource jobs, we also outsource development of current and future knowledge to perform and improve the job. Outsourcing jobs impoverishes the United States. Manufacturing seems mundane (compared to design and management) but there is a overwhelming amount of technology involved in manufacturing. If we don't do it we will lose it.

Logically, design and management will soon follow manufacturing. It is already happening! Development and technology have been the United State's forte. That is why we are the world leader. We must protect our knowledge and skills with all our might. Greed and chasing the ultimate last dollar might just be our downfall. There is nothing in history that says the United States cannot fail!