GM slams Toyota, rejects blueprints for 2010 Prius
GM is in a cutthroat mood right now, and considering its state of affairs and bankruptcy situation that’s an appropriate state of mind. The company is shedding brands, shedding people, and shedding facilities wherever possible in a quest to rediscover profitability. Toyota has offered to license its 2010 Prius hybrid technology to GM, but the American automaker doesn’t seem interested.
Toyota is working through its own set of economic difficulties with the downturn in North American markets, and that means it too is halting expansions and searching for cuts. It may seem illogical then that Toyota is offering secrets to its flagship hybrid car the 2010 Toyota Prius, but the silver lining has immense potential.
Any company looking to make its technology the standard used by everyone else in the industry would behave similarly. If Toyota can make its 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid synergy train the recognized standard then it stands to profit hugely from licensing fees.
Spreading its technology also more firmly cements Toyota products in the North American market without overtly planting its brand name everywhere, which could have the potential to drive away consumers looking to buy American. The same concept works well for companies like Microsoft when they make SDKs for new programming languages widely available. The iPhone application store is another great example.
Unlike Ford Motor Company who already licenses Toyota Prius technology, GM isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid.
Ford Motor Co. licenses Toyota patents as part of its hybrid program, while GM has turned down those opportunities . . .
GM is also drawing attention to a joint manufacturing venture it’s supported for 24 years with Toyota by halting the manufacture of Vibes at the Nummi plant. That may mean GM is considering pulling out, but official word hasn’t arrived yet.
Toyota is setting the stage for cooperation between itself and American competitor, but the new and leaner GM coalescing inside bankruptcy courts has other plans.
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GM is 'shredding' its credibility day after day. If has offered half ars hybrid cars and trucks whose mileage was a sad joke. Its ONLY real hybrid model will cost around $8000-10000k MORE than a similarly equipped future LI Ion Hyundai models, many thousands more than Ford and Toyotas state of the art hyrbid models.
Honda and Toyota took YEARS to get remotely profitable from hybrids, and now its GM's turn - so for 2 full years GM will not earn a dime.....and to now refuse a great offer from toyota smacks of childish anger and the same old BS 'good old white boy' philosphy from the same old GM exec mentality. What a joke!
The only people I do feel sorry for are the workers who are still foolish enough to hang around and not seek another profession and quickly!
After the previous Prius debacle, wherein Bloomberg reported something completely false in the idea of it being made at NUMMI, I would hesitate to believe their story about GM turning down Prius tech.
-bZj
Hey, if you're running an anti-green marketing/social philosophy blog or whatever, cool, but this headline is disingenuous. It does all parties involved, including your blogs credibility, a disservice. Nothing in the text of this story suggests a "slam" or even a harsh rejection. The meaty quote here appears to be "the American automaker doesn’t seem interested", that's no slam, in fact it's somewhat of a conjecture to imply that Toyota and GM cross development is being abandoned, let alone with GM telling Toyota to F off. Regardless of what direction you're coming from, please try to keep the headlines matched to the content and refrain from using overly provocative headlines when there is not a story to back it up. That behavior is so much of what is wrong with US media, both large scale and grassroots, these days. Please be a part of helping right that. You might not get the amount of hits in the short term, but credibility is worth much more than an inflated hit count. Thanks
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