A Quote by Rick Wagoner

What I've seen around the world is if the regulatory desires are combined with things that affect consumer behavior - such as in Europe, they tax gasoline very heavily - you do get people to move to very fuel efficient cars; trade off bigger vs. smaller cars.
Say German cars are sort of very built and efficient. Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick. Mexican cars just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent.
The gasoline tax is a user fee, but it does not fill enough of the need, and you want cars to be more efficient.
Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.
How we fund transportation in this country is broken. You all pay a gasoline tax, right? Well, cars go farther, we get electric cars, and so on. And then we do more with the money than just build roads. We do bike lanes and mass transit.
The problem with the auto industry is layered upon the lack of consumer confidence. People are not buying cars. I don't care whether they're or American cars, or international cars.
There are not a ton of people buying cars - cars are expensive. So people usually go for the cheapest car they can get. And if the price of gasoline falls again, it makes the savings that you get with an electric car harder to realize.
If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.
People get very thoughtful when they are in cars. I no longer care for cars. I don't collect them.
Electric cars are coal-powered cars. Their carbon emissions can be worse than gasoline-powered cars.
I'm very into my cars. I always ready the Top Gear magazines just to see what cars are out next and what sort of performance they give. It can range from the smallest cars to the biggest ones.
I was in Los Angeles. I saw the biggest ships you have ever seen with cars pouring off from Japan, into Los Angeles. Just pouring off these ships, and I am saying to myself, we send them beef, it's a tiny fraction, and, by the way, they don't even want it, they have to fight in order to take it in because they don't even want it, and it's very perishable, they'll send it back, they'll find reasons not to take it. And yet the ships, the boats, the ships are loaded up with cars, thousands of cars and they are just pouring off.
1973 was the first gasoline crisis in the world. That year, I designed the first aerodynamic truck, eating 40 percent less fuel. I put it on exhibit everywhere. It was 30 years ahead of its time. Nobody is building it today, and everybody still has problems with their boxy cars and trucks eating up fuel.
You're also looking at a global warming solution here in Europe: smaller vehicles, more energy efficient, many which use diesel fuel which is more efficient. And the price of gas here is $6 a gallon to discourage guzzling. A lot of big ideas and innovations coming out of Europe.
People get really nuts around cars. They get angry at cars, they get angry at their car, they get angry at people driving in cars; there's something really comical about that, about automobiles.
Conoco will build a $75 million plant to see if a process to convert natural gas to liquid fuel is profitable. It has to be. In California, gasoline is so expensive that people are trying to run their cars on cocaine.
With all the hybrid stuff and things like that, I think that's a fabulous direction to go with cars in that sense. As someone who grew up around muscle cars, I'll never not be able to not love a muscle car. Not that I don't care about the environment, that's not it. But I adore muscle cars.
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