I have been getting by for 30 years on the “small stuff”.
The way vehicles are designed today I get paid 6 hours labor to replace HVAC servo motors (warranty) and 5.5 hours to replace an airbag inflator (recall).
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That’s consumer grade stuff. Tesla claims that their cars and trucks are designed to a commercial grade life of one million miles and a battery life of 300, 000 miles. The cars could be engineered for longer life if someone was willing to pay for it, using existing technology. Longer battery life will require improvements in technology. And the electronics used in aerospace and satellites are many times more reliable than consumer grade.
And are there as many independent servicers in your area as there were several years ago? The population here has been growing like mad but the independent servicers are disappearing.
We are stuck with consumer grade.
Hertz filed for Bankruptcy Protection. Not the same as Bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy Protection allows Hertz to legally not pay creditors so they can ride out the storm. When/if things return to normal again, they can get out from under the Bankruptcy Protection and start paying their creditors again.
The courts will assign an overseer to the company that’s filed.
Jerome, please step away from the Tesla Kool-Aid. Reality is very, very different…
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-tesla-model-3-survey/
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Yep, Teslas test well by Consumer Reports, but several have been ‘not recommended’ because of their poor reliability.
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I certainly don’t share Jerome_Silverman view on electronics longevity, there are many things built to last a long long time. Go through the Lock system in Central NY. Some of those motors controlling the pumps have been in continuous service for over 100 years. But they were built that way because servicing them would be too expensive. If one of those fail now it would be cheaper to build a new Lock.
But so few things are built to those standards anymore. Computers or car electronics - it makes zero sense to build any of the electronics that’ll last a real long time. 1/10th of the way to end of life it would be obsolete. So now the other 90% of it’s life you’re using something that’s real obsolete. And then add the fact that people don’t live long enough.
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Interesting concept to pass along a 75 year old electric car to future generations through inheritance. Gee thanks great great grandpa, just what I needed. An obsolete 75 year old peace of junk. Not even a classic but does the radio work? What’s a radio?
When I was a kid my Mom would have the Art Linkletter show on in the afternoon, called “Kids Say the Darnest Things”. Those kids now had kids and its those parents that say the darnest things I guess.
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I am quite literally still LOL’ing… Whew man that one hit my funny bone pretty hard. Both in its complete hilarity and its gullibility factor. So silly I don’t feel the need to come up with examples and such Hog Wash i would feel silly coming up with examples.
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Yes it is. Glad your brought it up.
When a company files for bankruptcy one of the things that happens is their pension payments get transferred over to the PBGC. It is an insurance program to protect the pensioners. What was a huge legacy cost for a long term company with a huge retirement legacy cost unloads it onto the taxpayers. Then when the company comes out of chapter 11 voila’ no more legacy cost of the pensions. Their cash flow is temporarily improved, and maybe they survive.
I remember a slogan my 7th grade agriculture teacher had posted above the chalkboard. It read:
THE PEOPLE WHO LOOK AHEAD SELDOM FALL BEHIND
I remember thinking about this statement back in 1953 as a 7th grader. Where would Sears be if the executives had looked ahead? Over half the washing machines sold at one time were the Sears Kenmore. Had Sears offered really quality repair on appliances, Sears wouldn’t have lost its reputation. Sears auto service lost its reputation and was sued by two states attorney bgeneraks for fraudulent practices. Suppose GM had built a truly quality small car instead of the Vega, or had equipped the original Corvair with an independent suspension as it did for the 1965 models.
I could go on and on with examples. Sometimes it is hard to act on looking ahead. I was in a department meeting in the mathematics department where I was a faculty member. There was a demand for courses in computer.science with no faculty to teach them. A person with computer skills could earn at least three times as much in industry. I made the comment "If we can’t hire from the outside, why can’t we ‘grow our own’ "? My colleagues laughed at my suggestion. I decided to show them, so in addition to teaching a full load of classes, I drove 60 miles each way two evenings a week and took graduate classes at another institution. I immediately began teaching the same courses I was taking. Some of my colleagues were really upset with me. One said to me “You have a terminal degree. Why would you want to do more coursework”? The net effect of doing the coursework was that it held up my promotion because I didn’t have time to publish and published works is what counted. A couple of years later, the Dean woke up and sent two of my colleagues with full salary paid along with tuition to another university to take coursework in computer science. I asked for the same privilege and was told that I was needed on campus to teach computer science classes. I did this forty years ago because I remembered the slogan from my seventh grade agriculture class.
Industry, colleges and universities, and government need leaders who will look ahead and invest in the future.
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The court restructures the debts owed by the company, and that might include terminating the old pension plan. Money already placed into the plan is gone, it belongs to the employees. Restructuring might include terminating the plan, but that is up to the court.
As for PBGC, I believe they take over the pension fund’s assets and will distribute them according to the pension plan rules, up to a maximum level. Anyone originally entitled to more than the PBGC maximum in the original plan is shorted the difference between the amount they were entitled to according to the plan and the PBGC rules max.
I get a PBGC pension for the 12 years I was on the company’s defined benefit plan. After that, the company went to a defined contribution plan.
Hertz’s recent proposal to sell $500 million in new stock shares in order to raise money has been halted while the SEC reviews it. The probability that those shares would actually be worth anything a year from now is… dim.