Quote:
Originally Posted by squirrel
They fight the standards with lawyers, but meet them with engineers...
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It's the fighting part that just seems inane. These companies will launch hugely expensive lobbying and public relation campaigns to try to dissuade the public and government from tightening the standards, claiming that it is going to cost them too much to make the changes. I just love the irony of the situation.
Why not just cut to the chase and sink these millions of dollars straight into research and development to meet the new deadlines? Why not hire more engineers instead of more lawyers?
Like in the case of the electric cars in California, where GM claimed it would take too much money and time to develop fully electric cars, and yet little companies like
Tesla Motors (with but a fraction of the resources of GM) come out and develop the Roadster from scratch in only a few years, with plans to expand into lower price and higher production cars within a decade.
Maybe it's just because I'm going to college for engineering that makes me biased towards engineers over lawyers. But the fact that what these car companies are claiming does not line up with what modern engineering is possible of doesn't help their situation.