If we want alt-energy vehicles, the best way is with a high gas tax. In that case, Detroit – and Tokyo, Germany, etc – will come up with alt-energy cars to meet consumer demand. They’ll get field-tested and debugged by early adopters, and then bought by the mass market. But as long as gas can drop to $1.50/gal, there won’t be a market incentive to push for alt-energy vehicles except to appeal to the latte-drinking Prius crowd who watches Al Gore documentaries.

Japanese companies will win the contest everytime. Just look at TV’s, DVD’s, computers, video games and cell phones.

I say bail them out but force them to come up with vehicles that run on alternative resources immediately. Maybe give them enough to survive for 2 years and enough money to completely revamp their assembly lines to accomodate for hydrogen fuel cell and electric car mass production. The american public would flock to such vehicles. And Detroit has been sitting on these prototypes for decades.

If they want to survive, they have to adapt. Enough of the gas guzzling BS….or NO BAILOUT!!!!

This will start others in the line soon – Airlines, Retailers, etc. How do you decide who should be allowed to fail and who should survive? (Granted we already started a precedent by bailing out banks, but one could argue banks are needed to keep the lubricant in the economy going).

Also, I wonder what Honda and Toyota would think of this. First they open plants in the US to appease the xenophobes, now the govt will tilt the playing field away from them.

*If* we do a bailout, I am hoping the deal would include shareholders equity will be the first to be wiped out.