Within a few days, the government is due to render its life-and-death verdict for General Motors and Chrysler, once-mighty automakers that are now wards of the state.
General Motors is, by far, the more important of the two, in terms of numbers of jobs and importance to the economy. Many inside the company and out are pinning their hopes on the Chevy Volt, the stylish, exciting new electric car due out next year.
But are those hopes justified?
The man who did more than anyone to create the technology to make electric cars possible isn't too sure ... but first, a recap of where things stand with the troubled auto industry.
Washington has given the car companies $17.4 billion in loans since Christmas, but loans with strings attached. One of the biggest: To satisfy the government that they are making real progress in right-sizing and restructuring themselves.
Plus, they need to show that they are moving toward a future where they can be profitable again. The deadline for that: Tuesday, March 31. If the government thinks they have failed at that, it has the option of ordering them to pay back the loans, immediately.
If that happens, it would cause both car companies to declare bankruptcy immediately -- which could mean the loss of untold thousands of jobs. It also would mean the taxpayers would never get that money back, because the automakers have spent it all.
Those facts have led many to think that Washington may well extend what was supposed to be a final deadline. What Chrysler and GM really want is for Washington to decide that they have made sufficient progress to justify more loan money. How much more?
More than $20 billion, the monster truck's share of it for GM, once the world's biggest and richest corporation. Chrysler is a little different; the smaller automaker received only $4 billion earlier, and is asking for that much again.
Indications are that Chrysler would use this as a dowry to bring about a marriage of sorts with Fiat. While anything but a sure thing, the companies' product lines are complementary.
General Motors wants to survive as a stand-alone firm. To help reassure the government, GM recently laid off hundreds of white-collar workers, a traditional move for a company in trouble. But GM knows it can't just cut its way to success.
What the automaker needs is an exciting new car, or cars, that people want to buy. When Chrysler was on the rocks 30 years ago, Lee Iacocca kept interest up by telling everybody to wait till the new "K cars" arrived. Now, people are pinning their hopes on the Volt.
But are they justified? Last week, I talked with Stan Ovshinsky, possibly the best mind in Michigan. He is the principal inventor of the nickel-metal-hydride battery that powers your cell phone and laptop and was a pioneer in solar and hydrogen fuel cells.
Ovshinsky, who Time Magazine called "A Hero for the Planet," holds 300 patents, has been the subject of a Nova documentary and has been a pioneer in making electric and hybrid technology possible; see the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
So, what does he think of the Chevy Volt. He smiled wanly. "It's a start, he said diplomatically. "Not a bad thing. They will sell a few thousand." Only a few thousand?
The bugs haven't been worked out, he explained. The engineers still haven't decided what battery they'll put in it. Most people think a lithium ion battery is most likely ... but every so often they tend to spontaneously blow up, or catch fire.
True, they don't explode very often, maybe a few times per million. But even one exploding battery might doom the Volt with the public. Then there is the price tag.
It is expected to retail at more than $40,000, out of reach of most people. That makes it a bit hard to see how the Chevy Volt will save GM, currently losing something like $5 million an hour.
What is saddest is that it might have been different.
"They are 14 years behind (the Japanese)," Ovshinsky said sadly. Back in the 1990s, he and former GM chairman Robert Stempel went to Japan, saw hybrids were practical and on their way, and went back and tried to tell General Motors. "They laughed at us," he said.
"They said they weren't practical, wouldn't work, and nobody would buy them," said Stan Ovshinsky, still vibrant and working in his lab full-time at age 86. There is a certain satisfaction in outliving your critics. But in this case, he only feels sad.
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