House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan.

“Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said at a news conference in Washington.

Four U.S. senators announced bipartisan deal for automakers, which briefly pushed U.S. markets higher and halted a steep slide that had been touched off a day before on Wall Street and had spread round the globe.

The big three U.S. automakers have pushed Congress this week for a $25 billion bailout from the government to avert possible bankruptcy.

However, Democratic leaders warned the bill would not pass unless it included a plan for the industry to return to profitability. They said automakers can submit another plan by Dec. 2 which could be considered the week of Dec. 8.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger on Thursday urged Congress and the Bush administration to act immediately on loans for the U.S. automakers, saying one or more of them could collapse by the end of the year without additional money.

“Without immediate assistance, we could see, and I stress could see, a collapse of one or more of the domestic auto companies by the end of this year,” Gettelfinger said. “The costs that would flow from this are simply too great.”

He repeated statements he and the CEOs of the Detroit auto makers made in Capitol Hill testimony that a collapse could cost 3 million jobs and endanger the pension and health care benefits of 1 million retirees.

Senate Democrats abandoned earlier efforts to bail out the industry with funds from the $700 billion earmarked for the financial industry in the face of strong Republican opposition. They had pushed to take $25 billion from the financial bailout package for a bridge loan to GM, Ford and Chrysler.

Auto industry executives asked Congress for the $25 billion on Wednesday, but their lavish corporate lifestyles came in for scrutiny by lawmakers. They arrived in Washington to testify aboard multi-million dollar private jets that cost tens of thousands of dollars to operate.

Economists are expecting motor vehicle sales to drop this year to around 13 million from 16.1 million a year ago, and domestic automakers are barely clinging to half the market — down from nearly 73 percent in 1996.

Electric Car Manufacturer Hopes To Generate Sales

by John McChesney

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Tesla’s Roadster can accelerate to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. It’s like a slingshot, and just as quiet. Courtesy of Tesla Motors Inc.

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John McChesney/NPR

The Tesla Roadster can go up to 244 miles on a single charge, thanks to its 1,000-pound battery pack.

All Things Considered, November 19, 2008 · Even as America’s troubled automakers seek a handout from Congress, a relatively new car manufacturer that’s tailor-made for the 21st century is trying to get traction.

In an upscale showroom in Menlo Park, Calif., a low-slung, sleek, black sports car crouches on the floor. Manager Jeremy Cleland shows off some features of the 2008 Tesla Roadster.

“Now, this car here is 100 percent electric, operates off a lithium ion battery pack,” Cleland says. “It has 6,831 commodity cells. We get 244 miles per charge with this vehicle. And it actually charges back up to full in about 3 1/2 hours.”

Cleland calls them commodity batteries, because they’re readily available. They’re just like the ones you find in laptops. That kind of battery made this car possible.

The Roadster was largely the brainchild of Martin Eberhard, who developed the first electronic book reader back in the 1990s. He co-founded Tesla Motors in 2003 and now serves on the company’s advisory board. When Tesla started, “there was two things that everybody knew about electric cars: one was that they sucked, and the other was that they were dead.”

They were dead because California, under pressure from Detroit, had dropped the electric car from its zero-emissions mandate, and the Big Three manufacturers — Ford, Chrysler and General Motors — immediately shut down their electric-vehicle operations. GM recalled and crushed all of the cars it had dubbed the Ev1.

Revived Interest In Electric Cars

At about the same time, Eberhard had decided that electricity, rather than hydrogen, was the propulsion fuel of the future. He and his co-founders decided to target a niche not occupied by Detroit. Their goal was to “create a new segment of high-performance sports cars for people who loved them — but also for people who actually care about oil consumption, who care about their footprint on the Earth,” Eberhard said. “And with that, if we succeeded, we would build a brand that allows us to move into other segments of the market.”

With a carbon-fiber skin made in France, an aluminum frame made by Lotus in England and batteries made in Asia, the Tesla Roadster was born.

Today, the shells are flown in across the Atlantic, and the power trains are installed here. There’s no assembly line yet for the company, which is producing roughly 15 vehicles a week and expects to increase that figure to 30 by early 2009.

Here’s what production looks like now: Three workers roll around on stools under a car, lifting the 1,000-pound battery pack into place. After the batteries comes the drivetrain: an electric motor attached to the transmission. Each remarkably small, gleaming motor, lined up with others on a bench, is about the size of a big watermelon.

It’s the “highest efficiency motor in the world for this application,” says Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO. “Our motor is capable of putting out 300 horsepower, but if you were to look at an industrial 300-horsepower motor, it would be the size of a refrigerator.”

Fast Start On The Road, Not In Sales

A test ride, with company publicist Rachel Konrad at the wheel, shows what this $110,000 machine can do.

A few beeps tell you the car is on; the engine is so quiet, you wouldn’t know otherwise. It has a single-speed transmission that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. Step on the gas and it’s like a slingshot — and just as quiet. There’s no exhaust blast, just a gutsy whine when you floor it.

Tesla has delivered just 70 Roadsters. It aims to produce 1,500 next year and to begin producing a lower-priced sedan in 2011.

But the company is struggling. It had to lay off workers recently.

Dan Neil, who writes about the automotive industry for the Los Angeles Times, says Tesla “has dramatically changed the mental landscape of the electric car. And it was a fascinating proposal: An electric sports car — use the sex and glamour and cachet of sports cars to push this technology forward, and then generalize it with a family sedan.”

But Neil is skeptical that the company and its crew will be able to deliver on the Tesla dream.

“I think it’s a very close call whether they will achieve even half of what they’ve claimed they will achieve.”

Related NPR Stories

• Nov. 19, 2008

  Q&A: Pondering Options For Detroit’s Future

• May 13, 2008

  Nissan Builds Buzz With Plans For Electric Car

• Sep. 19, 2007

  Entrepreneur Hopes To Charge Electric-Car Market

The U.S. economy is settling into a deep trough that will likely worsen before it improves. The labor market continues to weaken at an accelerated pace, families are looking at trillions of dollars in lost wealth, and economic growth is heading south. What’s more, businesses and homeowners now have less access to credit, which means consumption and investment growth are also slowing.

The numbers tell the tale. The U.S. economy has lost jobs for 10 months in a row, with a decline of more than 500,000 in just the past two months, and a total of 1.2 million since the start of the year. This business cycle, which began in March 2001, has had the weakest employment growth since the Great Depression, leaving families with stagnant wages, declining benefit coverage, and deep indebtedness. In short, the vast majority of Americans are woefully unprepared for the current economic downturn and rolling credit crisis. Policymakers need to step in before the current economic downturn becomes even longer, deeper, and more painful for more Americans.

For a full analysis of the key indicators, please see the Economic Snapshot for November 2008.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in our three-part series on “Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President.” See part 1 here; part 3 will appear tomorrow.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton vowed to start building “a bridge” to the 21st century. President Bush’s White House, however, has moved backwards in time, operating on a 20th century model. Yesterday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF), with the New Democracy Project, released a new book called Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President. The book outlines new ideas for governing in the 21st century, updating the White House to reflect this century’s priorities. John Podesta, President and CEO of CAPAF, and Sarah Wartell, Executive Vice President for Management of CAPAF, explain that creating new White House offices and retooling existing ones “ensure[s] that a limited set of key objectives receive ongoing heightened attention” and allows the new president to make his priorities clear and begin setting his agenda from Day One.”

URBAN POLICY: President-elect Barack Obama’s Chicago background means that he will bring a fresh, pro-city perspective to a position that has not seen an urban face in decades.”To find a nominee with as strong a city pedigree as Obama’s, you have to go back to New York Gov. Al Smith, the Democratic candidate in 1928, or even further, to Grover Cleveland, who had been mayor of Buffalo,” the Washington Post wrote. Obama has already indicated he will create a White House Office of Urban Policy, a move Bruce Katz, vice president and founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, and Henry Cisneros, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, endorse in their chapter on revitalizing and updating the department. Metropolitan areas, they note, “have become the engines of national prosperity;” as such, federal policy “needs to shift from an outdated focus on ‘urban policy’ to an expansive, asset-driven perspective of ‘metro policy.’” The Office of Metropolitan Policy would work with key cabinet agencies, such as the Transportation Department, and “would actively engage the true metropolitan experts — local corporate, civic, and government leaders — in the design and implementation of new, cutting-edge policies.”

TECH POLICY: Science and technology “are the engines of our economic growth,” writes Neal Lane, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under President Clinton, but “we risk falling rapidly behind many other parts of the world” in discovery and applied technology. The OSTP should play a central role in the next administration, and should serve in the National Security Council, the National Economic Council, and the National Energy Council. “After eight years of political interference by the Bush White House” into science, Lane writes, the 44th president must ensure that policy decisions “will be informed by the best scientific evidence and analysis.” Lane recommends issuing an executive order within the first week of the next administration that emphasizes his commitment to relying on the best scientific evidence. Obama has already proposed creating a “chief technical officer” and wants to aggressively expand rural broadband connection. He has indicated he would move swiftly to overturn Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research, which Lane says should be done within the first week of his term.

ENERGY COUNCIL: CAPAF Senior Fellow Todd Stern and former Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes write, “Transforming the energy base of the economy will demand top-level participation across the executive branch.” The National Energy Council should thus include the secretaries of most cabinet agencies. We cannot transition to a low-carbon economy without enormous technological innovation,” the president should also create an interagency Energy Innovation Council “to develop an integrated, multiyear national energy research, development, and deployment strategy.” Stern and Hayes urge the next president to pledge to introduce energy and climate change legislation within his first 100 days. “The scope of this challenge is huge,” Stern and Hayes acknowledge; climate scientists warn the world will face catastrophe if it doesn’t immediately and seriously confront climate change. “Along with finding the right people to staff his Administration,” Time’s Joe Klein writes, “Barack Obama’s most important job now is to find the right words to inspire the nation to undertake this next great cause.”

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: At the start of his campaign, Obama pledged to create “a new Social Entrepreneur Agency to make sure that small non-profits have the same kind of support that we give small businesses.” He has promised to expand programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and to create a new Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Michele Jolin, a CAP Senior Fellow and the former Chief of Staff of the Council of Economic Advisers, advises the 44th president to create a new White House Office of Social Entrepreneurship to spur “greater innovation, creativity, and success in the non-profit sector.” The “non-profit sector can be a source of innovation and experimentation,” a testing ground for new government solutions. Jolin warns against creating a bulky bureaucracy or picking specific “winners”; instead, the government should “invest in a range of solutions designed to meet national goals.” “In short, the new president needs to focus on creating a policy environment that…fosters new entrepreneurship, improves nonprofits’ access to growth capital, and removes outdates tax and regulatory barriers to innovation.” The new White House office should create an annual multimillion dollar prize “for developing the most creative, sustainable, and high-impact solution to a defined social challenge,” Jolin suggests.

Bush Rolls Back Regulations

Having promised to “sprint to the finish” of his second term and “to remain focused on the goals ahead,” President Bush is “working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules” aimed at protecting workers, consumers and the environment, the Washington Post reports. “The administration wants to leave a legacy,” said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, “but across the board it means less protection for the public.” Indeed, the Bush administration is implementing over 90 new regulations which “would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo.” The wide array of new regulations includes proposals to undercut outpatient Medicaid services, weaken the Endangered Species Act, and allow increased emissions from older power plants. In some instances, the administration has allowed federal agencies to circumvent public feedback methods by limiting the period for public comment, “not allowing e-mailed or faxed comments or scheduling public hearings.” Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, meanwhile, “have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies.” The kind of regulations they are looking at are those imposed by Bush for “overtly political” reasons, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

CUTTING BACK MEDICAID: On Friday, the very same day that the Department of Labor announced that the U.S. unemployment rate is at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, Bush “narrowed the scope of services that can be provided to poor people under Medicaid’s outpatient hospital benefit.” The new regulation arrives at a time when states are considering limiting Medicaid eligibility and Americans are losing their jobs — and by extension, employer health benefits. According to the Kaiser Foundation, a 1 percent increase in unemployment results in 1 million more people enrolling in Medicaid and the State’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, and another 1.1 million more people becoming uninsured. Public hospitals and state officials immediately protested Bush’s proposed action, saying it would “reduce Medicaid payments to many hospitals at a time of growing need,” the New York Times reports. Ann Clemency Kohler, the executive director of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors, said that “the new rule is a pretty sweeping change from longtime Medicaid policy. Since the beginning of the program, states have been allowed to define hospital outpatient services. We have to question why the rule is being issued now, three days after the election, with a new administration coming in.”

GUTTING ENDANGERED SPECIES: In what would be the biggest change to Endangered Species Act since 1998, the Bush administration wants to allow federal agencies “to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.” Currently, federal agencies are required to consult with an independent agency — the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or the National Marine Fisheries Service — to determine whether a project would harm an endangered species. As Sharon Guynup of the Baltimore Sun points out, ”[T]aking wildlife experts out of the equation eliminates the checks and balances that have kept the [Chesapeake] bay’s bald eagles, shortnose sturgeon, Delmarva fox squirrels, piping plovers and other rare creatures from disappearing” and would only encourage agencies to “revert to pre-Endangered Species Act tactics of cutting big projects into a series of small ones that fall under the radar.” The draft rules also would also “bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats,” the AP reports.

INCREASING POLLUTION: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working on regulations that would allow increased emissions from older power plants while also rolling back existing air quality regulations for national parks and wilderness areas. While “the Clean Air Act requires older plants that have their lives extended with new equipment to install pollution-control technology if their emissions increase,” Bush’s proposed rule would “allow plants to measure emissions on an hourly basis, rather than their total yearly output. This way, plants could run for more hours and increase overall emissions without exceeding the threshold that would require additional pollution controls,” McClatchy reports. The industry-friendly rule — which the administration tried to implement in 2003, before it “was vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in July”– is now being opposed by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and Robert Meyers, the assistant administrator in charge of air issues. According to McClatchy, “the EPA official said that concerns in the agency were that the analysis justifying the rule change was weak and the administration didn’t plan to make the analysis public for a comment period, as is customary.” Three computer models, released by the EPA, have also shown that the proposed rule “would increase carbon dioxide emissions by 74 million tons annually,” ”roughly equivalent to the total annual CO2 emissions of about 14 average coal-fired power plants.”

Obama ‘to use executive orders’

Mr Obama’s team is scrutinising Mr Bush’s executive orders

US President-elect Barack Obama will seek to reverse Bush administration policies when he enters office on 20 January, his transition chief said.

John Podesta said executive orders by President George W Bush on issues such as stem cell research and oil drilling were at odds with Mr Obama’s views.

He said they could be easily repealed as no Congressional action was needed.

On Monday Mr Obama and Mr Bush will hold their first meeting since the Democrat’s election victory.

Mr Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters - Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven - will be given a tour of their new home at the White House.

Afterwards the president-elect and Mr Bush are expected to hold what Mr Obama has described as “substantive talks”.

‘Deliberate haste’

“I’m not going to anticipate problems. I’m going to go in there with a spirit of bipartisanship,” Mr Obama said on Friday, at his first news conference as president-elect.

You see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things I think are not in the interest of the country John Podesta

The meeting has been arranged with unusual haste - analysts say this is in part because the US is at war, and also the transition is taking place in the midst of an economic crisis.

Mr Obama has said that dealing with the economy is his top priority, and that he will move with “deliberate haste” to choose his cabinet.

Speaking on Fox News, Mr Podesta said Mr Obama’s team was working hard to “build up that core economic team”.

Mr Podesta said the incoming administration was also scrutinising many of the executive orders signed by President Bush “on stem cell research, on a number of areas”.

“You see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things I think are not in the interest of the country.”

He said the executive orders could be repealed or amended quickly by the new administration because no Congressional action was required.

“I think we’ll see the president do that,” Mr Podesta said.

One matter he highlighted was the Bush administration’s attempts to authorise oil and gas drilling in Utah.

“[Obama is] a transformational figure, and I think he’s going to transform the way government acts as we move forward,” Mr Podesta said.

The co-chair of Mr Obama’s transition team, Valerie Jarrett, said there could be a diverse, bipartisan cabinet.

“I’m confident his administration will include people from all perspectives,” she said.

Mr Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, pledged a smooth transition.

“If a crisis hits on January 21, they’re the ones who are going to have to deal with it. We need to make sure that they’re as well prepared as possible,” Mr Bolten said.

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