Sad At Sears

The other day, I made a run to Sears, to buy a battery for my Craftsman li-ion compact drill.  It's a great little tool.

I spent some time wandering through the hand-tool section, and realized that the old Craftsman brand is basically dead.  Craftsman tools used to all be made in the U.S.A, to a nice level of fit and finish.   Now I see two grades of Chinese made stuff--chintzy and somewhat nicer.  

I used to buy only Craftsman hand tools, but it looks like when I need new ones, I won't make an extra effort.  I can just as well buy Mexico/Taiwan sourced hand tools for slightly less money at Home Depot.

There are still mass market hand tools made in the U.S. with a no-B.S. warranty.  Check out Klien and Channel Lock.

MI LG Chem Plant: Public Loan, No Batteries

According to a local news report, the LG Chem battery plant recently built in Holland MI is sitting idle.  After building pre-production test units, the workers are now basically idled, spending their time cleaning the grounds, training, and wasting time.  

Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies. 

So what happened?  Simply, lack of demand from GM for Volt batteries. 

Full story here: http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/target_8/Volt-no-jolt-LG-Chem-employees-idle

Starbucks Poor

Ugh.  Medium coffee and a cookie, almost $5.  Why do I come here again?  

Vu1, what happened?

I am frankly frustrated.  I was excited to try a new kind of high efficiency, long life, dimmable, high color accuracy light bulb called an ESL, invented by this outfit called Vu1.  Vu1 started a plant in Czech Republic, built one batch of bulbs, which quickly sold out, then closed the plant and moved manufacturing to China.  For a long time now, they have been essentially quiet.  

C'mon Vu1, can you ship some bulbs for people to buy, already? 

Debate Thoughts

Automotive content in last night's presidential debate between Obama and Romney was minimal.

Obama, in the opening remarks, quickly mentioned the automotive industry as an economic recovery success story.

Romney later counter-punched, mentioning Fisker, Tesla, and Ener1 as money losing examples of Obama's green jobs initiative.  Romney also made a point to mention that the cost of gasoline has doubled since Obama took office.

Obama missed the chance to slam Romney for not supporting the taxpayer funded rescue of GM and Chrysler, a major tactical error.  

Romney +1 point, in my estimation.