Sources used in this document:

As the chart depicts, there is indeed large demand. However sales have dropped due in part to the financial crisis. Ford and GM therefore must be aware that consumers may be demand electric cars but may be unwilling to pay large sums of money for them. Below is an explanation why.

Brief overview of the Financial Crisis and its implications on Ford and GM

To begin, in order to understand many of the initiatives both Ford and GM took in regards to their restructuring, I believe it prudent to understand the underlying causes of such action. As many individuals realize, a massive wave of mortgage defaults was partially responsible for the collapse of Ford and GM as a whole. However the implications of these actions on Ford and GM are often overlooked. The financial crisis resulted from a mixture of both bad judgment and unethical decision making. Frank Vogel, cofounder of Transparency International, a nonprofit organization charged with ranking nations by degree of corruption remarked, "so many people engaged in so many aspects of finance have lost their ethical compass and put short-term personal gains above other considerations" (Francis, 2008). Logically, the more we value something the more risk we are willing to take to attain them, and unfortunately ethical decision making falls to the wayside. Continuing, although the crisis itself is rather complex, the ethical factors surrounding the crisis are far easier to understand. David DeRosa, a Finance Professor at Yale University eloquently stated the