Wait, I'm loving this HUMMER?

I still think that the coolest overlooked option to inject cash and interest back into Detroit's manufacturing base would be to make any auto industry bail-out money contingent on rapid total transition to either a wind turbine company, or a photo-voltaic producer . . . but perhaps there's dollahs in bikes too . . .

As recently reported in the London Evening Standard, European automobile manufacturers are
sensing that trend is favoring livable cities, walking and biking, and ditching dirty transportation options to the obscurity of the century in which they were born . . . and these automakers are BUILDING BIKES!  From TransportMichigan:  more . . .

"...as Detroit planning consultant Toni Griffin has suggested, it may be time for Detroit to start thinking in terms of "transportation innovation," not just automobile innovation, especially as the world continues to change. Ford dabbled in mass transit after the energy crises of the '70s, and no clear lines divided the field's pioneers a century ago. Bike mechanic and bike commuter Henry Ford got his first Detroit job at a streetcar works. The Wright Brothers, too, built their aviation career from a bicycle shop, now housed in Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn. Even Detroit tire manufacturers got started producing for the bicycle market."

"De-motorization" is already a well-documented phenomenon among Japanese youth, who feel that "having a car is so 20th century."

This is all good news . . . and of course we're talking about European car makers, not American ones yet, but ideas spread quickly, and cities are built on the scale of the dreams of their inhabitants, so it wouldn't take long to transform even the sprawliest burb to a Euro-style Burg!