The Difference Between AC and DC Electric Motors
It looks like General Motors is getting ready to lay off a whole bunch of people in the tens of thousands. Recently Mr. Kirk Kerkorian has been trying to buy up more shares of General Motors and continue to take over the company. It makes sense from his standpoint to buy General Motors stock on the cheap and then repair the mistakes and watch the stock go back up again. He stands to make a tremendous amount of money when General Motors recovers.
With Lovejoy as the point man, a contrite GM methodically went about repairing the damage, promising miffed dealers that the auto maker would keep out of the retail end of the business. The damage control worked.
These days dealers’ complaints center, not on distrust of the auto maker as a potential retail competitor, but on getting more hot products - hardly a novel dealer gripe.
"I just had a meeting with some California dealers and they had nothing but good things to say," says Cowger. "I spend a lot of time with dealers. I ask them what we can do better. The conversations are good. If they have problems, they tell me."
Cowger says that, in retrospect, GM should not have tried to get GTOs to every Pontiac dealership because regional demands vary for the all-new vehicle with the revived nameplate.
Direct current or DC electric motors work for situations where speed needs to be controlled. DC motors have a stable and continuous current. DC motors were the first and earliest motors used. They were found, however, to not be as good at producing power over long lengths. Electric companies found using DC motors to generate electric did not work because the power was lost as the electric was transmitted. Brush DC motors use rings that conduct the current and form the magnetic drive that powers the rotor. Brushless DC motors use a switch to produce the magnetic drive that powers the rotor. Direct current motors are often found in appliances around the home.
"Our dealer relations have come a long, long way in the last few years," says Gary Cowger, GM’s president of North American operations. "Bill Lovejoy did a great job there."
Lovejoy, who is now on the board of directors for United Auto Group, the nation’s second-largest dealership chain, was named GM’s fix-it man in 2000 after the auto maker acknowledged it made a big mistake with a plan to buy and run up to 800 dealerships, a proposal that infuriated GM dealers. They saw it as violating territory rights.
One of the board members who is on Kerkorian’s side has left the board and one has to wonder if he has left the board because he was thrown out or because General Motors is getting ready for massive layoffs and they do not want their main guy involved in board decisions when employees are being laid off. Because in the future the employee unions would not respect the board members who were on the board at the time of the layoffs.
William Lovejoy retired from General Motors Corp. two years ago but the former vice president of sales and marketing is still remembered at corporate headquarters as the guy who fixed the auto maker’s banged-up relationship with its dealers.