Actually, other than being awarded money to expand their EV program, Ford is the only "big three" that HASN'T taken TARP. See my comment below.

Of all the American car companies, Ford's the only one NOT taking taxpayer dollars. (http://www.directorship.com/despite-record-losses-ford-refuses-tarp/) except the stimulus money awarded to companies developing electric cars (Ford, Tesla, and Nissan being the awardees http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/2823).

Of the "big three", Ford is the only one in a position of making cars that people actually buy, and responding to the market and making improvements, BEFORE the recession hit. The other two just put out more ads.

True, Ford had, and still has, plenty of big trucks in its lineup. Some people still buy them, for all sorts of good reason. But Ford also has lots of small, efficient, award-winning cars (Focus, Fiesta) and I think they deserve some recognition for forward-thinking.

GM's green-washing themselves with the Volt, but in the meantime is struggling to make cars people actually use. The Volt's a hail-mary, a Batman grappling-gun for a company falling off a cliff. Their main product lines remain largely unchanged.

On the other hand, when I saw the cutaway of that motor, I too thought "Wow, that's way too much engineering and extra metal. How much of the energy produced is being wasted to push cams and pumps and heat?" I agree that EVs are the future for the mainstream market. Unfortunately, we can jump from a sinking ship onto a raft that isn't fully inflated. Until good batteries are forthcoming EVs are just not going to replace ICE yet.

Anyway, it's not like Ford's ignoring electric. They won that stimulus money for their EV program. And did you happen to look at the release schedule at the end of the press release? Battery-electric vans in 2010. Fully-electric Focus in 2011. Plug-in-hybrids in 2012. Seems to me that Ford's got the future well in hand, and in my opinion it's about time.

PS: We have two cars: an old Honda Accord, and a newer Honda Accord. So, please don't write this off as fanboyism.

@OCEAN CLAK
That's the point. Why is ViewSonic putting out yet ANOTHER vanilla netbook? At least put something new in there, like, I dunno, NVIDIA ION?

Right now, there are NO 10" ION netbooks in the market here in the States. ViewSonic, be innovators, not duplicators.

The more the better, bring it on Via! If it's compatible with Windows 7, more miserly than the Atom, has decent graphics (hopefully something along the lines of ION?), and is less expensive, I would love to see it on the market, and I might even buy it! Atom's done a lot to reduce size, cost, and power use, but we can always go thinner and lighter. Doesn't need to be more powerful than current systems if it's tinier.

@(Unverified) I agree. The form factors are similar. I suspect it will all come down to the software. Although the Courier's still vaporish, its software looks much much more refined and useful.

Maybe Entourage should use the Courier SW. ?

@fanboy Yeah have fun pressing a resistive screen with ski gloves on. :-/

@pcwolff Cool! Thanks for the info!

@(Unverified) ... and WinRemote for the iPhone ($1.99) has been around since before Android was a glint in Google's eye. Problem is, it doesn't do IR. So, uh, there you go.

I actually like the previous post's sedan grille better. This one looks like a fake chrome panel you'd find on a hotwheels car. I actually like the 3-bars motif better than most other grille treatments lately, and I'd be disappointed if Ford dropped that for new models. It's quite distinctive.

@magallanes If that's the case, your ">"s are backwards. :)