Chinese automaker launches ‘leccy lizzie • The Register.

So while the sad state of the American automobile manufacturers continues to alarm us and decline, now even the Chinese car makers are getting into the hybrid car market.  

BYD Auto has apparently advanced enough to think that they can begin selling this F3DM plug-in hybrid car here in the U.S. in 2010.  Advanced enough that financial luminary Warren Buffett purchased a 9.9 percent stake in the company just a few months ago.

What is going to happen to the United States as a culture and nation when we don’t have any heavy manufacturing any more?  A culture that doesn’t build anything, it seems to me, is one that will stagnate and become irrelevant.  I don’t know about you, but being irrelevant isn’t particularly high on my list of national achievements.