A much leaner General Motors emerged from bankruptcy today with the U.S. government as a majority stakeholder. The new GM will be about 30 percent smaller and free of much of the debt plaguing the old GM. According to CEO Fritz Henderson, this resurrection marks the end of "business as usual."One sign that the new business will, indeed, be unusual: GM is exploring the option of selling new cars on Ebay. The plan would be tested in California and then rolled out nationwide if it works.Under the plan the vehicles will still be shipped to a network of dealers, but each dealer will have the option of putting new cars in their inventory up for sale on Ebay. The point of the plan is to make the actual buying of a car easier for potential customers who are already doing a lot of research for their purchase online. As a consumer convenience, this seems great. It eliminates the unpleasant haggling and helps set an actual market price for cars.But if sales are moving online, it seems wasteful to ship huge stocks of cars out to a network of dealers in the first place. It would seem the whole distribution system would be a lot more efficient if you only shipped cars that were actually sold, and sent them straight to their buyers, or to a nearby hub.
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