For the last decade or so, nostalgia has been big in the car biz. Does it work? If substance backs it up. To wit. . .
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Posts By: David C. Holzman
Despite the fact that batteries were probably invented several thousand years ago, and have been used in cars since the late 19th century, they remain functionally primitive, messy devices. Compared to the absolutely amazing hydrocarbons that power today’s transportation, batteries are klunky, dirty, heavy, and slow to replenish, and, well, feel free to add any faults that I’ve missed, or make them up if you want. Mock the balky battery! It certainly deserves it.
It’s actually a shame though, because if only the battery would smarten up, and lighten up, and clean up, the green future of automobiles might loom nigh, peak oil could become another footnote in the history of technological advance, and four dollar gasoline could be a forgotten nightmare. Imagine your favorite clean electricity source replenishing the new magic batteries at your home, office, or Main Street charging station–quickly, quietly, and cleanly.
Now we have the economic literature to confirm what we all know is happening: local governments using traffic citations to make up for revenue shortfalls. According to a paper in the February Journal of Law and Economics, published by the University of Chicago, “as the economy tanks, motorists may be more likely to see red and blue in the rearview.” Study authors Thomas Garrett, assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Gary Wagner from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, examined fourteen years of revenue and traffic citation data from counties in North Carolina. Revenues drop, traffic citations go up. Specifically, “a one percentage point decrease in last year’s local government revenue results in roughly a 0.32 percentage point increase in the number of traffic tickets the following year.”
I love my Accord. I love cornering so hard that the outer edges of my tires are always worn, despite good wheel alignment. I love gearing down with the stick, and feeling the surge as the VTEC spools up and hits the sweet spot. Love that sound! To be sure, it’s no Boxster, but it IS Salieri to the Boxster’s Mozart. I don’t want no stinkin’ hybrid. I’ll take my internal combustion straight, like my bourbon. I don’t want an EV. In my nightmares, Better Place has taken over, and I’m driving a podmobile with a short range and the slows. But the twin specters of global climate disruption and peak oil are a dark cloud that follows me wherever I drive. I believe that we must replace fossil fuels with efficiency measures and renewables with all due haste or civilization will crumble in this century.
Not long ago, apropos of I don’t remember what, I posted on this site about a 1960 Imperial and its owner, Jim Byers. Byers had been an impressario of jazz for the Kennedy Center. I met him in the mid-90s while photographing his car. Byers saw my post on TTAC and emailed me. He’d replaced the ’60 with a ’67. Coincidentally, I had fled Boston’s snows for several weeks. We arranged to meet down by the Potomac so that I could test drive the ’67.
“Your camera can create clean cars.” That was the subject head on a mass mailing I received from the Sierra Club’s Greg Haegele. This was merely a gimmick—a “photo” petition to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is considering rescinding the Bush Administration’s decision to block California and other states from implementing CO2 emissions standards for cars, and the Sierra Club is leading the cheering section. While I am all in favor of reducing CO2 emissions and fast, while rescinding the Bush legislation might well be a good idea, I’m dismayed by the way so many advocates of reducing greenhouse gases focus on micromanaging automotive reductions rather than on the big picture. To be sure, Ann Mesnikoff of the Sierra Club says the group is also working on cap and trade, a big picture approach to greenhouse gas mitigation. But what is it with anti-anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crusaders and cars?
Twenty-eight massive serpents were found in an open pit coal mine in Colombia, by a team led by Jason Head of the University of Toronto at Mississauga. Luckily for the researchers (unluckily for the producers of Jackass), the snakes had been dead for nearly 60 million years. Titanoboa cerrejonensis, could have swallowed my old gen-1 Saturn or a Mazda Miata. Snakes can devour beasts that are roughly as massive as they are, and the 42-45 foot long snake weighed around 2,500 lb. fully grown, roughly equal to the aforementioned machines. Or 500 lb. more than a Lotus Elise. At almost five times the weight of the green anaconda, the world’s heaviest living snake, Titanoboa’s diameter would have been greater than the height of said Elise.
I love internal combustion. The sound of my Accord is Salieri to the Boxster’s Mozart, while the distinctive putt-putt of the VW [Real] Beetle is like some endearing melody from childhood, or maybe the rap version of Eensy Beensy Spider (yes, there is such a thing). The ICE is probably the most refined machine on the planet. In contrast, electric drive has all the elegance and soul of a washing machine. Nonetheless, I think global heating threatens civilization, and so I drive with guilt. In so far vain attempts to assuage that guilt, I skim anything dealing with capturing and sequestering carbon, in the so far vain hope that in this version of the Iliad, Achilles won’t die, and I’ve attended talks on the subject at places like MIT. I’ve even concocted wild schemes for personal absolution like cutting my trees and burying them in the peat under my backyard, and growing new trees. Nothing helps. And forget spewing particulates into the atmosphere, because even if that mitigated global heating without bringing on a new ice age–fat chance that we’d get it just right–it would do nothing about ocean acidification from CO2, something that will likely kill off most of our seafood. But now comes a little ray of hope from the 10 January issue of New Scientist.
When I went car shopping in the early ‘90s, my priorities were fun-to-drive, reliability, and economy. Style— not so much, or so I thought. But the first time I saw a Saturn, I knew instantly what it was, although I’d never seen a photo, since the car was conspicuously absent from the ads. As soon as Consumer Reports gave Saturn a preliminary blessing for reliability, I gave it my consideration. Ultimately, I became so smitten that I didn’t bother to re-look at the Integra after I discovered to my great chagrin, in the dealer’s lot, that the turning circle was nearly as big as the namesake planet’s diameter.
The young woman in a Corolla had the slows, yet was swerving as if drunk. When I pulled alongside of her at a stoplight, I saw that she was texting. As we took off, after the light changed, she continued to text and swerve and text and swerve. Two years ago, University of Utah professor Frank Drews told me that an estimated 60 percent of teen drivers text while driving. Activities such as texting, with multiple steps that take your eyes off the road for more than two seconds, are far more dangerous than talking on the cell phone. This according to the 100 Car Study by Virginia Tech researchers, in which video cameras recorded drivers over a year. For example, dialing and talking were responsible for equal numbers of cell phone-related mishaps and near mishaps, despite the fact that far more time is spent talking than dialing. And now, there may be a technological fix…
Unlike the New Beetle, an impractical fashion statement of a car, the (Real) Beetle eschewed style for utility. The ads of my youth played that up relentlessly, amusingly, logically. The Beetle was cheap. It was a cinch to fix. Fender-bender? Just undo several bolts, pop the old one off, put a new one on. The car was so tightly constructed that you had to open a window to close the door. Heck, the Beetle was so tight it could float. “If Senator Kennedy had been driving a VW, he’d be President today,” the National Lampoon opined.
The quest for more oil and natural gas is turning the oceans into a cacophony, from the perspective of whales and dolphins. These are among the smartest creatures on the planet; a dolphin can recognize itself in the mirror, a hallmark of intelligence. (There are certain difficulties performing the experiment with whales.) Airguns used in seismic surveys for oil and gas, peak at up to 259 decibels and can be repeated every 10 seconds for months. The noise interferes with the animals’ feeding, communication, mating, and navigation, and may be involved in beachings. Furthermore, these sounds travel more than 2,000 miles from the source, according to an alliance of wildlife groups attending the United Nations Environment Programme’s Convention on Migratory Species conference in Rome. There are 90 seismic survey ships in the world, and one quarter are in use in any one day, according to a report released at the conference, “Ocean Noise: Turn it Down.”
Nuclear fusion is the preferred deus ex machina in the minds of some who long for cheap, abundant energy, although fusion will never be either. The challenge: containing the plasma fuel that heats to millions of degrees inside a “bottle” made of magnetic fields produced by a superconducting magnet kept at absolute zero a few feet away. The concept’s been likened to trying to hold water inside rubber bands. A press release from MIT News entitled “New Insights on Fusion Power” celebrates the kind of esoteric advances that indicate that fusion lies somewhere beyond the Hubble Deep Field in the cosmology of future energy sources (i.e. just as distant as when I first wrote about it in 1978).
General Motors is on a crash course towards bankruptcy. The company once known as the world’s largest automaker is burning cash so rapidly most experts agree that it won’t last through next year. Although Ford has more money at hand, having mortgaged everything up to and including its logo, the Blue Oval is also spending its way towards C11. Chrysler? DOA. In response, Congress recently approved massive loan guarantees for the industry. But Motown’s supporters are clamoring for another, equally massive handout. As our duly elected representatives argue how best to save Detroit, its champions warn of looming disaster. Still it must be asked: should The Shrinking Three be left to face market forces unaided by Uncle Sugar?
The biggest surprise at last Friday’s Consumer Reports’ press shindig: no plug-in electric – gas hybrid Chevy Volt. Not a mock-up. Not a mention. Oh, GM was there– with two hydrogen fuel cell Chevy Equinoxes. So never mind all that talk of “reinventing the automobile.” At “The Future of the Car,” the car of the future’s just like your current ride, only cleaner and, mostly, a lot less practical.
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