The so-called “Cash for Clunkers” legislation demonstrates everything that’s wrong with a political process playing in the market arena.  It’s legislation that will do little to improve car sales. But it will drive traffic to dealers—mostly credit bandits scurrying around trying to buy new cars they can’t really afford.

There is one fundamental issue which restricts the usefulness of either the House version or the Senate (Feinstein-sponsored eco-version) of the legislation. Simply put, many current owners of low-value vehicles are unlikely to possess the resources to acquire outright for cash or qualify for financing on a new vehicle. Such owners are typically used car buyers, not new car buyers, and are likely the second, third, or later owner of said vehicle.

The benefit of the voucher diminishes as the value of the new vehicle increases (on a percentage basis), so customers with larger passenger vehicles or trucks looking to buy new of comparable size receive less perceived value from the voucher.

And worse, the value of the voucher limits qualifying vehicles to those which have an actual cash value (ACV) below the voucher value and also have EPA combined mileage rating low enough to meet the required mileage threshold gain or the limit to qualify in the first place (18 mpg for passenger cars in HR2571 or 17 mpg for all classes in the Feinstein bill).

The combination of these two factors limits the pool of vehicles to mostly older large passenger cars, SUVs, and trucks. Smaller vehicles, such as more recent vintage Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas, would not qualify for vouchers, as their combined mileage rating exceeds the maximum threshold value already in either bill and are likely worth more than the voucher anyways.

One key provision is that the vehicle traded must be owned and insured by the current owner for at least one year and must be in “drivable condition.” This will limit the formation of a “secondary market” of voucher-eligible vehicles and hence will not raise the minimum value on clunkers sitting on dealer lots. (It cannot be assumed that everyone will be honest and it’s not far fetched to believe that there will be fraud on the ownership requirements.)

The one category of vehicles that will likely gain the most from this program: the compact truck segment, such as the Ford Ranger, Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier, and, perhaps, the Chevy Colorado. The base models of these vehicles tend to be relatively inexpensive, with four-cylinder engines. Owners can maximize the value of the voucher on a percentage basis on a price basis, especially when manufacturer rebates and dealer discounts are included.

And the maximum voucher could be obtained by buyers coming out of larger engine passenger vehicles (such as an old Monte Carlo) trading for a new light truck to gain the bigger mileage boost to qualify for the biggest voucher.  These buyers need transportation (and financial assistance) in order to get a new vehicle – and the type of vehicle may be less important to them.

While this “cash for clunkers” program appears to be successful in Germany, there are other factors at work there. For example, small cars are more prevalent in Europe than in the USA (due to energy costs). Then there’s the qualifying restriction; it’s simply based on vehicle age: nine years or older. And the fact that the rebate is equivalent to the German VAT paid on smaller mass-market cars. Many manufacturers also matched the government rebate, making lower cost vehicles even more affordable. [NB: larger vehicles, particularly in the luxury class, saw very little benefit from the program.]

The net benefit of this program will not necessarily come from sales of new vehicles, but rather a government-sponsored marketing effort (courtesy of the news media and dealer promotion) to drive traffic to new car dealers.  Without a doubt, owners of low value vehicles of any type will consider exploring a new car purchase in response to the hype of vouchers providing a minimum value on their existing vehicle. But most of them probably can’t qualify for financing (and don’t have the cash anyways), so they’ll either leave disappointed or end up driving home in a newer used car.

All in all, don’t expect the proposed Cash4Clunkers legislation to create a big boost in U.S. new car sales. It’s just a promotion by the government to make it look like it’s a good thing for the environment and the economy.  But what’s really scary: it foretells a future where the government will really start to modify our taste for fun, powerful (but less fuel efficient) vehicles through coercive taxes and penalties—while promoting Pelosi-cars through government giveaways.

The Senate should kill this wasteful legislation now before things really get crazy. May I suggest you call yours?

I drive a Prius regularly. It’s time to correct a few myths about hybrids:

1. A hybrid’s drivetrain is the most important part of the car

Sometimes a drivetrain is just a drivetrain. The hybrid gets all of its fuel from gasoline, so it’s just a way to drive a bigger car with a smaller engine and save gas. The hype from those who haven’t driven them much is about saving the planet, and using less gas is certainly an environmental benefit. But, really, the Prius is just a well-built practical car with good economics (100k miles, great maintenance record, cheap fuel cost, paid off, etc)—with enough cachet that you don’t look poor when you drive it. If you really want to save the planet, ride a bicycle (which I do, several days a week), walk, or make your own fuel somehow.

2. The Prius is a lousy car

Jay Shoemaker’s recent review of the 2010 Prius totally missed the point of the car. He essentially claims it is a weird car and wasn’t fun to drive. He’s entitled to his opinion, and it’s clear that he shouldn’t own a Prius (Jay should stick with the sports cars and performance sedans that he likes so much). However, for the rest of us, the Prius is an A to B car. It’s a grocery cart. It’s a household transportation appliance.

The Toyota Prius isn’t the car for everyone, but it is a nice little practical car, if that’s what you need. Green-evangelists and automotive pundits miss this entirely, though for drastically different reasons. Boring A to B cars for boring people like myself; they should probably be evaluated by different standard than a fun car that happens to be able to carry people and cargo. The volume and shape of the cargo area is more important than the 0 – 60 time.

3. Hybrids are just like any other car

Like switching from a manual to an automatic, switching to a hybrid drivetrain takes some getting used to. Toyota went to extraordinary lengths to hide this fact, but the fundamentals shine through. My girlfriend, who has driven the Prius for most of it’s 100k miles, is weirded out by the jerks and the abrupt RPM changes that happen when a automatic transmission shifts. It sounds like it’s CVTs and hybrids for us for the “family” cars from here on out. Personally, I’m most comfortable in a manual or a hybrid, since that’s what I’ve driven for most of my miles. No wonder the guy who panned the 2010 Prius didn’t like it.

4. Hybrids are the only “real” way to save gas

In addition to driving the Prius, I’ve owned a VW Jetta TDI. It was a wonderful car (except for the accursed 01M 4-speed automatic transmission), and its mileage approached that of the Prius. My 500cc Kawasaki Vulcan regularly exceeded 50mpg, and it only cost $4500 brand new off of the showroom floor. Also, I hear that a Geo Metro can exceed 50mpg. The easiest way to save gas is just to make the vehicle smaller and lighter.

The term “Hybrid” isn’t code for “saving the world.” Hybrid is code for a smooth efficient drivetrain that some people don’t like because it’s not “fun”, whatever that means. “Hybrid” does mean “I get to drive a bigger on the same amount of scary foreign oil”. Fortunately, the Prius and the Volkswagen TDI series are both small cars — so, if you were going to be driving a Ford Explorer, they do translate to real-world savings.

Volvo deserves its What Car? Green Car award. Saving gas the conventional way is just as valid. “Hybrid” isn’t magic anything, though it does help to save a little gas. The Prius would be a grocery cart with any engine.

Three years ago yesterday, on a Jalopnik-TTAC joint podcast, a certain Robert Farago foresaw the rise of a “hybrid aesthetic” in automotive design. In order to break into the consumer psyche, went his logic, a hybrid car must look unmistakably like . . . a hybrid. Fast forward to 2009 and the new Honda Insight seems to confirm that looking like a hybrid means looking like a Toyota Prius. Chevy’s Volt might someday become the third member of the Prian party, while the forthcoming Lexus HS250h looks to be a Prius rebadge of GM-level laziness. If hybrids are the cars of the future, are we doomed to inherit a world of identical, beetle-shaped rides?

The obvious explanation for Prian design influence run amok is found in the wind tunnel. The outgoing Prius boasted a low-low coefficient of drag (Cd) of .26, making for one slippery hybrid. But the current Mercedes S-Class and Lexus LS460 also earn the exact same rating. For a four-door, the Prius’s CdA (Cd multiplied by area) is also surprisingly good at 6.24. But that’s not much better than, say, a 1991 Subaru Legacy which scores a 6.81.

The point is that the pursuit of wind tunnel efficiency does not lead inexorably to the Prian form, like some aerodynamic Mandelbrot set. There’s more to the wave of Prius-aping than mere laws of nature. The hybrid, writ large, has entered the American psyche. And it looks just like a certain Toyota.

To many Americans, the outgoing Prius was more than just a car. Through eight years of George Bush’s presidency, the Prius became symbolic statement of iconic power. It would not be unfair to say that, in 21st Century American iconography, the Prius took on the role of the Volkswagen Beetle to Bush’s Richard Nixon. It’s distinctive looks, unsullied by visual association with humdrum “regular cars,” created an undeniable statement. The bumper sticker had wagged the car.

The always-incisive cartoon South Park tapped into the Prian archetype in its send-up of self-satisfied hybrid drivers, “Smug Alert!.” The episode portrays the “Pious” and “Hindsight” as near-identical Prius-alikes, a subtle metaphor for the lockstep conformity of their “enlightened” owners. And with Honda’s latest hybrid so sincerely flattering the Prius’s looks, the South Park critique clearly had some merit.

But the real threat presented by the Priusification of the hybrid sector is not a looming cloud of smug. Rather, the very soul of automotive expression could become a victim of trend-following. Mass-market automotive offerings have long lost any stylistic luster, but more profitable “dedicated hybrid” models offer new opportunities to shape the automotive zeitgeist. In the face of this opportunity, automotive stylists seem to have raised the white flag, surrendering to (and thereby reinforcing) the power of the Prian archetype.

And this doesn’t just hasten the dystopic day when car buyers are forced to choose between a few flavors of hump-backed hybrid. Chasing the Prius’s self-defined segment too closely forces a comparison of the pretender to the original in which the newcomer may not fare well. The new Insight seems to have already fallen victim to this vicious dynamic. With so little separating the driving experiences of the Toyota and the Honda, reviewers are forced to conclude that the Insight is a slightly cheaper Prius without usable back seats.

Beyond this model-specific self-sabotage, the pursuit of the “dedicated hybrid” segment creates other dangerous temptations for automakers with hybrid ambitions. The early stages of the hybrid market favored unique models that identified their owners as early adopters. But as hybrid technology filters into the mainstream, Prius-like “dedicated hybrid” models will lose their unique appeal. If South Park jabs doesn’t get ’em, technological proliferation will.

Honda may have traded in its Hybrid Civic and Accord efforts for the Insight due to weak sales, but it may well have missed out on the “dedicated hybrid’s” moment in the sun. The third generation of the Prius hits dealerships this year, and early reports indicate that its blockbuster predecessor has been relentlessly improved upon in typical Toyota fashion. Oh, and the looks haven’t changed much. Honda’s decision to attack the Prius on price alone may run into some heavy competition.

If the Insight sells like gangbusters, the Farago principle will play out with a grim determinism. This scenario would not only prove that the hybrid market still demands visual representations of eco-awareness; it would also permanently cement the Prian form as the distillation of this hybrid aesthetic. But the automotive future is simultaneously too exciting and mundane to be represented by a single, instantly-recognizable (and baggage-carrying) form.

On the one hand, hybrid technology must eventually enter the mundane realm of the Fit, Corolla and Matrix. On the other, truly cutting-edge technology must be packaged in ever-more inspiring new forms. Not just another Prius.

Britain’s recently presented budget contains a new vehicle scrappage incentive, making Old Blighty the final major European economy to jump on the alleged “green stimulus” bandwagon. Thirteen other European nations, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, have introduced similar measures, which provide government incentives to new car buyers who scrap an older vehicle. But will Britain’s new program (which offers up to $2,900 in incentives) have the same salutary effects on new car sales as France (March sales up 8 percent) and Germany’s (March new registrations up 40 percent)? Closer to home, how will the solidified Euro-consensus on scrappage schemes affect the chances of a similar program in the US? Although the programs have already been hailed as the savior of European new car-sales, these things don’t always translate well across different markets. Under a critical lens, issues with the latest British plan indicate a number of problems with bringing such a program stateside.

Britain’s plan to provide about $3K towards a new car purchase per 10-year-or-older scrapped vehicle seeks to limit the measure’s impact on an already-tight budget, likely in response to Germany’s massive oversubscription to the program. As our Bertel Schmitt has reported, what began as a €1.5 billion program has ballooned into a €5 billion expenditure. To limit this kind of cost overrun, the British plan (sensibly enough) limits the offer to “only” 300,000 purchases. But beyond the numerical limitation, the British government is also requiring the “auto industry” to provide half of the incentive, about $1,500 per car. Who will be responsible for providing the second half of this incentive (importers, retailers, manufacturers)? Still no word from Downing Street.

Commentators like The Telegraph‘s Mike Rutherford have expressed concerns as to whether the industry will actually step up with the extra $1,500. It’s safe to say that the industry’s  enthusiasm level likely won’t equal the government’s, which will see its modest outlay more than returned by new vehicle VAT receipts. Moving past the question of whether this is a $1,500 incentive not a $3K incentive, Rutherford isn’t alone in expressing serious doubt as to whether consumers will materially benefit from the measure.

A web-based auto retail manager defines part of the problem to Bloomberg: “The U.K. car market is entirely different to those on the continent in that buyers typically change their car after three years when the finance agreement and warranty expire.” Besides a possible shortage of older cars to be scrapped, there’s also an issue of new vehicle availability, as imports to the Isles have been cut in line with falling demand.

And, as Rutherford points out, many 10-year or older vehicles may be worth considerably more than even the manufacturer-matched full $3K (especially considering Britain is crawling with classic and near-classic car nuts). Even more troubling, the incentive could end up shrinking the massive incentives already offered by manufacturers on new cars. $7,000 incentives on Fords and 40 percent discounts on Opels could dry up in the face of government stimulus, actually creating worse conditions for new car buyers. Throw in the likelihood of a dramatic drop-off in sales when the stimulus runs out (assuming it functions as planned) and the devastating effects on newer used car prices and fleet values (estimated to wipe out nearly $9 billion in value nationwide) and the British plan appears fraught with potential problems, even having learned from the experiences of continental cash-for-clunker experiments.

Back in the states, there seems to be little doubt that some form of cash-for-clunker scrappage bill will become law. Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs is already upgrading FoMoCo’s rating on the twin assumptions that GM and Chrysler will enter bankruptcy and that a clunker bill will be passed. Two competing bills have already been introduced (Tom Harkin’s S.3737 and Betty Sutton’s H.R.1550) and industry lapdog John Dingell has promised to include a similar provision in the upcoming climate change bill. This despite warnings from Britain that clunker bills are extremely inefficient as an environmental measure at best, and could actually increase carbon emissions.

The major concern with a possible US clunker bill is the indication that only “domestically produced” vehicles would qualify for federal bob. Both Harkin and Sutton’s bills have some form of “Buy American” stipulations. Harkin’s is particularly protectionist, while Sutton’s includes vouchers for certain vehicles built in North America (although at lower levels than vehicles “manufactured in the US”). Dingell will certainly try his darndest to funnel voucher money directly to Detroit. Though these measures seek to mitigate a lack of manufacturing stimulus that has been a noted criticism of European scrappage bills, yet more unintended consequences await such provisions: namely challenges on free-trade terms from Canada and Europe.

But such measures will be necessary to ensure any benefit at all to the US industry, which has weaknesses in its small-car portfolio, where scrappage-stimulated sales have been boosted the most. Absent environmental and manufacturing benefits (assuming the US wants to avoid a nasty trade war), a scrappage bill will benefit only scrap yards and new-car dealers. And yet an overabundance of dealers is fundamental to the auto industry’s wider woes. Though Europe’s scrappage results look good on paper to a sales-starved US industry, the consequences don’t seem to outweigh the benefits.

A few weeks of vacation from the blogosphere’s non-stop news cycle can leave a blogger feeling a bit behind the times. Two weeks is an eternity in internet time, but stepping away from the barrage of news, spin, hype and hysteria is good for the sense of perspective. Especially if the down time is spent exploring countries on the local typical family vehicle, complete with two wheels, four speeds and about 100ccs of thundering power. Beyond the sheer novelty of seeing entire families commuting on a moped (“Daddy, Nguyen isn’t staying on his side of the pillion seat”), travel in the developing world shows how insulated America is from the transportation realities of the rest of the world. If the $1,000 entry to the world of moped ownership is a major (if attainable) hurdle for workaday Vietnamese, even sub-$10K vehicles face what a GM sales release might call “a challenging sales environment.” Try to explain the “green premium” for hybrids and plug-in vehicles to an auto-aspirational third-worlder, and watch as the idea of paying more for less room and power draws only puzzled bemusement. Hair shirts, it appears, are strictly a fad for the western and wealthy. Case in point: the world’s first plug-in hybrid, the Chinese BYD F3DM.

BYD’s Corolla-aping PHEV raised more than a few eyebrows (many skeptical) when specs and concepts first appeared. Warren Buffet’s hefty investment into the cell phone battery maker quieted the skeptics and gave green-hued futurists a license to thrill. A 60-mile plug-in range, a multiple-mode hybrid system and a price tag under $25K had American hypermilers factoring in local tax credits and greengasming at the fantasy of it all. But in the world’s new largest market for automobiles, even $20K is a huge amount of money. And it turns out that one society’s eco-fantasy is another society’s overpriced, overly-complex answer to a question nobody has asked.

Xinhua reports (yes, nearly a week ago) that BYD’s F3DM has utterly failed to attract Chinese consumers; the firm has sold only 80 models since it went on sale in December. Apparently 20 of those were bought by the city of Shenzhen (think China’s Detroit) with the rest going to the local branch of China Construction Branch. In fact, BYD never even attempted to target private consumers with the model, despite the fact that an F3DM costs 30-40 percent less than a Toyota Prius (which only sold about 3,500 units in China between 2006 and 2008). Even the government isn’t rushing to put its citizens in the alleged volks-hybrid, offering a $7K hybrid subsidy to fleet buyers only.

Even with government help bringing the F3DM’s price under $20K, fleet sales aren’t as strong as BYD had hoped. Shenzen’s plan to buy more for the city’s taxi fleet is on hold as even BYD officials admit that the price needs to come down. BYD’s CEO Wang Chuanfu says that increasing production volume could help bring the F3DM’s price to a more-realistic $15K, but without institutions stepping up to prime the sales pump, the promise of a sub-$10K PHEV (after government subsidies)—and mass market sales—remain out of reach.

And even though the F3DM isn’t dependent on a charging-station infrastructure, price isn’t the only concern keeping buyers away. BYD faces an image challenge having never made anything more car-like than a laptop battery just a few years ago, and even its much-vaunted battery technology seems to struggle to meet on-paper performance numbers. According to Xinhua (hardly bomb-throwers when it comes to Chinese businesses), the 60-mile electric range is only attainable driving at a steady 30 mph. And recharging from a home wall socket takes nine hours.

But these tradeoffs and the correlating plug-in efficiency rewards only have meaning in the context of price, and here the lesson for Chevy’s Volt are plain to see. GM’s $40K profitless wonder defies fiscal logic on a comparable scale, offering only the most image-conscious greenies a value proposition worth even including. Like the F3DM, the Volt’s target audience (if not consumer) is the government, and the same increased volume-decreased price mirage lingers on the horizon. But unlike China (BYD expects its sales to double for the second year in a row, hitting 400,000 units), America’s demand for automobiles is in double-digit decline. And that includes demand for the much cheaper hybrids that are already available in the marketplace.

But we don’t have theorize about private PHEV sales levels for much longer. Shenzhen rolled out hybrid subsidies for private consumers this month which would cut the price of an F3DM in half, to about $10K. This coincides with a BYD plan to launch “a mass marketing excercise to promote the car to private buyers.” But if the car-crazed, yet pragmatic Chinese do start buying the F3DM, it will be at half the original MSRP, a feat that GM can’t hope to pull off with its Volt. Unless they just slap in powertrains from BYD, which is hedging its consumer-market gamble by offering to license technology to Western firms. In any case, BYD’s consumer sales push will give us some idea of private PHEV demand (and its required stimulus) by the time the Volt launches. Sales trends are easier to follow when they start at 80 units per quarter.

Do you ever feel trapped in Monty Python movie?  The B&B discussion following Edward Niedermeyer’s post, CARB So Crazy: California To Ban Black Cars, made me think so. First soldier: What? A swallow carrying a coconut? King Arthur: I could grip it by the husk! First soldier: It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut. King Arthur: Well, it doesn’t matter. First soldier: Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right? King Arthur: Please! First soldier: Am I right? I’m no Michael Palin or Graham Chapman, but I’ve got an idea or two about white and black colored cars.

I track mpg with the fortitude of a deranged obsessive-compulsive disordered person checking to make sure the front door of his house is locked. Each time I top off my tank, I record how many miles I’ve driven since my last fill-up. I note whether that tank of gas was expended running about town or on the highway, whether I predominantly used the A/C, and I calculate the fuel efficiency. My ’05 V6 Jeep Liberty has about 58K miles on the odo and I have mileage readings for 54,478 of ’em. I’ve also tracked the mileage of my ’01 4-cylinder Honda Accord over the last 35K miles. Both of my vehicles are metallic black.

The California Air Resources Board proposes to regulate the reflectivity of car paint and windows to increase fuel efficiency. They theorize that lighter colored cars get better gas mileage because the roof reflects more sunlight, so the air conditioner doesn’t have to run as often due to lower interior temperatures. This is great news. Overall, my Jeep gets 16.35 miles per gallon.  All I have to do is paint her white and my fuel efficiency will jump . . . how much?

Don’t know. Although CARB’s public presentation contains all sorts of numbers, charts and graphs, they neglect to reference a single study that validates their claim. Come on! All they have to do is get mechanically similar cars painted white or black and compare fuel consumption. Why the rush to take away a woman’s right to choose [the color of her car] (in my family, I chose the hardware and my wife picks the color) when we don’t know whether or not there will be a meaningful savings in CO₂ emissions?  After all, I thought most Californians were Pro Choice!

Living in north Texas, I am all too familiar with climbing into mobile solar ovens after a long day at work. When it’s really hot outside, everyone has their A/C on.  So CARB’s savings claims are based on the fact that four months of each year evening commute temperatures range between 62° F and 77° F—mid-range temperatures where non-reflective cars would need the A/C on after a long soak in the sun but “cool cars” would not.

However, the very Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory (LBNL) study that CARB uses to support their proposal debunks this assumption. The Cooling Load Reduction chart (page 14, “Cool Coatings for Cool Cars: A measure to cool the globe”) shows that by 5 p.m. there is NO difference in air temperature measured at the anterior-heading compartment (i.e., where the driver’s head would be). The “cool car” soaking in the sun heats up slower, but by about 2 p.m., the gap has closed and the interior temperatures remain virtually identical the remainder of the day. Therefore, the only sun soaked vehicles that would see a decrease in A/C usage would be those that leave work at lunchtime, not the masses in evening commute.

When I drive with the A/C on, I get 1.13 (Jeep) and 1.16 (Accord) fewer miles per gallon. There would be no change in A/C usage during the morning since solar soak would not yet be a factor.  Additionally, as the LBNL study shows, the proposed “cool car” protections would be of no help during my evening commute. However, over the protestations of my cholesterol clogged arteries, I make a run for fast food about four days a week at lunchtime. Using CARB’s dubious assumption of four months’ savings per year, I could satisfy sixty-nine more Big Mac attacks without switching on my A/C each year.  But I don’t travel far—about (generously) six miles round trip.

So what would my annual savings be? 0.68 (Accord) to 1.96 gallons (Jeep).

Ladies and Gentlemen, let the debate carry on.

First soldier: Am I right?

King Arthur: I’m not interested!

Second soldier: It could be carried by an African swallow.

First soldier: Oh yeah, an African swallow, maybe, but not a European swallow. That’s my point.

Second soldier: But then the African swallow’s not migratory . . .

It seems straightforward enough: federal vouchers for old clunkers. Takes old heaps off the road. Stimulates new car sales. Done. Of course, we are talking about a government program here. And that means that H.R. 1550, the “Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009,” has quickly become a cat fight amongst interested parties (manufacturers, dealers, dismantlers, after-market parts makers, trade protectionists, etc.). If passed, 1550 will surely evoke the law of unintended consequences. At the moment, the bill’s been referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, so that august body can breathe their magic upon it. Ahead of that joyful event, 1550 contains some HIGHLY contentious sections. How about a stricture for the new car purchase that stipulates different minimum levels of highway fuel economy depending on whether the vehicle was manufactured in the United States or “North America” (i.e., Canada or Mexico)? Yes, way.

The money shot: Section 3 mandates a $4K voucher for “passenger automobile assembled in the United States with a minimum highway label fuel economy of 27 miles per gallon.” The same four grand goes to “passenger automobile assembled in North America with a minimum highway label fuel economy of 30 miles per gallon.” I guess our neighbors to the north and south must. Try. Harder.

If the new “passenger automobile assembled in the United States” achieves that same [higher] 30 miles per gallon highway mpg standard, the US vehicle gets an extra grand: a $5K voucher. Oh, and if that “passenger automobile assembled in the United States” happens to be an electric or plug-in electric vehicle, the voucheree scores $7500. At the moment, the money would go to someone looking at a $100K+ Tesla Roadster or one of those NEV golf cart thingies.

AND if the new “passenger automobile assembled in the United States” only achieves 24 mpg highway, don’t worry too much. The feds would like to present you with a $3K voucher.

The bill also stipulates a lower minimum for trucks, ’cause we don’t want to leave out trucks, a domestic mainstay, do we? “Non-passenger” vehicles must achieve “only” 24 miles per gallon highway to qualify for that $5K voucher. [Look for some tall ass gearing if this passes.]

As for the imports—Saturn Astra, Toyota Prius, Honda Fit, etc.—their buyers are  SOL, voucher-wise. Which, of course, threatens to evoke a trade war. Which could well be the last thing the US economy needs right now [see: Great Depression].

As for the cost to dealers and dismantler of making all these sales, which should generate some kind of profit, 1550 throws in $50 per transaction. Hey, why not? It’s not as if the dismantling industry has a history of title washing or any sort of thing. And while we’re on the subject, who’s in charge of making sure all the clunkers are crushed, the toxic waste removed and the registrations destroyed? Uh . . .

At the moment, the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) is 1550’s most vociferous opponent. Well they would be, wouldn’t they? Aaron Lowe, the org.’s vice president of government affairs for the AAIA, sent out a press release countering any suggestion that their opposition has anything to do with their members’ profits.

“Proponents of the Cash for Clunkers bill say that it will benefit the environment because it will take older cars off the road, replacing them with new, more fuel efficient vehicles… What will become of all these old cars? The answer you don’t hear from the backers of Cash for Clunkers is that these scrapped vehicles will more than likely be sent to landfills, creating more pollution, not less.”

The AAIA has created a website—fightcashforclunkers.com—to carry their banner forth. While there’s a debate to be had about the relative pollution of old vs. new, let’s file this one under Where’s MY NSFW Bailout?

The Cash for Clunkers program would earmark federal funds for car owners to trade-in their sport utility vehicles in exchange for vouchers to be used to obtain newer, more fuel efficient vehicles. On the surface the program may sound reasonable, but its consequences will increase the nation’s carbon footprint, create issues for those not fortunate enough to afford the cost of a new vehicle and be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The Fight Cash for Clunkers organization… instead favoring tax credits to help upgrade, repair or maintain older vehicles, as well as tax deductions for interest on car loans and state sales tax.

Death would be too good for this bill. And the idea that the feds should do something, ANYTHING, to stimulate the US new car market is sadly, badly mistaken. The best thing our government could do for the UScar industry is to let Chrysler and GM go C11 and/or C7.  The resulting flood of new, highly discounted product will drive down prices and, perhaps, encourage buyers to trade-in their old cars for new.

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.

According to New Scientist, the lower 48 could become uninhabitably hot and dry by 2100. And so I grasp at any hint of deux ex machina. Magic batteries with high energy density and fast charging? OK! Carbon sequestration (oh, please, oh please!). Biofuels? Bring ’em on! High energy density liquids from cellulosic crops grown on marginal lands, or from pools of algae growing in the desert sun, or from sugar cane. Some concepts would even produce petrol. Liquid gold . . .

Or pie in the sky. A major problem with most biofuels is that when wild land is converted to crops, there is a carbon debt, according to an article published in Science last year. That’s because the soil, and the plants and trees that grow thereon store an immense amount of carbon. It would take 17 years of sugarcane production on an acre of Brazilian Cerrado, a type of savannah, to mitigate as much carbon emission as that land naturally stores in the wild state. For the tropical peat lands that have been converted to palm oil plantations, the carbon debt is 420 years. Converting central US grasslands to corn for ethanol incurs a 93-year note.

Nor can you simply convert croplands previously used for food to fuel, because if you do, it will become necessary to plow new land somewhere in the world to replace that food, incurring more debt, according to a second article in Science published concurrently.

Even growing sugarcane on the Brazilian Cerrado, where the carbon debt is a short 17 years is potentially a problem not a solution. The reason is simple. Experts anticipate tipping points in global climate disruption. One possibility: the earth’s reflectivity influences its heat balance. As arctic ice melts, exposing dark ocean, the earth absorbs more heat from the sun, hastening warming.

If the warming reaches a point where the melting of the permafrost begins to release the massive quantities of methane stored within, that gas, which has more than 20 times the insulating power of carbon dioxide, could make warming irreversibly worse. There are many other potential tipping points. And experts fear that we could begin reaching them within the next two decades.

To be sure, certain cellulosic crops such as switchgrasses could sequester carbon in the soil while being harvested for biofuels, although we still haven’t figured out how to break the cellulose down in an efficient manner. Algae production in closed artificial ponds in, say, the desert southwest may eventually produce truly ample feedstock per acre, according to some experts. And waste to energy could well become a bountiful source of liquid fuels. But all this is pretty speculative at the moment, and the inevitable question arises: how much might we produce?

Perhaps the most optimistic of respectable studies on biofuels’ potential in the US, “Growing Energy,” comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The study suggests that it might be possible by 2050 to shrink US demand for liquid fuels to the point where the various sources could almost meet the demand while neither displacing food production nor boosting crop acreage.

The problem is that when market forces come into play, it will become extremely hard to ensure that biofuels will be grown in a way that won’t add onerously to carbon debt and global warming. An article in the 27 March 2008 issue of Time noted that deforestation “closely tracks” commodity prices on the Chicago Board of Trade—and that’s despite increased law enforcement in Brazil beginning early in the decade.

Even Nathanael Greene of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a coauthor of “Growing Energy” who professes optimism about biofuels, conceded on his blog that “. . . it is definitely possible . . . that the amount of truly low-carbon biofuels we can drive through real politics and real markets is much smaller than we would hope.”

In his farewell speech (the one about the military-industrial complex), President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans, “As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.” As any oil company CEO (cough, Dick Cheney, cough) will tell you, Eisenhower’s words point to personal virtue, but shareholders want profits today not resources tomorrow. Thankfully, some take Eisenhower’s words to heart. One such person is Josh Tickell, the creator, director, and protagonist of the impressive documentary film Fuel.

Fuel chronicles Tickell’s personal journey through the dark side of America’s petroleum addiction, his efforts to promote alternatives, and his vision of a sustainable plentiful future.

Tickell grew up in the harsh reality of modern Louisiana, the land for which the term “environmental racism” was coined. The refineries and petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River have fouled much of the land, water and air in the area. All of this contamination has led to a “cancer alley” and reproductive problems for the people living there, including Tickell’s own mother who suffered nine miscarriages and numerous illnesses.

Angered by the personal and environmental damage cause by petroleum, Tickell began looking for alternatives. While studying on an organic farm in Germany, he had his first encounter with biodiesel fuel. To Tickell, this was the answer to his hopes: a safe sane sustainable fuel that didn’t require invading Middle Eastern countries or dumping toxic sludge in bayous.

Thus inspired, Tickell came back to the US in 1997, bought an old diesel-powered motorhome, christened it “VeggieVan,” and toured the country (entirely fueled by used fry oil) preaching the potential of biodiesel. That tour turned into an 11-year odyssey through the growing pains of the biofuels business. Along the way, Tickell experienced both exuberant highs, such as the Carl’s Corner truck stop in Texas converting to biodiesel, and soul-crushing lows, such as when the first “biofuels are bad” articles began appearing.

His deepest low came with Hurricane Katrina. Tickell saw the hurricane (possibly made worse by global warming), and the resulting damage, chaos, and mismanagement as a rejection of all he had been advocating.

However, after helping with the relief effort (in a biodiesel-fueled boat), and seeing the people of Louisiana pulling together to help each other, Tickell had a change of attitude. In his own words, “I stopped fighting from anger . . . and I started looking for partners.” Those partners have ideas that just might save industrialized society.

There are two main objections to biofuels: one economic and one physical. Critics note that biofuels are more expensive than conventional fuels. This criticism is largely specious, because petroleum is subsidized by transferring most of the social, political and environmental externalities away from the price at the pump. In Tickell’s words, “Make the oil companies pay for [his mother’s nine miscarriages]. How much would a gallon of gasoline cost then?”

The physical argument is more valid. Not all biofuels contain more energy than it takes to make them, and some biofuel practices (such as cutting down rain forest to grow palm oil trees) are more destructive than helpful. Tickell knows this and is explicitly against such techniques. The focus of Fuel, and the solution to our petroleum addition, is sustainable biofuels.

Two of the most promising technologies on this front are algae-based biodiesel and biomass-based alcohol. Algal biodiesel started with a Carter-era research effort called the Aquatic Species program. Thanks to 30 years of research and development, we can now feed algae CO₂ from power plants, water from sewage treatment plants and ambient sunlight, and have them excrete ready-to-use biodiesel fuel.

Other companies are making similar progress in converting other waste products (e.g., municipal garbage, agricultural waste, wood chips, etc.) into alcohol. Still other companies are researching ways to grow biomass on marginal lands unsuitable for food crops.

The genius of these technologies, unlike fossil fuels, is that they are sustainable. So long as people breathe, throw away trash and go to the bathroom, we will have CO₂, biomass and wastewater.

Biofuels alone will not solve the world’s petroleum addiction, and Fuel spends considerable time discussing how an array of technologies may do the trick.

Those technologies range from the mundane (energy efficiency, public transportation, etc.), to the emergent (solar and wind power, plug-in hybrid cars), to the exotic (30-story urban vertical farms), but they all have a part to play.

The ultimate message of Fuel, unlike most environmental documentaries, is one of hope not doom. President Jimmy Carter made energy efficiency and alternative fuels sound like a trip to the principal’s office. Tickell, in contrast, sees a clean, sustainable, balanced energy future, and in such a future the truth is that there’s fuel enough for everyone.

Biologist Jared Diamond once wrote that the worst mistake in the history of the human race was adopting agriculture. It allowed a greater population compared to hunter-gatherers, but at the expense of increased vulnerability to disease, pests and warfare. Diamond underestimated humanity’s capacity for blunder, for an even bigger mistake was tying our transportation system to petroleum.

Whether we’re talking about wheat or oil, more energy means more people leading better lives. But in each case, it also means centralizing authority and becoming dependent upon a complex and easily disrupted infrastructure. Nuclear and aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin thinks it’s time we undo the damage and diversify humanity’s energy diet. Zubrin’s book Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror By Breaking Free of Oil describes how we can get there.

The key to the problem, especially for us pistonheads, is compatible fuels. Electric power plants can burn coal, natural gas, wood, municipal garbage, or a variety of other things. Industrial applications have a similar suite of possible alternatives. But when it comes to cars, there’s no Tiger in the Tank quite like liquid hydrocarbons, and those come almost exclusively from oil.

Fortunately for oil-poor countries, such as the USA, dead dino juice is no longer essential to fuel our vehicles. All we need is carbon, water, some well-known chemistry, and a little ingenuity.

The centerpiece of Zubrin’s strategy is methanol; the undrinkable single-carbon IndyCar-fueling brother of ethanol. Ethanol does have its advantages, and Zubrin is in favor of appropriate ethanol production, but methanol can be made from a far wider variety of sources.

Any form of carbon (from coal, natural gas, garbage, biomass, etc.) can be reacted with steam to form a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen called synthesis gas (syngas). Put the syngas under the proper conditions and the molecules combine to make methanol.

Methanol, in addition to being a fuel, is also a building block. Similar chemistry can be used to turn methanol into ethanol, dimethyl ether (a clean-burning diesel fuel), and ethylene (the basic molecule of plastics production). None of this involves extreme temperatures, high pressures or exotic catalysts.

The naysayers will quickly point out, “But we can’t run our cars on methanol . . . .” Sure we can. Zubrin documents that Ford was selling methanol-fueled Escorts to the California state government back in 1986. Methanol-compatible flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) were sold in the US up to 1999, and there are millions of FFVs in Brazil, the USA, and Canada that can run on gasoline-ethanol blends.

Recent developments in engine technologies make alcohol fuels even more attractive. We’ve come a long way since Ford modified its first-generation EFI system to be methanol-compatible. Imagine what can be done today with computer controls of direct fuel injection, variable valve timing, variable vane turbochargers, multi-stage intake manifolds and the like. These can all be tuned to take advantage of the 100+ octane rating of alcohol fuel blends without compromising the ability to run on regular gasoline.

Unfortunately, the US government has to date dropped the ball in the regulatory arena. Instead of mandating flex-fuel compatibility, thereby leveling the playing field for gasoline and alcohol blends, Congress has only provided a CAFE incentive for FFVs. Naturally, automakers have responded to this incentive by exploiting the CAFE credits while providing a minimal range of FFVs. In 2008, Congress did consider legislation which would have mandated car makers’ sales be 50% FFVs in 2012 and 80% FFVs in 2015, but they failed to pass legislation.

There are many reasons, as Zubrin argues, for implementing alcohol-based transportation fuels and few reasons to oppose it. It’s already working in countries like Brazil, the technology is available and inexpensive, and there are many economic, political, and environmental benefits.

Zubrin sees breaking OPEC’s economic and political influence as the primary benefit of alcohol fuels. Local production keeps money local, rather than flowing into OPEC’s coffers. Given that OPEC nations finance terrorist organizations, stopping this money stream implies defunding those organizations, which is the “energy victory” Zubrin seeks.

On the environmental front, Zubrin sees alcohol fuels as a way of increasing (yes, increasing) carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ production. Getting the impoverished world out of poverty implies increasing its energy use, which implies more CO₂. Doing so by American-style petroleum use means quintupling atmospheric CO₂, while using alcohol fuels keeps global warming out of the picture.

Zubrin’s thesis is compelling, but he does occasionally gloss over some objections. For example, he focuses on alcohol chemistry but neglects known transportation and storage issues. Similarly, he discusses the energy potential of ethanol crops, but neglects the water, soil and fertilizer inputs required.

Finally, while the methanol-based economy may be a good short-term strategy, it’s only a way of stretching fossil fuels, not eliminating them altogether. In our next installment, we’ll consider another approach that may solve our long-term fuel issues.

Last year in Geneva, I grumbled about how the annual car show was all green talk and no green action. This year, in contrast, I found few new cars worth writing about: the VW Polo is a bore, the Daewoo/GM Spark is a joke, exotics are an anachronism, and the A4 Allroad is a good sequel—but why waste any bandwidth on it? On the other hand, there are some pretty exciting alternative-fuel vehicles on display. (And, predictably, some big disappointments, too).

One of the good things about a show is that you can talk with the industry’s grands fromages on an off-the-record level, to get a feeling of what’s buzzing. Basically, there seems to be an understanding that government support will make electric propulsion feasible for small, lightweight cars in selected countries such as France and Israel. Second, hybrids are a good idea for heavyweight cars and trucks. Finally, electric sports cars are good testing beds for new technology—but not much more. (But where does that leave the Volt? Exactly. But I digress).

Starting with the lightweight-but-serious stuff, I really like the Michelin-Heuliez “Active Wheel” joint venture. The main thought is: an advanced electric car doesn’t have to have a conventional gasoline-engine configuration. You don’t need a large engine bay; why not save the space for luggage, crashroom and legroom? So the Heuliez (you pronounce it “Early-Ezz”) “Will” has its electric motors, brakes, and suspension elements encased in the wheels’ hubs. At 450 mm, the Will’s roll center of gravity is low. Each front wheel allocates the power it puts on the road according to available traction, and steering is 100% electronic: there is no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels, just as in an Airbus. But what about all the unsprung weight you get from putting everything in the wheel? This is where the Will is remarkable: unsprung weight in each front wheel is only 32kg. This means a mere 7kg more unsprung weight in comparison to a conventional layout. The Will (not the wheel) looks boring, but that’s because Heuliez concentrated on technology, not on the car’s appearance. Future generations will look more advanced, but in the meantime, the press will be allowed to drive the first Wills this July.

It would be great if the Mindset held the same promise, but I doubt it. Mindset is a company with a prototype designed by Murat Günak, the guy who penned epic cars such as the Mercedes SLK, Mercedes SLR and the Peugeot 206. It uses Heuliez’ e-technology. The Heuliez engineers I spoke with think it is a true dream car concept. I like it too as a complete re-think of what a modern car could be: fast but bench-seated, aerodynamic but unblobby, sporty yet replete with high ground clearance. The word in Geneva however was that Mindset is not getting crucial second-stage investors funding. We’ll see.

When I took the Mitsubishi iMiev for a test drive six months ago, I was impressed. And in Geneva, most e-engineers opined they have high hopes for the iMiev being a significant advancement because, uniquely, it is more than just an urban vehicle. PSA (France’s Peugeot Citroen group) in Geneva announced it will be adopting iMievs for their home market. It seems that once you have a usable electric drivetrain, it’s not too difficult to adapt it to different lines of cars. For a start, Mitsubishi in Geneva is showing a wacky coupe variant of the iMiev called the Sport Air. My girlfriend loved it, but I reserve judgment.

How to reserve judgment for Tesla when they hide themselves away in a sad, dark, minor area of the Geneva show, with Uzbeki LPG-adopters as neighbors? So these are the guys who want Europeans to send down payments for their pricey sports cars? It seems they’ve had a major management malfunction somewhere.

Talking about major malfunctions, it was endearing and bizarre to listen to the MSM journalists interview Opel’s operators about the Ampera, Europe’s Predator-faced adaptation of the Chevy Volt. Here are some questions I eavesdropped on: Will the rear-view mirrors look like that on the actual 2011 model? Regular or premium? How about the warranty? I was impressed with the Ampera’s claim of a 500km range, but I also like Orson Wells’ “F for Fake”.

For a taste of proper things to come, look at the official Swiss electric vehicle showcase stand, splendidly located in the middle of the most important hall of the motor show. There, the Honda Insight was displayed right next to the new Prius. Bad news: inside, in comparison to the Toyota, the Insight looks every penny saved. I was more than disappointed how cheap and unappealing the dashboard and some of the interior fittings appeared. Altogether nicer is the e’mo, a prototype developed by the University of Applied Science of Rapperswil (I’m not joking, and neither are they). The e’mo was designed to be superlight (350kg), fun to drive and sexy-looking. A sandwich-plate structure makes it stable and crashworthy, and non-golfcart-ish. I can hardly imagine a more appealing urban vehicle (but that may be because I yearn for a Citroen Méhari).

Another advanced electric car I could imagine driving is the Protoscar Lampo. Impressively, the Lampo has four-wheel drive and a GPS-based range estimator which they say is more accurate because it integrates data about hills and freeways. 268 hp and a range of 200 km sound nice for this LiIon sports car that sports a composite material body. The selection of beep tones (from freight train to wolf whistle) to alert pedestrians was an auto show hit, too.

Since it stores its energy in the form of compressed air, the MDI Airpod would probably be able to do wolf whistles, too. Honestly, how wacky can you get? It is hard to take such an odd job seriously, but MDI is actually already selling vehicles to various airports. The thing about compressed air, an MDI official told me, is that you don’t need expensive, heavy and complicated batteries. Sound logical? The AirPod, of course, is strictly urban, but the MiniFlowAir is a bit closer to, er, conventional concepts of what a passenger car might be. They showed it in Geneva and it was hard not to find it impressive.

In the mean time, some people will make do with the Smart ed, which is in the first year of four years of testing in England. A Smartish guy told me nobody had yet returned a FourTwo ed, and that the driving experience was generally seen to be superior to the regular Smart (with no jerky shifts). Surprisingly, only 60% of the 100 participants live in urban London. Mr. Smart said that in contrast to Germans, the English seem to take reducing their CO₂ footprint quite seriously. It’s strange times we live in.

Lithium-ion batteries are not yet a major source of automotive propulsion. Excluding the li-ion cells lingering within the $100k+ Tesla Roadster, not a single volume vehicle depends on the technology. Toyota has adopted a “go slow” policy on li-on cells re: their gas – electric Synergy Drive (most famously found inside the Prius). Sure, li-ion batteries will power Chevrolet’s electric – gas hybrid Volt. Eventually. And that’s no small point. At the moment, with gas prices at historic low levels, hybrids simply aren’t selling. Of course, nothing’s really selling. Except the idea that we need lots and lots of hybrids and that those hybrids will need lithium ion batteries and we better make sure we have enough lithium otherwise the vision of clean, gas-free personal transportation will disappear. And the New York Times can’t have that, now can it?

Earlier this week, The Times set the autoblogosphere abuzz with a look at Bolivia’s bounteous lithium supply. According to the Times, the United States Geological Survey estimates Bolivia is home to some 5.4m tons of lithium. The U.S. soil supposedly contains “just” 410lk tons of lithium. Ladies and gentlemen of the politically aware persuasion, forget ye olde missile gap. Welcome to the “lithium gap.”

Francisco Quisbert is the leader of a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers who live near a giant salt flat. Quisbert’s fifteen minutes of fame arrived when a NYT reporter recorded him pronouncing “we know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” If that wasn’t enough to raise the hackles of the friends of hybrids, Quisbert also played the class card. “We are poor. But we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”

Yeah right. Meanwhile, back to the template Times’ readers know and love to hate: western exploitation. The head of Bolivia’s national– yes national– lithium mining company provided the necessary rhetoric. “The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia. Maybe there could be the possibility of foreigners accepted as minority partners, or better yet, as our clients.”

Bolivia’s President (and former Coca grower) Evo Morales is no stranger to the government-sanctioned expropriation technique commonly known as “nationalization.” Whether sending soldiers into BP’s local headquarters or nationalizing Brazil’s natural gas operations and then charging higher prices, Morales has made it clear that he believes natural resources belong to local indigenous peoples (even if they’re not as well compensated as, say, the Bolivian government and Morales-appointed representatives).  

Obviously, lithium commerce predates hybrid hopes. The battery industry has been buying lithium for well over a decade. And Bolivia’s reluctance to grant that industry grant unfettered access to its lithium predates its current leftist president. When right wing nationalists controlled the Bolivian government in the early 90s, advances by the American firm LithCo to secure supplies were thwarted. Unlike the early days of Saudi oil exploration, American firms are on the outside looking in.

The Times reports that Sumitomo, Mitsubishi and a French conglomerate headed by Vincent Bolloré have been trying to wrangle a lithium extraction deal with the Morales government. More recently, Reuters has reported that the Korean firm LG is trying to jump onto the Bolivian lithium bandwagon.

Morales is having none of it. Well, some. The companies’ opportunities are limited to investment in the government operation, which consists of a $6m pilot plant. Construction of a $250m lithium extraction plant is proceding at what The Guardian calls a “snails pace.”

According to Bolivia’s state mining director Freddy Beltran, “there haven’t been any developments (in the negotiations with Mitsubishi, Sumitomo or Bolloré). None of them has made a proposal including (the creation of a lithium) industry.”

Beltran’s kvetch: the three firms all want to export raw lithium. (Why does this sound familiar?) The Bolivian government wants them to develop a processing industry in-country.

Yes, well, the Bolivian government is likely to come to some kind of “arrangement” fairly soon. As one Bolivian economist puts it, “we have the most magnificent lithium reserves on the planet, but if we don’t step into the race now, we will lose this chance. The market will find other solutions for the world’s battery needs.”

Or other lithium supplies. The WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog (and Lithium Abundance blog) points out that increasing demand for lithium would increase exploration, which could turn up new reserves.  

What’s more, battery technology is hot (so to speak). With federal funding providing the match. Scientists are hot on the trail of alternative battery materials– from zinc-air to improved nickle-metal-hydrate. Meanwhile, China is pumping out lithium for its own booming battery sector.  

In short, despite the NYT geo-political paranoia, anyone worrying about the possibility of a Bolivian lithium embargo is wasting their energy.

Reading GM’s FastLane Blog sometimes feels like watching the images generated by an underwater camera cruising through the Titanic’s sunken remains. Yes, I know, GM hasn’t cracked in two yet, never mind hit the ocean floor. But the blog’s extended periods of silence strikes this jaded journalist as, well, creepy. A sense of impending doom that’s also reflected by the editorial mix: half-assed attempts to address the key questions vexing GM’s “turnaround plan” (as bulkhead after bulkhead buckles under pressure), interspersed with exec-sourced, over-optimistic appraisals of GM’s prospects. And now, it looks like GM’s just given up, surrendering the floor to “resource analyst” Amory Lovins’ mob over at the Rocky Mountain Institute. Abundance by design™! ‘Cause austerity sucks, right?

The org’s 25-year-old Aspen-dwelling Bulldog-educated transportation consultant uses the platform (so to speak) to plug (so to speak) EV socialism (for real). Apparently, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Volt.” I said, Volt. Not Dolt. But I gotta say, I find the entire premise of Laura Schewel’s article pretty stupid.

I spend my every working (and sometimes every waking) hour trying to make the cleaner, greener promise of plug-in vehicles a reality. The barrier that keeps me up at night is not the high cost of batteries or if Smart Grid will happen. It is the fear that there simply won’t be enough plug-in vehicles soon enough to hit the greenhouse gas reduction targets we must hit. I believe that communities are the best bet for overcoming this barrier.

Consumers and automakers are in a chicken-and-egg situation: the uncertainty of consumer demand for a completely new type of vehicle makes it difficult for automakers to commit to plug-ins in significant numbers. This uncertainty, in turn, affects the building of charging infrastructure and other supporting technologies. This, in turn, creates uncertainty in consumer demand, and so on.

I don’t know about you, but I sleep better at night knowing that Laura is wide awake, helping GM add credibility to their electric/gas plug-in hybrid Hail Mary. I would however like to know exactly which greenhouse gas reduction targets “we” must hit. Kyoto? California? What? You would’ve thought GM would share my curiosity, but I guess not.

That said, you can’t blame them for sharing Ms. Schewel’s sense of urgency—assuming that GM suddenly understands what that phrase means. But who shares her sense that there’s some sort of techno-phobia re: plug ins? You use it like a normal car and plug it into a wall from time to time. The only uncertainty is how much it costs and whether or not the thing will run out of gas/juice and/or break. But Toyota’s got that sussed, one imagines. And, by extension (cord), GM. You know, eventually.

Oh, hang on. She means having lots of sockets available, right? So you can plug in at work or at the post office or something. We need a national plan! Just kidding, ’cause everybody knows that “making a comprehensive national plan will slow us down.”

Furthermore, the ingredients for plug-in success naturally vary from place to place, and a uniform U.S. approach would be a detriment to natural diversity. Of course, this community-based readiness approach should be paired with a national backbone of open plug and communications standards so that vehicles, products, and services can be operated on a national basis. The federal government should also provide funds for cities to implementing their plans.

As Mater from Cars famously opined, you hurt your what? You plug your plug-in into a socket, right?

As far as I know, I don’t need a converter for my shaver when I travel around this great nation of ours. If the plug-in electric vehicles of Toyota—I mean, tomorrow need some special big ass socket, well, let them sell me one. If an apartment complex needs a dozen or so, let them charge their tenants for the privilege of plugging in, tuning out and paying rent. If I’m at the post office needs one, forget about it. I’ll plug in when I get home. Next?

Nope. Ms. Schewel considers this one of those “stakeholder” deals. Which, to me, is the sound bite of my tax dollars flying out of my wallet.

These stakeholders [lots of bureaucrats, ‘natch] must create a coordinated, multi-year plan that makes owning a plug-in better than owning a traditional car for the first local adopters. We’re developing a long list of ways to do this. A few of my personal favorites: a “plug-in” concierge call-in service for all owners; federal and local incentives bundled at the dealer for immediate cash back; special parking spots; free electricity for your vehicle.

Didn’t the Soviet Union have a little bother with all their coordinated, multi-year plans? If I recall, they were a communist dictatorship at the time. I know the Earth is warming, but can anyone understand my gut instinct: let’s not go there?

Surprisingly, Schewel’s GM-promulgated propaganda doesn’t end there. For me the segment title “How Much is Enough?” pretty much answers itself. But for Schewel, the sky’s the limit. Or should it be “this guy’s the limit”?

President Obama’s goal of 1 million plug-ins by 2015 is not a revolution either. We need millions upon millions of plug-ins (coupled with smarter land-use planning to reduce driving, and huge investments in public transit).

Me? I need a drink.

California accounts for a huge chunk of America’s new car sales (at least for the transplants). And 13 other states (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington) follow its vehicular emissions laws. Put them together and they account for just under half of all American new vehicle sales. And now, thanks to President Obama’s decision to grant California a waiver from federal emissions regulations, they’re going to call the shots for the entire U.S. automotive industry.

President Obama will free California impose its own vehicular tailpipe regulations. Those rules, already drafted, consider CO2 a pollutant. (Global warming and all that.) Manufacturers wishing to sell vehicles in California and its legislative clones will have to meet a new, fleet-wide CO2 standard. As CO2 emissions are directly related to fuel economy, CA et. al. will be, effectively, directing the carmakers to sell higher mileage vehicles. Significantly higher.

“The California law, which was originally meant to take effect in the 2009 model year, requires automakers to cut emissions by nearly a third by 2016, four years ahead of the federal timetable,” The New York Times reports. “The result would be an increase in fuel efficiency in the American car and light truck fleet to roughly 35 miles per gallon from the current average of 27.”

There are two schools of thought on the effects of this move. First, not only can Detroit and the rest of them meet the higher standards, but it’s about fucking time.

“This is a complete reversal of President Bush’s policy of censoring or ignoring global warming science,” Daniel J. Weiss, director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress in Washington, told the Gray Lady. “With the fuel economy measures and clean energy investments in the recovery package, President Obama has done more in one week to reduce oil dependence and global warming than George Bush did in eight years.”

For environmental activists, the idea that automakers can meet the new California standard is a given. Another shibboleth: carmakers would have already done so if not for their greedy, SUV-pimping, foot-dragging ways. The fact that $4 a gallon gas did more for the environmentalist’s cause than decades of federal corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards is shoved aside. As is the fact that the electorate voted with their wallets.

There’s a planet to be saved; free markets be damned. From this perspective, the federal waiver is a victory for Mother Earth that will be fully vindicated by its non-impact on the auto industry and its immeasurable impact on the earth’s climate. One way and the other, decades hence, people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Alternatively, the decision to empower California to set national fuel economy standards will, as the automakers have warned, wreak havoc on a fragile industry, drive-up prices for consumers and, ultimately, fail.

There’s no way automakers selling cars in America can meet the California mob’s higher, fleet-wide fuel economy standards within the deadline without chopping low-mileage models from their lineup within the relevant states. (The fuel-sucking CUV halfway house, for example, just became an evolutionary dead end.) Detroit News columnist Daniel Howes described the CA mandate as the involuntary hybridization of the nation’s fleet. That sounds about right to me.

Whether manufacturers would offer low[er] mileage vehicles for sale outside of the 14-states is a tricky question, given the intersection of politics, PR and commercial reality. Whether those non-CA-friendly vehicles could be “imported” into the 14-state cabal is even trickier. And speaking of tricky…

As The NYT points out, the new laws mean “automobile manufacturers will quickly have to retool to begin producing and selling cars and trucks that get higher mileage than the national standard, and on a faster phase-in schedule.”

Has anyone looked at the U.S. new car market recently? Who’s got money for that shit? And who’s going to pay cash money to buy these newfangled fuel misers? What if these wonderful machines don’t sell?

All of which highlights the small matter of what “we” (i.e. taxpayers) are going to do about GM and Chrysler, currently (and for the foreseeable future) sucking on Uncle Sam’s teat.

While the Department of Energy is preparing to dole out dole worth $25b for retooling “loans” to build these more left-coast compliant vehicles, this turn of events suggests that Uncle Sam will be on the hook for even more more money for GM and ChryCo. Hey, you want us to build way cool fuel efficient vehicles? You gotta pay. I mean, loan.

I understand the rationale behind California’s zeal and President Obama’s support. But there’s no doubt that they’ve just invoked the law of unintended consequences. Thought politically toxic, a gas tax hike would have been a far more effective solution. As we shall soon see.

Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski’s recently released transportation plan brags of creating jobs to build roads and bridges. But its main focus: making sure those roads won’t be used. The plan talks about “congestion,” “bottlenecks,” “greenhouse gas,” “carbon,” “green standards,” “non highway programs” and “incentive programs designed to reduce the number of cars on our roads.” To realize this vision, Kulongski and his supporters have to reinvent the wheel, or, more precisely, the tax on those wheels.

People are driving less and using more fuel efficient vehicles. It’s only a matter of time before alternative propulsion vehicles like hybrids and EVs account for a significant chunk of Oregon’s registered automobiles. You’d think Kulongoski and the state’s environmentally-minded politicians would be happy. Ecstatic. But the Beaver State’s fuel taxes states pay for its transportation funding. The less diesel and gasoline drivers buy, the less tax revenue for the state.

So how do you get people to drive less AND pay more for the privilege? Tax them by the mile. That way, the state can monitor and manipulate the per mile rate to generate sufficient tax revenue to cover their green dreams– no matter how efficient the taxpayers’ personal transportation.

Last year the Oregon Department of Transportation announced a successful demonstration of a GPS-based system. It tracks individual car’s movements, measures their mileage, calculates a fee and generally enables bureaucrats to collect “mileage taxes.” Now Gov. Kulongoski wants implement that system.

“The Governor proposes continuing the work of the Road User Fee Task Force – which will begin to partner with auto manufacturers to refine technology that would enable Oregonians to pay for the transportation system based on how many miles they drive.”

The idea is hardly new; pay-as-you-go has been the darling child of the greenhouse gas gang for some time.  Several European countries use tracking software to tax commercial trucking. London’s congestion charge is another form of the system. And despite public opposition, the UK government seems hell bent on “road pricing.”

Nor is Oregon’s desire to monitor motorists unique within the United States. To wit: the California Air Resources Board’s OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostics) regulations for carmakers.

The California standards mandate that OBD-II computers diagnose and record problems with cars’ emissions systems. Technicians download the data at inspection time. To more efficiently test cars and identify the vehicles that are polluting, California has upped its game. OBD-III specs seek to link on-board emissions diagnostic data with telemetry. Cars remotely identified as polluters would be flagged for testing.

The original idea was to have road-based sensors, so that drivers could be notified to bring their cars in for testing and repair. Of course, satellite based technology is more practical now.

When OBD-III was first announced, the implications for privacy and possible Fourth Amendment violations were obvious. With the threat of global warming enjoying mainstream acceptance, there’s little chance that these fears will prevail over arguments claiming the primacy of “the greater good.” After all, it’s “for the children.” And the future of our planet.

But even cloaked in a mantle of green advocacy, there’s no question that OBD-III, like road pricing, is the slippery slope to a world where all motorists’ movements are monitored, recorded and analyzed.

Obviously, we can’t stuff the technological genie back in the bottle. Police departments routinely use cell phones to track suspects, greatly increasing law enforcement’s effectiveness and providing invaluable assistance during abductions. But there are legal requirements for that procedure; laws that protect cell phone owners from indiscriminate/random search and seizure.

It’s also true that “black box” on-board electronics now record your speed, g-forces, acceleration, air bag deployment and more. In some states, the police can seize that information pursuant to a criminal investigation, with or without your permission. But again, it’s post-facto. The police have determined that a crime may have been committed.

In contrast, California wants all cars to tell them if they’re polluting, at any time they choose; without prior notice, a court order or a presumption of innocence. Oregon wants all cars to report to the treasury department. Where will it stop?

Perhaps along with your tax bill, Gov. Kulongoski  will send you an invoice for traffic violations, such as speeding or improper tire inflation. Since red light cameras can issue violations without a complaining officer, this seems like the next logical step.

The English, who are now the most surveilled nation on planet earth, have been justifying the proliferation of license plate, facial recognition and street cameras with “if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about” for decades. Meanwhile, America was founded on the principle that the government poses the greatest threat to personal liberty. Which is true, if technologically irrelevant.

Oh, and Gov. Kulongoski also wants to raise the state’s gas tax by two cents a gallon.