Lick My Silent Sports Car - How much has Big Auto lied?
SuzannePjam
Posts: 411
Who resurrected the electric car?
Mark Morford
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Oh my God, do they ever lie.
All of them: Big Auto, Big Oil, BushCo, Pennzoil and Havoline and Saudi Arabia and the oil lobbyists and lackey scientists working for the Department of Energy and all the rest, on down the line and right up to your garage door.
Lie lie lie lie lie like evil little ratdogs because they are, after all, corporate greed monkeys and war profiteers and duplicitous oil-sucking cretins (is that too polite?) who would eat their own mother's heart for a notable uptick in share/barrel price. Nevertheless, it's always a bit of a jolt when you see it all up close and personal and they basically rub it in your face.
Just look. Look over here. It's a new sports car. It's a new sports car that looks deliciously like a Lotus Elise and reportedly drives like Michael Schumacher's wet dream and goes from zero to 60 in about 4 seconds with so much torque and freakishly instantaneous power it makes the gods swoon.
This car, it has a top speed of 130 mph. It has a range of 250 miles. It also has GPS navigation and air conditioning and air bags and it surely will come with a very bad-ass sound system. It has heated seats and (I presume) iPod integration and Bluetooth. You know, just like a real car.
Oh, and by the way, this car? It's completely silent. It is 100 percent emissions-free. Doesn't even have a tailpipe. Because it has no internal combustion engine of any kind.
It's not a hybrid. It's pure electric, powered by a "3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor," which I'm sure is rather impressive if you know what the hell it means. But it means one thing for certain: The only oil in this car is in the buffing fluid for the leather seats.
It's called the Tesla Roadster, unveiled recently to a gaggle of giddy auto peeps in Santa Monica and coming to an elite showroom in about a year for about the price of a Porsche 911.
That's right, it's not a prototype. Not some eccentric inventor's crazy basement fantasy. It's a real car. Street legal, drivable, gorgeous, available soon. The Tesla guys have already earned their share of press, given how they managed to wrangle millions in backing from the Google boys (among others). Rumor has it that the Guvernator himself, after going for a test drive during last week's press day, has already placed his order for one of the little luxo speedsters, presumably to feed to his fleet of rabid Hummers.
Did I mention the Roadster costs about 80K? Who cares? The price is irrelevant. The fact that this car even exists in such a pure and obvious and performance-oriented form, does. Simply put, it is the most flagrant proof yet that we have been brutally, savagely misled.
See, they lie. And they've been lying for years, decades. They lie about how difficult it is to replace the internal combustion engine. They lie about how unfeasible it is to eliminate auto emissions without sacrificing real performance (the 130 mph Roadster's lithium-ion battery system is estimated to be twice as efficient as a Prius and three times as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell).
But they lie, most of all, about how much we still require foreign oil, because these billion-dollar corporations claim they can't possibly afford to develop sufficiently advanced technology in your lifetime to create a 100 percent emissions-free, oil-free, ultragreen vehicle that still has all the comforts and performance of a regular car.
Nice pipe dream, they say. Here, have a bloated SUV, they say. Sorry about all your dead kids in Iraq, they add, smirking like a chimp and blowing their noses into a big pile of Halliburton profits.
Did you already know? Did part of you suspect that we could be, if we were directing our country's massive resources at all correctly, already mass-producing the technology that could quickly wean us from our dependence on foreign petroleum?
Did you already calculate that if even a fraction of the $300 billion -- a truly staggering amount -- we've wasted on BushCo's failed and disgusting war could have gone to revolutionizing our nation's energy infrastructure (like, say, funding large-scale development of the Roadster's technology), instead of annihilating a pip-squeak nonthreatening nation over its oil reserves while simultaneously serving as the most successful terrorist-recruitment poster in world history, the United States could be considered the epicenter of integrity and invention once again? Of course you did.
But, oh, wait. Such an obvious, lucid redirection of resources and ideology would require someone with true vision in the White House. Someone with integrity. And intelligence. And fearlessness. And an articulate understanding of complex ideas. And a Congress to match. Never mind.
I know, it's not exactly a new story. Just go see "Who Killed the Electric Car?" for proof of how corporate greed eats innovation like so many CornNuts. Then go see "An Inconvenient Truth" for a story of brutal denial and sheer idiocy among the political and corporate elite. Then rent "The Corporation" to see how social responsibility ranks right up there with modest golden parachutes on the list of U.S. corporate values (though that may finally be changing, given the undeniable business woes caused by global warming). Voila America in a nutshell.
But Tesla is different. It's an independent company. It doesn't have to answer to Bush or ExxonMobil or GM. Indeed, its execs say that any sales of the pricey sports car will help propel its core technology even further and maybe create an economy of scale to make mass production of regular cars much more feasible.
In other words, screw the monoliths; enthrall the wealthy individual enthusiasts first, sex up the media with cool pictures and dazzling performance, prove you can make serious profits with green technology and the big corporations will have to follow.
Sure, why not? Why couldn't the Roadster's ideal combo of sexiness and performance and entrepreneurial grit trickle down to the consumer mind-set and generate some fanatical buzz, force some change, help take us back to a culture where true innovation and radical thinking aren't considered a threat (sorry, GOP) but rather the mark of a vital and thriving country?
Hell, mass-produce that Roadster motor and toss it in a nice little Audi TT or even a Ford Focus, slow it down a little and add a trunk and slice the price by 60 percent and advertise it as zero pollution and zero trips to the gas pump and a big throbbing middle finger to Saudi Arabia and BushCo and Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, and watch the eager throngs line up.
Of course, these cars do need one thing to juice their love: electricity. Which we are, at more than 100 global-warmed degrees all over the nation last week, straining like mad to produce in sufficient amounts to keep our air conditioners cranked to stave off the dire heat problems created, ironically, by all those years of lying. But hey, one massive ecological crisis at a time, you know?
Mark Morford
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Oh my God, do they ever lie.
All of them: Big Auto, Big Oil, BushCo, Pennzoil and Havoline and Saudi Arabia and the oil lobbyists and lackey scientists working for the Department of Energy and all the rest, on down the line and right up to your garage door.
Lie lie lie lie lie like evil little ratdogs because they are, after all, corporate greed monkeys and war profiteers and duplicitous oil-sucking cretins (is that too polite?) who would eat their own mother's heart for a notable uptick in share/barrel price. Nevertheless, it's always a bit of a jolt when you see it all up close and personal and they basically rub it in your face.
Just look. Look over here. It's a new sports car. It's a new sports car that looks deliciously like a Lotus Elise and reportedly drives like Michael Schumacher's wet dream and goes from zero to 60 in about 4 seconds with so much torque and freakishly instantaneous power it makes the gods swoon.
This car, it has a top speed of 130 mph. It has a range of 250 miles. It also has GPS navigation and air conditioning and air bags and it surely will come with a very bad-ass sound system. It has heated seats and (I presume) iPod integration and Bluetooth. You know, just like a real car.
Oh, and by the way, this car? It's completely silent. It is 100 percent emissions-free. Doesn't even have a tailpipe. Because it has no internal combustion engine of any kind.
It's not a hybrid. It's pure electric, powered by a "3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor," which I'm sure is rather impressive if you know what the hell it means. But it means one thing for certain: The only oil in this car is in the buffing fluid for the leather seats.
It's called the Tesla Roadster, unveiled recently to a gaggle of giddy auto peeps in Santa Monica and coming to an elite showroom in about a year for about the price of a Porsche 911.
That's right, it's not a prototype. Not some eccentric inventor's crazy basement fantasy. It's a real car. Street legal, drivable, gorgeous, available soon. The Tesla guys have already earned their share of press, given how they managed to wrangle millions in backing from the Google boys (among others). Rumor has it that the Guvernator himself, after going for a test drive during last week's press day, has already placed his order for one of the little luxo speedsters, presumably to feed to his fleet of rabid Hummers.
Did I mention the Roadster costs about 80K? Who cares? The price is irrelevant. The fact that this car even exists in such a pure and obvious and performance-oriented form, does. Simply put, it is the most flagrant proof yet that we have been brutally, savagely misled.
See, they lie. And they've been lying for years, decades. They lie about how difficult it is to replace the internal combustion engine. They lie about how unfeasible it is to eliminate auto emissions without sacrificing real performance (the 130 mph Roadster's lithium-ion battery system is estimated to be twice as efficient as a Prius and three times as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell).
But they lie, most of all, about how much we still require foreign oil, because these billion-dollar corporations claim they can't possibly afford to develop sufficiently advanced technology in your lifetime to create a 100 percent emissions-free, oil-free, ultragreen vehicle that still has all the comforts and performance of a regular car.
Nice pipe dream, they say. Here, have a bloated SUV, they say. Sorry about all your dead kids in Iraq, they add, smirking like a chimp and blowing their noses into a big pile of Halliburton profits.
Did you already know? Did part of you suspect that we could be, if we were directing our country's massive resources at all correctly, already mass-producing the technology that could quickly wean us from our dependence on foreign petroleum?
Did you already calculate that if even a fraction of the $300 billion -- a truly staggering amount -- we've wasted on BushCo's failed and disgusting war could have gone to revolutionizing our nation's energy infrastructure (like, say, funding large-scale development of the Roadster's technology), instead of annihilating a pip-squeak nonthreatening nation over its oil reserves while simultaneously serving as the most successful terrorist-recruitment poster in world history, the United States could be considered the epicenter of integrity and invention once again? Of course you did.
But, oh, wait. Such an obvious, lucid redirection of resources and ideology would require someone with true vision in the White House. Someone with integrity. And intelligence. And fearlessness. And an articulate understanding of complex ideas. And a Congress to match. Never mind.
I know, it's not exactly a new story. Just go see "Who Killed the Electric Car?" for proof of how corporate greed eats innovation like so many CornNuts. Then go see "An Inconvenient Truth" for a story of brutal denial and sheer idiocy among the political and corporate elite. Then rent "The Corporation" to see how social responsibility ranks right up there with modest golden parachutes on the list of U.S. corporate values (though that may finally be changing, given the undeniable business woes caused by global warming). Voila America in a nutshell.
But Tesla is different. It's an independent company. It doesn't have to answer to Bush or ExxonMobil or GM. Indeed, its execs say that any sales of the pricey sports car will help propel its core technology even further and maybe create an economy of scale to make mass production of regular cars much more feasible.
In other words, screw the monoliths; enthrall the wealthy individual enthusiasts first, sex up the media with cool pictures and dazzling performance, prove you can make serious profits with green technology and the big corporations will have to follow.
Sure, why not? Why couldn't the Roadster's ideal combo of sexiness and performance and entrepreneurial grit trickle down to the consumer mind-set and generate some fanatical buzz, force some change, help take us back to a culture where true innovation and radical thinking aren't considered a threat (sorry, GOP) but rather the mark of a vital and thriving country?
Hell, mass-produce that Roadster motor and toss it in a nice little Audi TT or even a Ford Focus, slow it down a little and add a trunk and slice the price by 60 percent and advertise it as zero pollution and zero trips to the gas pump and a big throbbing middle finger to Saudi Arabia and BushCo and Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, and watch the eager throngs line up.
Of course, these cars do need one thing to juice their love: electricity. Which we are, at more than 100 global-warmed degrees all over the nation last week, straining like mad to produce in sufficient amounts to keep our air conditioners cranked to stave off the dire heat problems created, ironically, by all those years of lying. But hey, one massive ecological crisis at a time, you know?
"Where there is sacrifice there is someone collecting the sacrificial offerings."-- Ayn Rand
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
R.i.p. My Dad - May 28, 2007
R.i.p. Black Tail (cat) - Sept. 20, 2008
----
I think the way to go is still with http://www.bmwusa.com/hydrogen.htm
"Hydrogen Technology
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe - and the lightest. When hydrogen is combined with air, compressed and then ignited, it creates three times the amount of energy generated by the same amount of gasoline. What's equally amazing is that the exhaust it creates is virtually nothing but water vapor."
The day it's on the showroom floors in north america, I'll buy one.
hydrogen is adding a middle man ... and the infrastructure requirements make it decades away ...
electric is the way to go with renewable power source ...
these days - batteries can be charged to expand the range to over 100 km ... a great start for a commuter car which are the cars we need to get off the road ...
big auto doesn't want a car that doesn't need to be repaired or lasts a long time - and eventually, their own greed will doom them ... they will probably spend more money lobbying against these cars somehow but eventually, they are gonna hafta clue in ...
the big 3 are already loosing money, and they will spend millions more lobbying and fighting this sort of technology. If they would use that money to develop affordable cars like this, could you imagine that money in sales that the first of them that figure this out will make?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
gripes - you could say the same with all those fockers ... oil, defense ... these industries aren't run by innovative people with a vision of the future ... they are run by old tired men who are doing things old school ...
the myth that being environmentally and socially responsible is disproportional to success is ridiculous and it will take more of these companies to prove it ...
You hit it right with old tired men... they would rather protect their stock and their (old tired) friend's stock, then invest money upfront and develop for the long term. Also the shareholders would crucify them if their stocks dropped. There is no incentive to the companies to invest a shitload of money and plan for the future, the will ride this horse as far as it will get them.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Yes, things sometimes take time, but this is less than 10 years away (for europe).
the cars cost over 100K just to make each one.
and Mr. Brian is right. If an efficient method of extracting hydrogen is perfected, than its going to be the long term answer- and thats why "big auto" is investing all their money in that. Electric cars are a nice idea, but ultimately the power is still coming from the burning of fossil fuels.
It's like with any new idea, whether it was computers or flat screen t.v.'s, the price will come down once it gets mass produced and there is demand. It will happen with alternative fuel cars as well. Unfortunately this administration didn't feel it was necessary to invest in research for alternative fuel cars and the big automakers didn't bother to develop anything other than low efficiency gas guzzling cars. But now that there is a need you can bet there will be a hot competitive market for them. And in the next few years prices most definitely will come way down.
"Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead,
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed..."-- Elvis Costello