While our country’s leadership during our economic crisis of 2007-2008 is woefully inadequate, there are enough intelligent and resourceful people in the United States to turn our domestic economy around. Vested interest have prolonged the suffering, but now even the vested interests can not hold back the opportunities they have created for those resourceful enough to take advantage of the opportunities the vested interests have created. The people who have solutions will have their day. One of the bonuses of a free market economy is that problems can get solved. The downside is that problems have to get to such a drastic condition before the attention of the masses presents an opening. I think $4 plus a gallon gas is just that opening. The huge transfer of wealth from this country, that has taken the air out of our domestic economy, is now being realized. The lines of battle are forming. The enemy, once clearly identified, will see the real strength of a free country’s economic response, and hopefully in spades. They have run the table at our expense, but now is the time we will find out whether this country still has the resilience to right itself and take itself in a new direction.
This morning on CNN, I watched and listened to their report on the electric car and how we should have been driving them by now as they have been economically viable for some time. GM literally crushed this opportunity and now they themselves may find themselves crushed. In the old days the expression was, those that live by the sword, die by the sword. GM will either make the necessary changes or else they will disappear like so many other companies that failed to serve a need.
We will need oil for a long time, but the question of the day is, how much oil will we need and for how long? People are already cutting back on their usage of gas and finding they can make it if they conserve and trim their budgets. Working the problem of $4 a gallon gas from several angles is one way Americans will solve this problem for now. But the leadership in Washington still rides down Pennsylvania Avenue in their gas powered carriages oblivious to the sounds of the people’s stressed out budgets. Solutions, such as the electric car, can not be held back forever. The car companies and the oil companies may want that day never to happen, but free market forces will take us in that direction. Electric cars are coming. The days of our dependency on foreign oil is still with us, but an awareness that this needs to come to an end is just beginning.
Stay tuned.
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4 comments:
The electric car of the past decade was built by Toyota, Honda, and GM, not just GM, as the article mistakenly believes. Those cars were anything but viable alternatives for what we have now - they were exorbitantly expensive, couldn't take anyone where they ewanted to go, nor when they wanted to get there, had battery packs that cost 5 times more than the gas burned by a reliable gas powered car. All electrics still aren't even remotely practical after years of improvements in battery technology. Plug-in hybrids are the only viable alternative means of electric propulsion, an obvious fact that this blogger is painfully unaware, and THAT is what GM and Toyota and everyone else is now building, not those useless relics that were sent to the crusher, and for very good reasons. Only those who've never owned an electric car think they are practical vehicles. Wait until the general public makes the mistake of buying them (like the
tiny $40K Mitsubishi EV out next year with 100 miles of driving range - that's a driving radius of around 40 miles - and a $20K battery pack that needs to be replaced every 5 years and requires 6 to 8 hours to recharge). THEN you'll hear all the things that this ignorant shill didn't tell you about those battery-only electrics. And the killer fact is that a plug-in with 40 miles of range can eliminate over 94% of gasoline usage - you
don't even have to suffer the inconveniences (the need to own, insure and maintain two cars) and the exorbitant costs of a battery-only electric.
Electric cars are a good idea - but I drive 86 miles a day, round trip. Most electrics don't have that kind of range. Hybrids are a possibility, but I see them as a stopgap measure anyway. Pure elctrics are the answer, but they need greater range and durability. all of that said, I STILL think LS9 is the company that has the answer - bio-generated crude in commercial quantities, which will buy us time to wean ourselves off of oil.
I have never owned an electric car, I know nothing about electric cars, I have never driven an electric car, and I don't know anyone who owns an electric car, but one thing I do know and that is we need to reduce the amount of oil we import into the United States. If we could get by with only the oil we can take out of our own territory, I think our economy could deal with that. While not a perfect solution, any actions taken to reduce the amount of oil imported by the United States will help the drain of US dollars out of our domestic economy. If hybrids will make a substantial reduction in the amount of oil we import then let's build more hybrids and hope people will buy them. The transfer of wealth from this country to the OPEC nations is real.
If the government really wanted to incentivize the populace to reduce oil consumption, why not a 50% rebate on any car getting over 35mpg and an added tax on any vehicle that gets less than 20mpg. But more importantly, a long-range energy plan to reduce oil usage.
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