Nuclear Options
January 8th, 2007This is my atomic bomb and should be our Manhattan Project.
Chairman G. Richard Wagoner Jr. on Sunday unveiled an innovative prototype, the Chevrolet Volt — a plug-in vehicle that derives its power primarily from electricity rather than gasoline — as the world’s automakers take on global warming and U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Wagoner’s announcement underscores the depth of GM’s previous miscalculation on alternative vehicles and the degree to which the U.S. automotive landscape is changing. In 1990, GM introduced the concept of an all-electric car, the EV1. The vehicle made it to U.S. consumers but didn’t survive through the decade. GM hasn’t given a date when consumers can buy the Volt because the advanced lithium-ion batteries needed to power the vehicle — similar to technology used in cellphones — are still years from widespread use in automobiles.
Still, Wagoner and other GM executives have pledged to give the electric-car technology high priority within the company’s massive product development operation. “In the end, this is all going to be about delivering on these products,” Wagoner said. The world’s auto executives meeting here at the Detroit auto show say that any big push into alternative vehicles will have to come from the automakers themselves. The executives said it isn’t clear yet what role Washington will play under the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Some Democrats have proposed higher federal fuel economy standards. Wagoner reacted strongly to calls from Washington lawmakers for government-mandated increases to as high as 40 miles per gallon from the current level of 27.5 mpg for passenger cars, with a lower level for trucks. “That’s simply impossible,” he said. Wagoner, and other executives, said the industry is doing its part to confront the nation’s energy problems through bigger investments in advanced technology. Analysts in Detroit say any moves in Washington could come to a standstill, given the auto industry’s unified lobbying position against major increases in fuel efficiency.
Right here and now, the Congress should demand that all cars in the United States made in ten years and later run with this battery and provide the funding to make it possible. It would be an atomic bomb on the heart of oil tyrants everywhere and would deliver a new freedom for America and the world in the same way that the defeat of the British in the War of 1812 was liberating for this nation. It won’t happen but damn if it isn’t the absolute right thing to do.
And since I just dropped the nuclear metaphor, what’s the harm (beyond radioactive fallout) in using it again to describe an Al Gore run, something that is possible but improbable, though it would absolutely level the political world.
I say Al should do it. But I’ve been saying that for years.