What's The Goal, Green Vehicles Or Gas Guzzler Subsidies?
Matt Rosenberg
Similar to some other automakers, the vehicles currently on offer from Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep include quite a few, such as SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks, that aren't really tooled for the motoring future that's already unfolding. That's a future with high gas prices that will be staying high, sharply slowing sales of gas-guzzling pick-ups and SUVs, and consumers ready to buy plug-in hybrid electric vehicles by the boatloads if automakers can deliver them with reliable lithium ion batteries and at prices of, say, $30,000 or less.
That price point is apparently the aim for GM's Chevy Volt, a PHEV to watch.
So with gas now pushing past $4 a gallon, what does Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep do? Accent their plans for future-facing vehicles? No. They unveil a promotional campaign to try to sell more of their energy hogs with a three-year subsidy to buyers to keep their gas costs at $2.99 a gallon. New York Times syndicated columnist and energy inquisitor Thomas Friedman has a pointed take.
....reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.I can't say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: "So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don't really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we're currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge."
Friedman goes on to approvingly cite an economist's suggestion there actually be a price floor for unleaded regular gas of $4 per gallon, supported by mandatory increases in the federal gas tax if the market price goes lower, and with compensatory payroll tax deductions for those earning under $80K per annum. Whatever one thinks of the proposal, Friedman's central point is that the government needs to send a clear message the days of cheap oil and cheap gas are long gone and that consumers and fleet owners need to look ahead, to new technologies and fuels, not behind. He writes:
We need to make a structural shift in our energy economy. Ultimately, we need to move our entire fleet to plug-in electric cars. The only way to get from here to there is to start now with a price signal that will force the change.
Author Paul Roberts and the World Wildlife Fund report that the environmental benefits of plug-in electric cars accrue even if the electricity comes from fossil fuels. But as they both add, the cleaner the electricity, the greater the benefits of PHEVs and all-electric vehicles. That's why the Pacific Northwest is an ideal proving ground for a consumer-focused PHEV pilot project. Here's where clean hydro-power already reigns, where renewable energy sources are beginning to ramp up, and - deep breath, please - where nuclear power is slowly gaining traction, which Seattle Times editorial page editor James Vesely discussed last weekend, and his colleague Kate Riley detailed last spring. Even those fusty authoritarians at Wired are singing the praises of nuclear, both last week, and in greater detail as far back as 2005.
There's something happening here. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, R. James Woolsey, director of the CIA for president Bill Clinton, and Paula Dobriansky, current Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs (pictured at right), herald the coming clean technology revolution in transportation. They stress the need for broad adoption of PHEVs running on clean electricity, and advanced second-generation biofuels made from sources including forestry and farming waste, and grasses. Also key, they write, are amped-up support from the feds and leading U.S. corporations for more production of electricity from nuclear technologies and from coal-fired power plants that sequester carbon. That last approach is something at the heart of a Washington-state based research project that should be allowed to continue, over misguided objections, as the Times' Riley recently opined.
Green-powered plug-in hybrids mesh with congestion pricing to ration peak hour highway capacity and carefully crafted public-private partnerships to fund necessary transportation infrastructure improvements. Public transit that can truly compete on travel times and convenience is part of the equation, as are expanded corporate transit, para-transit, and telecommuting. All are strategies to help manage growth, ease mobility and maintain environmental quality in burgeoning metro regions. Nobody said this would be easy.
Advanced navigational systems will help reduce congestion and pollution, too. That topic, along with congestion pricing and PPPs, will be covered at the June 26 West Coast Tolling And Traffic Management Workshop that our Cascadia Center will sponsor at Bell Harbor Conference Center on Seattle's waterfront. And save the date for our Sept. 4 and 5 conference, "Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation."
Comments
I have been driving a Plug-in Hybrid that gets over 100mpg in Houston, TX for more than a year now. I use just 4kwh, 60 cents, of Clean Domestic Wind Energy to offset the Amount of Dirty Foreign Oil I have to buy. I did it to reduce the amount of Air Pollution I make and to reduce the amount of Foreign Oil I use to improve my local environment and to improve our National Security by helping our nation become Energy Independent. What I have found since this time that the money I save by not buying so much gasoline is now spent taking my family shopping, or to the movies, or to buy electronic games for my son. In short, Plug-in cars also improve the economy, providing revenues for jobs, and improve our tax base.
I can lead our auto industry to Plug-in Cars, but I can’t make them build them.
That is why I, and few thousand other individuals will build aftermarket Plug-in conversions.
They are coming!
Jim Philippi
HybridPlugs.com
Posted by: HybridPlugs.com | May 29, 2008 6:53 AM
I greatly appreciate the plug-in hybrid technology as my next car will likely be a plug-in; however it is unreasonable to expect the auto makers to allow their gas guzzlers to sit on car lots for ecology's sake. Let's not be so focused on "greening" the auto industry in leaps and bounds or we won't have our present car companies to supply us with sound ecological technology. They are operating in an environment that obviously most auto manufacturers couldn't react to quickly enough.
Have heart in the fact that those new gas guzzling pick-ups and sport-utes are likely more fuel efficient and run cleaner than the vehicles they are replacing. The shift is in, but it is unreasonable to expect responsible societal change at a brisk pace.
Posted by: John Louderback | May 30, 2008 6:09 AM
John,
//we won't have our present car companies to supply us with sound ecological technology.//
When have American car companies ever offered sound ecological technologies?
//They are operating in an environment that obviously most auto manufacturers couldn't react to quickly enough.//
For the past 40 years experts have been saying that we'd hit peak oil in 40 years. American car companies used that time to build more powerful, larger cars and to find CAFE standard loopholes (SUVs being classified as trucks). The Titanic would have reacted faster than this.
Posted by: Matt the Engineer | May 30, 2008 2:33 PM
Matt, I, in no way defend the American car manufacturers. I didn't mean to imply that they presently offer ecologically sound technology. I'm only putting forth that their present infrastructure and those of the foreign based auto makers,is the best way to bring affordable new technologies to market or mass production. For many years to come, we will have a certain portion of our population that will only buy from the so-called "Big 3" auto companies.
I do share your frustration with American auto makers. More ecologically sound automobiles will finally be built by them, but only to protect the bottom line. In the mean time, Chrysler and friends are stuck with absurd gas price subsidies and an exhausting tap dance for the stock holders.
Posted by: John Louderback | May 30, 2008 7:07 PM
Their goal is the same as yours: survival. They will change when they have to; that is when they think they have to. And that is now. But it takes 5 years to steer the Big 3 companies.
Do you support ALLOWING the companies to change? Or only government rules that dictate.
Wish you well, Matt.
Posted by: Ron Hebron | June 10, 2008 10:35 AM
//Do you support ALLOWING the companies to change? Or only government rules that dictate.//
As long as the economic intrests of these companies don't fit with the environmental goals of society, they won't change even if we "ALLOW" them to (whatever that means).
A free market will always eat up resources at an unsustainable rate. We need to regulate fuel consumption as strongly as we regulate fishing (or more strongly, since oil won't grow back).
Further, if we take all of the subsudies we throw at the auto industry and used this money to build in-city and inter-city rail, we'd go a long way to solving our fuel problems.
Posted by: Matt the Engineer | June 24, 2008 2:27 PM