slowdown

Electric Car Manufacturers Inspire New Paradigms

I don’t’ want an electric car…and neither apparently does anyone in or outside of California or Toyota would have jumped on the bandwagon a long time ago. I’m sick of hearing about the Prius….I don’t want one of those either. They are small expensive unappealing cars that will not meet my needs. I don’t just drive to work everyday with nothing more than a bag of golf clubs like the TV ads profess Californians are doing. In fact, I dare you to go stand in the middle of any one of your states boat launches and count the number of Prius’s towing and launching boats. Go to campgrounds in your state and count the number of Prius’s hauling travel trailers or snowmobile trailers in the snow covered mountains, or lumber and landscaping materials of any size and weight from the local Home Depot. Those are the things that the rest of us do in our spare time…so quit trying to shove the Prius down our throats. What I do want is an SUV, cross- over or truck that will meet all of my needs and at the same time be fuel efficient or flex fuel to reduce emissions and dependence on foreign oil. We have those…they are readily available in our own domestic fleet. They are Chevy’s, GMC’s, Fords, and Dodge and have been on the market for 10 years. The transplant car companies….aren’t there yet. They are still focusing on cars that burn gasoline. A car that gets 60 mpg still burns 17 gallons of gas every 1,000 miles versus a car that gets 21 mpg using E85 (my Chevy Impala) that burns 7.1 gallons of gas every 1000 miles. In my mind – the Prius is not the benchmark, my Impala is because it significantly reduces emissions and oil dependency. That’s where we should be investing our money. The infrastructure/R&D needed to produce Ethanol efficiently and economically whether it’s from our own rubbish, wood chips, switch grass or corn (coskata.com). Instead – we wait to see what some other country develops and ships over here thinking that they have our best interests at heart. How stupid and lazy of our leaders to think that “let someone else figure it out” is the answer. I work in the domestic Automotive industry and I’m sick of being told we are idiots because we still build cars and trucks that pollute the earth that no one wants. The reality is that those ships in our harbors…yeah…those are the real polluters – (University of Colorado at Boulder (2009, February 27). Commercial Ships Spew Half As Much Particulate Pollution as World's Cars). Yet you say nothing about the fact that the 51,000 ships that traverse the earth daily bringing in imported goods including oil to our country emit the same amount of pollution as fifty percent of the total number of cars and trucks on this planet! And by the way – those Prius’s that you want us to buy…are manufactured overseas and you guessed it…shipped here and are sitting in your ports. So the way I see it…the ships in our ports not only pollute the earth…they bring in goods from foreign countries that practice economic protectionism instead of reciprocation and ultimately cost us jobs. Did you know that Toyota will not allow California’s NUMMI assembly plant (Toyota/GM joint venture) to export the Toyota Carolla/Tacoma to Japan? Does that bother you? It should. The practice has a direct impact on California’s economy. As for building cars no one wants – when the March sales numbers came out the Detroit 3 outsold the Transplant 5 with Toyota behind General Motors and only slightly ahead of Ford by 8,000 vehicles. Did you really expect the domestic auto industry to maintain marketshare when we opened our market to free trade without first getting commitments from those other countries to open theirs?

Electric Car Manufacturers Inspire New Paradigms

So....when will we have electric ships...after all they put as much pollution in the air as half the worlds trucks and cars...oh yeah...I forgot...water and electricity don't mix well. I won't be buying an electric car of any kind. They will not meet my needs.