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The Winning Trifecta   (September 13, 2006)


The Winning Trifecta: Save the U.S. Auto Industry, Provide Healthcare, and Stop Importing Oil


go to DaimlerChrysler's PHEV webpage Here is a bold, practical plan to solve three severe crises facing the nation: the decline of the U.S. auto industry, the unaffordable-Medicare/Medicaid, 46-million-with-no-health-insurance mess and the "addiction to foreign oil" than our President so recently pinpointed as a problem. I call it "The Winning Trifecta."


Win #1. Save the U.S. auto industry by re-tooling to build super-efficient "cool" vehicles. In the current issue of Scientific American (which I recommended here a week ago), Energy's Future, the article "The Rise of Renewable Energy," contains a sidebar entitled "Plugging Hybrids" which states:
"If the entire U.S. vehicle fleet were replaced overnight with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), the nation's oil consumption would decrease by 70% or more, completely eliminating the need for petroleum imports.

The switch would have equally profound implications for protecting the earth's fragile climate, not to mention the elimination of smog. Because most of the energy for cars would come from the elctrical grid instead of from fuel tanks, the environmental impacts would be concentrated in a few thousand power plants instead of in hundreds of millions of vehicles.

PHEVs could also be the salvation of the ailing American auto industry. Instead of continuing to lose market share to foreign companies, U..S. automakers could become competitive again by retooling their factories to produce PHEVs which are significantly more fuel-efficient than the nonplug-in hybrids now sold by Japanese companies.

Most important, PHEVs are not exotic vehicles of distant future. DaimlerChrysler has already introduced a PHEV prototype Sprinter van that has 40% less gasoline consumption than the conventionally powered model.

Click here to learn more about the Sprinter's PHEV technology.
What's not to like? I know, I know, Americans demand "sporty" acceleration. My pal Arrol Gellner has the answer: electric drives beat the heck out of gasoline engines. It's true: electric motors have instant torque. There's no waiting around for RPMs to climb. You get instant acceleration. Sure, you need a big enough motor to accelerate the car/truck, but cutting vehicle weight is the other side of the equation: less mass requires less energy.

Bottom line: a savvy car company could market a PHEV as the hottest sport vehicle on the road. The "cool" factor would be immense. Not only can you beat an "old" gas truck off the line, you also get outrageously great mileage and cut carbon emissions to near zero.

What exactly is a PHEV? It's simply a gasoline/electric hybrid with a good-sized battery. You plug the car in at night (when the draw on the power grid is lowest) to charge the battery, and then go the next morning. If/when the battery is drained, or when certain conditions apply (like a steep hill), the gas engine (running 10% ethanol, why not?) starts up and boosts the power output. People are already making their own PHEVs by tossing a couple batteries in their Toyota or Honda hybrid cars.

go to Volkswagen's webpage According to the current issue of Scientific American (Sept. 2006), Volkswagen has come up with a lightweight two-passenger prototype "city car" which gets 240 miles per gallon. (See the article "Fueling our Transportation Future". You can find the issue at your library.) OK, so it's not for the freeways; Americans have two or three vehicles anyway, so why not make one of them super-efficient for short trips?

So we have the product and the marketing campaign. Now we get rid of the albatross which threatens to bankrupt GM and Ford: healthcare costs.

"Each more than 100 years old, Ford and GM are victims of being successful for too long. GM has 476,000 retirees. Ford provides health insurance for 590,000 people at an annual cost of $3.5 billion. Both Ford and GM have health insurance costs of about $1,100 per vehicle. Neither Asian nor European producers are burdened by such costs."
Win #2. Institute a limited and therefore affordable national healthcare plan which covers all Americans, enabling U.S. corporations to compete on a level playing field with foreign companies whose employees are all covered by government-provided healthcare insurance.

Referring to the auto industry's healthcare liabilities, knowledgeable reader John B. made this comment:
I know some people go crazy about national health care but it is the only way out. I believe corporate America is also starting to like the idea. Then they will not have to pay the cost themselves. Just think -- all of GM and Ford's health care problems will disappear.

Regarding the enormous unfunded liability posed by Medicare and Medicaid, John added:

It comes down to one solution. Nationalize healthcare. Paul Krugman is always saying that using the cost per capita of Canada we could cover everyone in the US for what we currently pay. Why, 20% or more of the current cost is administration and then the profits of insurance companies. Seeing all the paper work flying back and worth from the insurance companies and doctors on my minor insurance company, I can believe this. So, now we have all the people covered and puff, we just wiped out $37 trillion of unfunded Medicare and Medicaid cost as well as covering 46 million (currently uninsured) Americans.

Then you say, what about the quality issue? Well, growing up on an air force base, I dealt with government health care till I was 21. It is satisfactory. Also, I have also lived in Canada and Norway, and the medical coverage was good and people seemed quite happy about it. I also could imagine the U.S. having some other top layer of coverage or something for those doctors that opt out of the system. In Cuba, which is a very poor country but with national health care, life expectancy is practically the same as the US. Embarrassing.
Win #3. Drastically reduce and then eliminate foreign oil imports by mandating PHEVs in government fleets and then in all vehicles. The changeover will take a decade or two, but look at the enormous benefits in air quality, carbon reduction/global warming, and in the politics of oil. How to keep the Oil Industry happy? let them make $100 billion in solar panels, as BP and other oil giants already do. How to create 50% of the nation's electricity with solar panels to feed the PHEVs? It's actually brain-dead easy: put panels on all existing building roofs, and tie them into the existing electrical grid. After all, they're already all connected; how hard can it be to place a meter for electricity flowing out as well as in? Such a system is already mandated by California's Million Solar Roofs campaign.

If this seems implausible, then read The Solar Economy: Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future If you read it with an open mind, you'll find yourself convinced that it's entirely practical to place panels on every roof for a modest cost to the economy at large. After all, we're going to send $500 billion for oil overseas to governments like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela over the next few years if we change nothing; why not invest that same $500 billion in our own solar and PHEV technology and kiss the Saudis and Venezuela good-bye?


For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog.

                                                           


copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media.

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