So count this as gallows humor.

AIG has been given roughly $185 billion.

Zero electric motorcycles announced today that they are selling a street legal version of their electric dirt bike at about $10,000 less a ten percent federal tax credit.

Zero street legal lithium-powered supermotard

Tesla automobiles has already sold a few of their all-electric high-performance sports cars at about $100k.

Tesla electric roadster

If we had used the money from the AIG bailout to actually support American companies that make things, it could have funded:

9,250,000 Zero electric motorcycles or equivalent.

(Honda sold about 15 million units world-wide in 2008. All makers sold about 1 million motorcycles and scooters in the US in 2008.)

Plus,

925,000 Tesla cars.

(BMW sold about 1.4 million cars in 2008 world-wide.)

So with one bailout package we could have created an American motorcycle company selling electric bikes as the second-largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. And we could have jump-started an all-electric car manufacturer to nearly two thirds the size of BMW. Not to mention establishing a dominating presence in the clean transportation industry of tomorrow.

Somehow I’m not laughing all the way to the bank.

references:
motorcycle sales
Zero
Tesla
AIG bailout

What’s to be done?

The choices:
	The ice floe: Let them die with the polar bears. Suppliers will crash and burn, and who knows how Michigan will survive.
photo by Reason	Show them the money: Nobody will buy their assets in this market. ( Solarworld offered to take Opel as a freebie today) Bankruptcy isn’t going to provide quick revenue to support the whole rickety framework, so the Feds would have to provide some kind of guaranteed market like Federal fleet sales and buyer rebates, and support for R&D, and try to get a rapid program in place to retool.

The problem with letting them die, is that they may drown us too. A huge number of jobs and businesses depend on the Big 3 car businesses. Numbers are quoted as high as 10% of all jobs are indirectly affected by the car business. Cities will be besieged with falling taxes, failing business, collapsing housing. Unemployment will soar, and Federal costs will too as the safety net gets hit with a wave of the jobless.

The problem with bailing them out is that it may be throwing good money after bad. The basic problem with pumping money into failing behemoths is you are using a very expensive, blunt instrument to do surgery. It very well may not work, and political pressures could easily pollute the Congressional effort with giveaways. Bickering between the Democratic leadership in Congress and the lame-duck Bush administration is not helping. The folks in Richistan have long ago taken their money out of manufacturing, and indeed out of the country, so they don’t care.

The long view:
Either the prognosticators are right and the Big 3 are already zombies, or they aren’t and there is some hope for restructuring of one or two. In both cases it’s the suddenness of the collapse and the terrible timing that make it so awful. The Big 3 have been giving away market share for decades and the Republic is still standing, sort of. So if you could slow the demise, and at the same time strongly encourage lightweight, modern cars and trucks, with a frantic race to hypercar manufacturing, it might be possible to avoid the worst effects of the collapse, and use the direness of the situation to push through much-needed restructuring of labor and management.

The greatest obstacles to this approach are the blockheads in management, the blockheads in Congress, and the desperate UAW. Bankruptcy of some sort is so attractive because it means some judge, and not an elected representative, will be telling the UAW folks that 50% are laid off and the other 50% are getting wages cut in half. Presumably the same judge would seize control and clean house in the white-collar departments, sell off the fancy buildings, cancel the golden parachutes, and generally machete his way through the mess. It still might not work, because car sales are so slow that competing with the healthy carmakers is a daunting prospect. It would take a big discount to get a sensible buyer into a Ford Focus/Chevy Cobalt over a Toyota or even Hyundai, when everyone knows Ford and Chevy may go kaput, taking their dealers with them.

The ugly:
I think a lot of the pious declarations of free-market discipline are fueled by irrational anti-union sentiment. It is clear the UAW is dying, but union inefficiency does not mean jobs ought to be wasted. Sure a Democrat really can’t deliver the death sentence to a unionized industry, but they might well allow the lame-ducks to do it.

What if:
What if a benevolent industrial dictator from the WWII era were given the nationalized hulk of GM? Leaving Chrysler to die, and Ford to try it alone, he could forget profits while revamping the company from top to bottom. Of course this presumes there is something worth saving.

My guess:
Stretching out the process may be the best that can be done with the Big 3. Facing extinction, might, just might, startle them into serious change. Ford is most likely to survive. The most important long-term goals for the nation are restoring our manufacturing capability, and providing 21rst century green transportation as soon as possible. The Big 3 and the UAW can get on the train or be left behind. For the computer-biz kids from the coasts the idea of re-starting an industry from scratch may seem commonplace, but if that’s the way it goes, then surely those people in the Midwest are in for some cascading failures of small business, and some really tough times.

The Problem:
GM, Ford and Chrysler are spending more money than they take in. The burn rate is fast enough to leave GM penniless in a few months. No one, except possibly the taxpayer, will lend them money, figuring it would be good money after bad. The stock market is devaluing GM to the point than a billionaire could simply buy all the stock (which is really buying the debt).

GM falling stock price chart There is not much value left there….

A good article at Seeking Alpha

	Two truly stupid models.
Pontiac Aztec		Ford Excursion

The Money Situation:
The market seems to think privately-owned Chrysler is a goner. Ford has a little more money than GM, but is essentially in the same boat, even if it could take over GM’s domestic market share. Vast numbers of vendor and related jobs depend on the Big 3, 2-3 million has been quoted. Its easy to guess that a sudden loss of that many jobs would tip us into a depression. Worldwide, manufacturing and transportation businesses are in deep trouble, from Boeing and Airbus, to the world-wide shipping industry, to China itself.

The Political Situation:
It’s hard to see how any President, let alone a Democrat who just carried the Midwest, can suck it up and let GM die. And then there is that Depression looming. Nobody wants to be Herbert Hoover.

The Design Problem:
American companies have once again ( see 1970’s) failed to plan for rising gas prices, and are caught with aging designs that weigh too much, push too much air, and consume too much. They have not diversified with small vehicles, in spite of having successful off-shore small-car companies. They have not invested in in-house powertrain research, like hybrids and batteries. Their bit of fuel-cell research is pie-in-the-sky stuff, with no path to manufacture. The one bright spot is the Chevy Volt, not yet ready for manufacture, and never intended to be sold in large quantities.

The Culture Problem:
In four decades while the Japanese and Germans were optimizing their labor-hours-per-car, time-to-market, and reliability, Detroit was selling SUVs and trucks as commuter cars, with haphazard work on future manufacturing. With a few loss-leader exceptions like the Dodge Viper and Ford GT40 and long-running Chevrolet Corvette, Detroit made cars carelessly for people who are careless about cars, neglecting both the Apple Computer (cars as digital appliances) end of the market and the performance end (import tuners). They did great with the size-is-status market.

The Labor Problem:
The labor problem is partly the healthcare and pensioner problem. The Big 3 hourly employees are still dependent on the mother company for healthcare ( there’s an unfunded plan to transfer to UAW) and so are the pensioners, whose healthcare and pensions are not fully funded either. Further, the future is not with the UAW, so it may end up fighting the greater communal good in favor of its own survival.

The Rewards Problem:
The short-sightedness of Detroit has long been publicly discussed. Foreign manufacturers seem to be planning design changes in sync with changing market conditions with success, though all will be hurt by the sudden downturn in world-wide sales. Rewarding dismal failure just ain’t American somehow.

So when we saw a new (to us) kind of locking chock on a fellow’s rig, my riding partner Matt demanded that we get some. I had a set of truly fugly but battleship-rated set of chocks made from quarter-inch steel channel on the trailer. Replacing them with new Bike Shoes from Pit Posse made it lots easier to load the bikes single-handed, and gave a positive clamp on the front wheel. They cost us about $70 each plus shipping.

Part 1: The Chocks – ATK Bike Shoes (only for dirt bikes)

..The inspiration.

These chocks are intended to bolt down to your trailer bed, but as an alternative to permanent mounting, our friend had them bolted to a sheet of plywood which he just threw in the pickup when needed.

....Bolted to the trailer bed.

You can see from the pictures that they are made from tube steel and are sturdy, with good welds and paint. It’s trivial to bolt them down, just drill and bolt. Don’t forget the Locktite and big washers!

Magic thread locker goo.

The mechanism is a bit hard to understand. Look at the picture above with the blue chocks. One is in the open and one in the closed position. One hoop reaches forward under your fender to grab some tire tread, the middle hoop goes along for the ride, and the biggest hoop is pulled down to apply pressure against the tire. This holds the bike upright and locked into the chock.

The Loading Sequence:

	Rolling up onto the trailer.
	Set in open chock.
	Look Ma, even with the chock open, the bike stays up!
	Push the first hoop as far back as it will go, and tuck into the tread.
	Pull the big hoop forward until the tire is squeezed.
	That’s it!

Once we had the chocks bolted down and tested, we were still in the same old situation with the rear of the bikes. Always the rear bounces around and slides sideways, even with a pair of tie-downs. I thought at first that I’d add a piece of of steel channel to the back for each rear wheel, and just tie the wheel down to the bed. But that would have made for awkward permanent trip-me-ups right in the middle of the trailer, and it just didn’t seem like the best solution. Worse, I didn’t have any scrap of the right size, like I did for the front. See Part 2 for the solution.

But I still wasn’t satisfied with the system for the rear of the bike. If we just installed some channel or blocks to hold the wheels, the bike would still jump around when the trailer hits bumps, and the attachment points on the bike are too low and too close to the trailer rings to use a proper angle with the ties. Here’s what I did instead:

Part 2: Turnbuckle Tie-Downs

One of the problems with the nylon webbing ties is that they only work in tension, not in compression. As soon as you pull on them sideways they stretch or the ratchet gives a little, and there goes your tension. I thought of making some long poles with clips on the end, but without a way to adjust them, they would have too much play. And they would flop around and be in the way when not in use. But then someone pointed out that the foot pegs were ideal tie down points. They are strong and in about the right place for the trailer. Nobody cares if they get scratched, and they have holes for connections. They are much too close to the ground for webbing ties, but a turnbuckle fits the distance, roughly 12 inches, easily.

Turnbuckles come with closed eyes or hooks, however, both of which present problems. The hooks connect easily, but not positively, so you only get tension, not compression. The eyes require some sort of clip or bolt. But the turnbuckle itself is stiff and readily adjustable. (In the picture below you can see a modified turnbuckle with larger eye.)

..parts needed.

Attaching to the bed:
After some thought I decided to go on using the same 3/8″ eyebolts, that I had already used on the trailer for tie-down points. I needed to connect two eyes together. They eyebolts have an eye with approximately 7/8″ inside diameter, which is way to large for a connector bolt, so I scrounged through the little baggies of gear at the store until I found a bushing that fit tightly inside the eye. I needed a little Dremel work to grind the eye larger on some, but I left the bushing alone as it had flat sides. I held the bikes up in the chocks and measured each one ( good thing – they are different) to get a trailer attachment point with a good angle to the footpeg.

Rear view showing turnbuckle angle:

..Yes, that’s a trials tire I am testing.

So now we knew where to attach to the trailer and how long the turnbuckle unit should be to be able to reach and still tighten up. The eye bolt on the trailer had to attach to the eye bolt on the turnbuckle. So I took a bolt that matches the inside diameter of the bushing, two large fender washers, and the bushing, and make a sandwich with the bushing between and inside the two eyes. This makes a fitting almost as tight as a machined fitting, yet it can still rotate in two axes. Don’t forget to add a little grease and use Locktite on the nut. This combo gives you adjustment and a simple attachment to the floor, yet retains its stiffness in both tension and compression.

..Eyebolt with bushing.

..Finished joint.

Adjusting to each bike:
Now that we have a way to attach the turnbuckle to the trailer, we can look at the length. Our two bikes are a bit different and one was too high for the one size of turnbuckle available. So I used a piece of threaded rod and a coupling nut to make an extra-long eyebolt. Of course this meant I had to use the normal right-handed end of the turnbuckle, with the left handed end using the turnbuckle’s own eye. On the other bike I was able to just substitute a longer screw eye for the one that came with the turnbuckle.

In both cases I used an eyebolt with a larger eye diameter to match the eyebolts on the trailer. You can see this in the picture of hardware above.

..Made-up long screw eye.

..Longer eyebolt:

Connecting to the footpeg:
Now I had to connect the screw eye to the footpeg with some easy device that requires no tools, because this connection will be made and broken every time you use the bike. I had a couple of crude rigger’s carabiners with threaded nuts that worked fine for one side, but I only had two, so I sat and stared at it for a while. I decided to accomplish two tasks with one device: by using a padlock as a connector I would be locking the bike to the trailer, and solve the connector problem. It turned out that a standard padlock is just the right shackle size to make a good connection, so I bought a pair of keyed-alike ones. It might make sense to just use four padlocks if you try this rig. The padlocks are really easy to use, and make a tighter connection than the carabiners.

..Carabiner.

..Padlock.

Using the system:
You could use this system without the Bike Shoe chocks, and I used to do it by myself with the ratchet tie-downs using the bike’s kickstand. However there isn’t much slack in a turnbuckle- only about 40% of total length- and it might be difficult to get the first one on without losing the bike. So you might need a helper. One turnbuckle will hold the bike ( that tension plus compression), so the second one is not a problem.

We had already installed our slick new Bike Shoes (see Part 1), so loading the bikes is now easy and quick.

1) Roll the bike up and lock it into the chock.
2) Unscrew one turnbuckle and connect it to the footpeg, leaving some slack.
3) Repeat for the other turnbuckle. At this point the bike is extremely stable, but there is some play at the footpeg.
4) Tighten both turnbuckles. (Don’t over-tighten, for instance by using a lever, because a turnbuckle can exert tons of force. You might pull the eye right out of the bed or bend your peg.)
5) You are done. Go riding.

Tightening the turnbuckle:	Ready to go.

Before, even with four tie-downs on each bike, after a run up a rough road we always had to get out and re-adjust because the bikes were flopping around. The more they moved, the looser they got. The trailer has quite a rough ride ( the next trailer I build is going to have shocks). After, with the turnbuckles, the whole trailer moves as a unit, bikes and all. The bikes’ suspension is only slightly compressed beyond the resting position, and we automatically have the security of padlocks for those long nighttime stops at the Chinese buffet.

What else you can do:
For road racers who transport bikes a lot, this would make a great system. You will have to find a way to attach to the footpeg though. You could drill a hole right through the peg, but you could also make a backingplate with two holes, one for the peg-shaft and one for the turnbuckle. Then take the peg off and re-install it with the plate between it and the frame. You might want to bend the plate to get the attachment point away from the bodywork. Some bikes will have a hollow axle where you could put a skewer through the rear. Using two eyes, threaded rod, and coupling nuts you could make a skewer that would work. You could substitute a clevis pin or even a bolt for the carabiner attachment to the footpeg, but the padlock works so well, I’d advise to keep that.

The author	Brer Matt, the chocks were his idea.
	.. Yes Matt’s wearing a genuine Sharkbait t-shirt.

We went down to LA to the uber-hip Smart House to test drive a Smart Fortwo.

not-your-usual-showroom Venice CA

Our car spec is:
1) minimal cost – Prius is too much at $26k+
2) minimal energy use – Smart is in the same range as Prius.
3) two seats and room for light luggage or groceries
4) more interesting than boring old Prius
5) AC, CD-Radio, electric locks and windows
6) freeway capable
7) airbags and roll-over protrection
fits my six foot well-over 200 lbs frame
10) alloy wheels – I don’t ever want to see another hubcap.

See a gallery of pictures here.

The Smart meets all these, plus has a cool Tiptronic-style auto-manual paddle shift transmission, and is so tiny you can park it end-in instead of parallel. Cost, for the middle level of options, is somewhere between $13.5K and $17k .

Passion model with silver frame.

Options:

Pure is the base model – I bet they sell none. no AC or radio or sunroof! I am ignoring it from here on.
Passion is the middle model – I bet 80% are these. Has fixed glass ( polycarbonate) roof, and all the options we need.
Cabriolet is the convertible version of the Passion.

All are three-cylinder, gasoline powered rear drive. ABS brakes are standard on the Passion.

The sales people weren’t entirely clear on some small items like MP3 support, glove box, and the funny ash-tray or CD holder choice. The cars also have built-in attachment points for bike racks. The Passion and Cab have only one engine option so far, though in Europe they have several engines, and battery-electrics and super-clean diesels are said to be in the future. Update: Passion ( Coupe) has plug-in MP3 capable CD-player.

Why?

Because its cheap, hip, gets something like 32-42 mpg in the real world, and parks where no other car dares to go. Keep the SUV for towing your boat, and drive this little puppy to work every day. Pick up girls/boys/whatever.

Driving Impression:

We drove a Euro-spec one with the Tiptronic-style auto-manual tranny, but no paddle shifters. ( see update) The transmission was not working correctly, it had a huge lag in shifting. Either it’s automatic-adjust-to-your-driving-style was totally confused by the multitude of testers, or it’s just plain broken. I can’t believe it comes that way based on the large number sold in Europe. This is the smallest car on the road, but it is quite comfy for two men, and easier to get in and out than my Honda Civic. Visibility was excellent, and oddly it feels far bigger than it is. It’s no racer, but it keeps up with traffic more or less like a base-model automatic Corolla. It felt solid and quiet, given that it is a tiny econobox.

Fit and Finish:

Because it is so light, a bit more than half the weight of a Prius, you have to expect the body work and interior to be a bit motorcycle-like. The front hood for example, is just a plastic cover, without hinges, that snaps in place. The gas door is similarly just a cheap piece of plastic. The seats and interior panels looked fine, and the controls and knobs were similar to inexpensive cars from other makers. The trunk releases were flimsy, as was the special storage panel in the trunk door. I think you expect some breakage in these parts, and they should be handled gently. Angry teenage drivers will tear the plastic stuff right off the car. But steering, door handles and seats felt solid. From the start the Smart has used snap-in replaceable body panels, so you can decide to have a different color just by buying the set of panels. This will make minor repairs cheaper, as no paint matching is required. The frame is actually a kind of roll cage, visible from the outside and inside ( see the cutaway views on the gallery) . It comes in two colors, metallic silver and standard black. You get to mix and match with the body colors: white, grey, black, blue, red, and yellow. Just exactly why anyone would buy such a cute car in a boring color is a mystery, they should have electric green, orange, plus some nice pastels.

Aftermarket:

The car screams for customization, from the replaceable body panels, to the wimpy little motor. It has a very cute but masculine personality -unlike VW bugs, men will buy them – much like the eager quality of the original Mini Cooper. I foresee photo-realistic murals on body panels, LED lights, sound systems, fancy seats, lots of engine upgrades, wider wheels and the usual suspension bits. I would think an autocross or even road racer would be possible.

What to ask about:

There is a power steering option, which I had no need for.
Which transmission are you getting, with the paddle shifters and manual option?
Does the CD-Radio have an MP3 option, or is that only on the Cab model?
Is there a real glove box, or just a space?
Some colors are extra, as are leather seats and special wheels.
Check out the racks for bicycles.

How do I buy one?

They are going to sell through Mercedes dealers ( Daimler Benz has been an owner since the Swatch company bowed out). The Penske organization holds the distributorship, which usually means everything is organized down to the paperclips, but there is a certain vagueness about dates and locations. They say, January or February 2008.

Dear Smart:

Let’s get more daring with the colors!
Get the super-clean turbo diesel in.
Move as fast as you can on the lithium-electric version.
Clean up the cheap plastic.
ForTwo is the dumbest name since the Charade.

Added: a video of a head-on crash test

Notice that the safety cell frame remained intact, one door even works after the crash.

Overview
ZOOM covers the history of the oil business and its growth into a tangle of giant industrials and oil-rich governments, followed by an analysis of what will happen if we don’t stop using oil voluntarily. Then, the authors cover the gamut of alternative fuels and automotive technologies, and follow up with a conclusion of what’s required from government, business, and society to move to sustainable transportation.

The Authors
Carson and Vaitheeswaran are correspondents for The Economist. They take a journalistic viewpoint, based on many interviews with industrialists and oil ministers, scientists and environmentalists. They do not neglect the ripe influence of Washington politics, and they cover recent developments in India and China in particular.

The Audience
The book is written in a breezy journalistic style, without footnotes or pedantry, but it does have an extensive bibliography. It does not go into scientific or complex financial detail, so it makes for an easy read, while still covering one of the most important issues for the twenty-first century. It’s a must-read for people interested in the car, oil, and alternative transportation business. It is a good choice for lay people interested in green transportation.

The authors focus on the way things work now, how we got here, and how using the tools that seem to work in this world, we might get to a more sustainable transportation economy. This will seem overly free-market oriented to some environmentalists, and too scientific and regulatory to an industrialist. But the authors’ point of view seems moderate and thoughtful to me. Note that in line with overwhelming scientific consensus, the authors have no doubt that man-made Global Warming is upon us. Their sense of the harm it is causing is more financial and political than environmental, as fits their role at a financial magazine.

What ZOOM isn’t
It’s not a guide to buying a car, engineering, investing, or even voting. It’s not an environmentalist, economics, or political tract, and it focuses on the US, Japan, and Asia, though the lessons are equally applicable to the UK and EU. It’s more a recipe for how to think about the problem, than a guide for specific solutions.

The Book
When petroleum became a valuable commodity for the first time, coal and coal gas was lighting and heating the houses of the Western world. Kerosene was the first petroleum fraction to gain wide use, as a replacement for whale oil. Today, we are searching for new automotive technologies, and new energy sources to run our vehicles. The twin crises of depleting oil reserves and Global Warming are driving research, investment, and legislation all over the world.

Once gasoline and diesel engines supplanted steam and electric on the roads, the low cost and high energy value of petroleum fuels quite literally made the modern industrial world possible. In an age of coal heat, and millions of horses on the streets, gasoline cars and oil furnaces were actually once a cleaner model. Now of course the numbers have caught up with us, and transportation accounts for a substantial share of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. In addition, petroleum diesel also contributes dangerous particulates to the mix of photochemical smog and greenhouse gases. Today, with a saturated car market in the developed countries, the sudden explosion of car buyers in India and China pose both an environmental threat and a financial one, as their demand destabilizes the international oil markets. The bungling of the political situation in the Middle East is also damaging international stability.

There are three types of technology that vie to replace petroleum: hydrogen, bio-fuels, electric batteries. Bio-fuels are easiest to implement, because they use existing internal combustion engines, and can be added to the pipeline and filling-station infrastructure. But most ( all types today) do not solve the greenhouse gas problem, and they emit at the vehicle, which is the most difficult location to clean up.

Battery-electric vehicles are as old as gas and diesel, but recent advances in battery technology and electronic controls are making battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) feasible again. While BEVs use well-understood electric technology, the batteries are still unproven and too expensive. The electric grid may not be able to support a flood of new loads. However, some will argue that night-time charging, and extensive conservation, coupled with moderate growth in the grid will balance out the extra load.

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles have superior fundamental efficiency, but suffer from hydrogen storage problems, and the high cost and fragility of fuel cells. The degree to which the lack of hydrogen distribution infrastructure is a problem is under debate, similar to the debate over the capacity of the electric grid.

Both hydrogen and battery-electric vehicles suffer from a lack of clean sources of energy, as both hydrogen and electricity are currently made from dirty sources. Ironically, it may be hydrogen storage which provides a storage solution for intermittent wind and solar electricity.

The authors take a market-oriented view of how the decisions will be made on which technology succeeds. In fact there is no assumption that any one technology will dominate in future in the way that petroleum does today.

There is a huge amount of information covered in the book, so I’ll list some important points:

US does not depend directly on Saudi oil: The US gets the vast majority of its oil outside the Middle East, yet we have been spending upwards of 50 billion dollars a year (before adding the cost of the Iraq war) to protect and defend the supply of Middle Eastern oil. Its an old story: the need for oil in World War Two pushed the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia and the German invasion of Russia.

US reserves are small: If every possible oil reserve in the US was tapped fully with no regard to environmental protections, less than ten percent of our use would be filled.

The Oil Curse: Countries with low standards of living and large oil reserves invariably have sick, corrupt, and impoverished economies, not excepting Saudi Arabia which has terrible unemployment and potential unrest.

Saudi Arabia controls: The Saudis, with the largest proven reserves, profitably pumped at $20/barrel, can effectively control world oil prices by varying their production, unless increased Chinese and Indian demand or some new conflict overwhelms Saudi capacity.

Petro is dominant for a long time: There is such a vast amount of oil used every day that it is unthinkable that it won’t be dominant for decades. There is no demand issue that will prevent the major oil companies from continuing to profit handsomely from oil for a long time. However, the majors ( Big Oil) are very vulnerable to political situations especially if the US is reluctant to enter another war for oil after Iraq. The majority of oil reserves are now controlled by governments.

Peak Oil: The concept that as total proven reserves plateau and oil becomes ever harder to extract, new demand will trigger dangerous price bubbles is discussed. The authors think it likely that elastic demand caused by rising prices, and new supplies made profitable by very high wholesale prices, will balance out the shrinking supply. On the other hand, they didn’t foresee today’s sudden $80-100 oil price.

Price Supports: The authors consider falling oil prices to be a real potential problem for maintaining the profitability of new alternative technologies. They consider proposals to put a price floor on oil to be worthy of consideration.

Military Greens: Some new enthusiasts for getting off oil addiction come from the military. The US military is the single biggest user of petroleum in the world and keenly aware of its logistical vulnerability to oil supply cut-offs, as well as the real possibility of more wars for oil.

Dirty Washington as Usual: As with many other pressing issues, corruption and cronyism in Washington is blocking serious discussion of measures to mitigate our dangerous reliance on oil. The historical one-two combination of auto and oil industries, now including greedy farm-state corn-to-ethanol proponents is still powerful. Executives at some oil companies have still not acknowledged the existence of Global Warming or their association with it. Other companies have better PR, but are still blocking meaningful legislation. American auto companies still control committee chairs in Congress, but are themselves enmeshed in collapsing market share and an inability to keep up technologically. They have a legitimate desire to see the industry change once, and only once, they assume to hydrogen. But most observers think that bio-fuels and plug-in hybrids (gas-electric cars with larger battery packs) will be essential stopgap measures until hydrogen technology and cheaper batteries are viable.

The Far East: India and China are ramping up quickly to build millions of cars annually, making them major players in the world auto market. Their increased fuel demands and choice of greener technologies will be extremely important in the balance of oil price and Global Warming. There is real movement in both countries to start their industry by building greener cars, but the low price-point of their emerging markets makes that difficult.

Some points I think the authors miss:

It is axiomatic that the flood of new cars built in India and China will be made of mostly small cars, which is good, and they will be very inexpensive. In the West also there is renewed market interest in tiny cars such as the Smart and several new concepts shown this year. Yet small cars are the least profitable in the market, and being inexpensive can’t generate profits to fund research nor high-enough prices to include new technology. New manufacturing concepts like the Hypercar may well be required to break this deadlock.

Because they are journalists for a financial magazine, and have access to the CEOs and oil ministers of the world, the authors place a great emphasis on what individuals in power can do – following the classic Great Man theory. It seems to me however, that aside from founders like Bill Gates, or Hewlett and Packard, it’s a rare thing for an incoming CEO to reshape a company. It is far more common for them to generate a mixed record and be pensioned off for a new favorite. See Ford Motor and Jack Welch at GE.

The authors explain the technical and environmental issues of the vast Canadian tar sands deposits thoroughly, but neglect to predict the financial impact of really extensive extraction of these expensive and dirty sources. In fairness, the wholesale price of oil may have crossed the profit threshold of tar sands since they wrote the book, making extraction suddenly more attractive financially.

ZOOM is very America-centric, assuming I infer, that the rest of the world will follow American prescriptions, both good and bad. I would argue that an activist Europe in alliance with China and India could create a green gap like the cold war missile gap, that can be used to drive Americans, the most wasteful users of energy on the planet, in the right direction. Perhaps the authors have more faith in America and less in Europe than I.

The authors blame major environmental organizations for not pushing painful necessities like gas taxes, carbon taxes, cap and trade systems. While this may be true about traditional non-profits, there are lots of people pushing this kind of regulation, many in government and academia. Many environmental organizations have built their fundraising on absolutist never-say-die rhetoric and appeals to the heart, which do not play well with the compromises and complex technical solutions which are ahead. ZOOM does not go into what’s possible on the environmentalist or activist side in depth.

The great lesson of Rocky Mountain Institute’s Hypercar concept is that it must have low weight, much lower than current small cars. Low weight is required as a simple matter of physics to achieve stop-and-go driving efficiency. Getting to a low-weight 4-5 passenger car is going to take total re-engineering of the car, and of the car market. This problem has reverberations across the social, governmental, and economic cultures. If low-weight cars become a reality, many carmakers could be bankrupted by development costs and sheer inability to keep up, governments will have to mandate radical fuel economy or weight directly, and the market will have to change what it expects from a car, even in Europe and Japan.

Their Summary:

“Americans need to pay honest prices for fossil fuels”
The subsidies, direct and indirect for petroleum should be dropped; the replacement and environmental costs of oil, much higher than the standard wholesale cost shows, should be captured in the pump price.

“The business of business is business”
Don’t expect giant multinational corporations to act except in their self-interest.

“Leave it to the market to pick the winners”
Micromanaging market choices by government regulators will not succeed.

“Government must act”
Leaving the market alone will also not succeed. There never has been anything remotely free about the energy markets, they are creatures of regulation and government control. Governments must make it in the corporate self-interest to protect the environment.

“Individual action is the essential catalyst for change”
Individuals must create new leaders who will drive change.

My Summary:

It’s a good book, worth reading. Are they right about everything? Of course not, they are just guessing based on the guesses that other people are making. Everybody is guessing about alternative energy. Maybe bio-fuels are less-polluting than I think, maybe sustainable electricity can replace more coal than many think. The whole world situation is dynamic, like a room full of spinning plates. Many factors outside the energy economy can have huge effects on energy: agricultural markets, financial markets, replacing petro-dollars with euros, even a revolution in Saudi. Least likely I think is a disruptive technology, but that’s possible too. On a bad day the situation looks like a planetary train wreck, on a good day it looks like the biggest opportunity since cars and transistors to start a whole new industry which is actually good for the community.

What do you think?

In the automobile business, hitting the price/performance point could be more challenging than designing a great car. Sure, it takes dedication, some very smart designers, and trainloads of cash to design and build those few hundred Bugattis. But with a corporate conglomerate providing money and will, it’s just a matter of writing the checks. When it comes to designing to the requirements of a popular model, and turning out a million units that will be sold at a profit, that takes some intense organization, engineering, and timing. Alright, not any pencil pusher can design a supercar, but it’s easier than doing a $14,000 compact.

The legendary Bugatti is back, one of the three fastest cars in the world, hugely expensive and rare.

Bugatti Veyron
image from here

Toyota announced it will build 1.4 million of its econobox Corollas this year, world-wide.

2007 Corolla
image from here

I say the lowly Corolla is a much more difficult feat of engineering than the Bugatti. How can this be? Well here’s my point:

Although the Bugatti is complex, with many more parts than the Corolla and far higher performance, it has some design advantages over a car built for the millions.

cutaway turbocharged Veyron W16
image from here

First, let’s stipulate that the Bugatti is a very, very good car. It’s quiet, fast, comfortable and handles well. It has all the surface bits that sell luxury, and some carbon fiber and engine bits that sell performance. So what if I think its nouveau-riche ugly like a Coach purse or Harry Winston jewelry. It has to be flashy and unique, like a designer dress, a thing of status as much as performance. That is status is its measure of performance.

Veyron

images from here

On the other hand the Corolla is a workaday econobox, a pair of off-the-rack jeans compared to the Oscar-night dress that is the Bugatti.

The 2007 Corolla is a lot more complex than the original Corolla, but still it’s an entry-level car designed to master a viciously competitive market segment at a very low price point. There’s no money for turbos or carbon-fiber, there’s no room to carve a wind-tunnel influenced design. It has to run on lousy gasoline in Africa, in deserts and rainforests and in the Swedish winter. You have to be able to clean the seats with a damp cloth, change the oil at Jiffy Lube, and get tires, belts, wiper blades, and light bulbs anywhere. The factory has to turn them out by the millions with two or four doors, and they have to stay reliable and rust-free for several years of daily driving on Buffalo’s salted streets, in Timbuktu and New Dehli. The few coats of machine-applied paint have to look sharp at the dealer, and last for the life of the car, even though the car won’t often be washed and waxed. In a real sense performance determines the status factor of the Corolla – not how fast it goes, but how cheap it is to run and maintain. Yet it has to compete in the showroom with dozens of other models.

Corolla engine bay showing thrifty 4 banger
image from here

The Bugatti has to look great, drive great, and carry its uber-status with aplomb. It would be a crime to drive one in the snow, to park it in the city, to leave it outdoors overnight. Nobody would touch the paint with a sponge, drop ice cream on the seats, or feed it anything but premium gas. Mechanics will speak gently to it. Maintenance and repair schedules can be done like an airplane with regular replacement before parts wear out, cost be damned.

The 16 cylinder Veyron motor

No inept teenager will bounce it off a curb, no hapless brother-in-law will get it stuck in a muddy field, no tow-truck will ever get a hook near it. Most of all, it will never be driven hard. But lots of third-owners will redline that Corolla back and forth to school while running dubious oil in the engine and ignoring the water temperature. The Bugatti will be driven with a velvet foot, with occasional forays into the three digit range on back roads. Mostly it will sit and get polished in a really nice air-conditioned garage. If a million-dollar car requires $30,000 in annual maintenance, then so be it. If anything at all fails on the Toyota in the first 100,000 miles, the company risks a bad reputation spread across the Internet, and billions in annual sales.

The Corolla will be driven for two hundred thousand miles or more in fifteen or twenty years before it goes to the crusher. The Bugatti will never see 30,000 miles, though it will likely be maintained forever in a museum.

So why is it harder to design the Toyota than the Bugatti? Imagine you are in charge of the windshield wiper motor on both cars:

On the Bugatti team, you go to the high-end supplier and tell them you want the best; they quote you a price at 20x what Toyota pays for a Corolla unit; you buy a few and test them; you go back and forth trying exotic materials until they are light enough and seem to be durable and fit. The price goes up 100%.

On the Toyota team you talk to the two or three suppliers and tell them you want a better wiper motor than the last model, that weighs less and costs less. You go back and forth tweaking the alloy of the base plate, shrinking the electronics, improving the weather-tightness and bearings. In the end, you have to decide for every component part whether you’ll trade a 2% weight loss for a 5% decrease in reliability versus a 5% increase in price. The boss sweeps in and says to cut 10% off the price and still make it a better wiper motor, so you try another supplier. After you settle on the design, then you tweak it so the plant robots will be able to pick it up and insert the bolts, not too tight, not too sloppy. You consider eliminating the fourth bolt in favor of three bigger ones, to save a couple of seconds and a few grams. Somebody has to decide whether bolts with pre-formed washers are cheaper than bolts with separate washers, then you look at sharing bolts with the Camry because it saves a part number across a million cars. Oh by the way, the suppliers have to be able to reliably drop 1,000 pre-tested units every day on the loading dock at the time your plant foreman determines, in five different countries.

At the end of the Bugatti design, the final prototype of the car weighs 200 kilos more than planned, a bit more than, say, the Ferrari Enzo. So you swap out all the big steel chassis bolts for titanium, and increase the turbo boost 1 lb to get another 50 hp, add ostrich leather as an option, and call it a supercar.

At the end of the Corolla design, you sweat the last 2 mpg on the US EPA mileage tests. Meetings are taken to decide on adjusting the software to get a better score versus rough idling in cold climates. Those wiper motors had better install in the 30 seconds allotted, or you may never make engineering manager. Then they tell you CO2 will now be measured as part of the emissions test.

Obviously I am making hypothetical examples, but you see how it is possible to trade money for organization and planning, up to a point. If building each Bugatti costs 100 more man-hours than planned, that’s only a few thousand dollars per car across a few hundred very expensive cars; if each Toyota costs 1 more man-hour, that’s millions of dollars. In the supercar you just have to get 1000 hp, a number not so difficult in a modern engine of very large displacement, where cost and cost of maintenance is not a factor. But in the econobox you have to make it more reliable than the supercar using cheap plastic and stamped metal parts and a lot less assembly time. For the Toyota, you also have to design the assembly process down to the second, scrimping on each failed part, bad fit, and human motion. If the Bugatti assembly guys take Friday afternoon off, well it really doesn’t matter to the profitability ( or more likely losses) of the car model. Suppose you decide to give away custom $10,000 his and hers watches with each Bugatti. The extra media play you get from the stunt might sell two more cars, making it worth doing. if you gave away a $10 Casio with each Corolla, it would cost $14million, and that would require selling an extra 14,000 cars ( at a guesstimated $1000 profit per Corolla) just to break even on the raw cost.

So paradoxically it’s easier to make an ultra-expensive supercar, than your everyday automotive appliance.

What’s the Point?

The next time you hear the electric car club griping about how long it takes to get an automotive juggernaut to change course, remember what it is they actually do all day long in engineering. Now consider that Toyota is famously the most agile carmaker on the planet. They spend fewer man-hours building a car and design them in a shorter time than anyone. And they make buckets of money. Now imagine what it’s like getting cash-poor old and inept GM to change course.

When you hear some upstart company claiming it can build an econobox from scratch using new drive-train technology, when it has never built a gas car, hold onto your wallet. Notice how Tesla, the Lithium battery-electric automotive startup is beginning with a $100,000 supercar, the two-seat Roadster. They aim at the Hollywood set, where the car will be a green status symbol and get lots of attention.

But when you hear that Tata in India will produce a $3000 gas car, or that multiple Chinese companies plan on making hybrid econoboxes in two years, give it some thought. They don’t compete with Toyota or Honda or even Saturn, and they have a huge home market hungry for cars. They are perfectly willing to blatantly copy parts off Japanese cars, intellectual property be damned. Their markets are emerging and expectations are lower, the companies are establishing a beachhead in the market, and quality improvements are planned for later.

It’s all about leveling the playing field of the market: in Europe and the West customers demand very high levels of reliability and function, and many carmakers vie for their business. Emissions and crash requirements are still stricter than in India and China or the Third World. So if you want carmakers in the developed world to make greener cars, you have to give them a level playing field, or wait a long time until the market develops.

Sure we can get the big OEMs to go greener, but if you want them to do it faster, and I do, then you have to understand what it is they can and can’t do. Carmakers have huge fixed costs, huge payrolls, office overhead, land and energy costs. Yet they have to plan two to four years ahead to sell a car which they hope will be popular, against smart rivals, in a world market where wholesale oil just doubled in cost.

If you don’t take into account the actual costs of being a carmaker, then your public green transportation policy is doomed. On the other hand, if we had listened to the whining of the Big Three carmakers in the 80’s, we would still have choking yellow air in Los Angeles, and no airbags. The difference is the level playing field. Set them a reasonable standard, convince them that the standard is permanent, and let the market and the engineers work out the details.

Some References
The Stalwart
Fast Company
Car Connection

A proper artisan Bugatti, just for visual reference….

The DARPA Urban Challenge is the third in a series of DARPA sponsored contests for robot cars. Except for a remote kill switch the cars are totally autonomous once turned loose. The first two contests were on remote dirt roads with no traffic. This time the test is in simulated urban traffic, with stop signs, turns, and moving vehicles in both directions.

Stanford’s entry waits to turn left ( blue Passat with Red Bull logo)

The qualifying rounds are just finished at abandoned George AFB in Victorville California and the finals are on November 3.

Video of the Stanford entry. The horn you hear is a safety device sounded by the robot car ( blue Passat with Red Bull logo) the other cars have human drivers.

All videos by Matt

More video, text and pictures after the jump…

To give an image of the difficulty of the test, imagine you are a nervous parent with a teenage driver taking the car out alone for the first time. Now instead of a human teenager, imagine a software program is driving your car. In real time it is deciding when it’s safe to turn in front of a moving car, and how to drive with oncoming traffic. The only way to stop the car if things go wrong is to hit the Big Red Button in the marshall’s booth. Now add an array of delicate $75,000 laser rangefinders on the bumpers and roof, and enclose the test in concrete freeway barricades, where a single error could smash your delicate equipment.

Georgia Tech showing sensors on roof and bumpers

The other cars on course are government issue Tauruses with roll cages and drivers wearing helmets. They run an intricate radio-controlled pattern so that the robot is confronted with cars behind, cars in front, and cars going the other way.

Course A with human-driven bogies

Can They Do It?

Well some entries can drive in traffic and stay in the lane, and obey traffic laws. Some had a hard time and got stuck. We were fortunate to see the Stanford car, Junior, in action as it completed Course A.

Stanford’s Junior has some trouble:

As you can see in the video, Junior gets confused when a stationary car is parked in the lane ahead, even though he is supposed to turn left.

Course B was a longer loop with traffic following, but not ahead of the bot. We saw the Georgia Tech car fail here when it made a right turn and nearly hit the barricade.

Georgia tech on Course B

Anatomy of a Robot Car

First you need a normal car that is street legal. Humans will have to drive it to the starting gate. Small SUVs and station wagons were the common choice.

Next you need to computer-control steering, throttle, brakes, gears.

Next you add several computers, power supplies, cooling fans, and an on-board data network.

University of Texas entry

Then you need some very high-tech sensors, super-accurate GPS, laser rangefinders, radar, cameras, wheel rev counters.

Roof-mounted sensors

Finally you need a lot of custom software to gather and process external information from the sensors, keep track of location on the map, and decide what to do.

The software has to be wrapped up in a package that puts safety first, and prevents runaway cars from ramming the barricades and driving wildly through the parking lots of the old base.

Oh my yes, you need a lot of money, even with sponsorship. The teams, mostly college kids, are large, and the sensors are really expensive, even allowing for discounts and freebies from the manufacturers.

The Princeton team

What’s Easy, What’s Difficult

From the first Challenge in 2004, all the teams were able to control vehicles with the computer, add computers and sensors, and run the bot safely. In the previous Grand Challenge test three vehicles were able to drive the long desert course at a reasonable speed, staying on the road and out of trouble. Many teams failed to navigate the course at all in the previous test, so you can see the basic problem is in the choice of sensors and the software.

Machine Vision

To understand the difficulty of getting a bot to see like a human or even simple animal, imagine that you are driving a car with no windows, no sense of direction, no sense of road feel, and no hearing. Now we place a series of abstract pictures in front of you, and give you commands from the GPS navigator which says turn left, turn right and so on. You have to decide how fast to drive and when to turn based on the abstract pictures. The GPS isn’t accurate enough to keep you from hitting other cars or the wall, but it does keep track of your route. Trouble is, the pictures look like gobbledygook until you laboriously translate them into your visual language. So the software is racing all the time to figure out if that shadow is a wall, or a hole, or just a shadow.

We talked with a member of the Stanford team about their sensor strategy. They are using the data from the LIDARs, laser rangefinders, to look for lines in the pavement. Because the LIDAR is returning an echo, it isn’t confused by shadows and colors. Their bot runs on two Intel quad processors, while other competitors using cameras for visual data are using much more computing power.

Stanford runs light

Cal Tech goes with heavy-duty blade servers

What Does it All Mean?

DARPA is trying to develop a military force that is 30% robots, but clearly recognizes that most military contractors are too bureaucratic and slow-witted for this sort of cutting-edge research, so they are piggy-backing on college students and academics.

The future of mil-transport? This one military-industrial group was third in the Grand Challenge 2005.

DARPA was able to jump-start the Internet in the past, and there are already military autonomous planes in service. Leaving aside the DOD’s Star Wars vision of fighting droids swarming over the battlefield, the civilian implications are vast and unpredictable. I have written about this before, and the success we saw in Victorville shows that success is coming sooner than I would have predicted two years ago.

For instance, robot parking garages, robot taxis and buses, robot subways, robot delivery service, robot security, software-based robot car trains on the highway, robot farm and construction and mining equipment come instantly to mind. True, this sounds like those breathless Popular Science articles about flying cars, and typical science fiction, but there are good economic reasons it may come sooner rather than later.

First, the cost of these vehicles is in the software and sensors. In both cases, the per-vehicle cost will plummet when mass production starts. Second, the green revolution in transport ( see Jawfish here and here too ) requires new energy-efficient re-working on many mature systems that use human operators. As we found with the PC computer and the cell-phone we can’t know what all the uses are of this robot technology until it gets out into the commercial world.Third the software and sensor technology is easily transferable to other types of ground-based vehicles.

For more pictures see our gallery.

The DARPA website has extensive information and up-to-date news.

Toyota 1/x concept ( all 1/x photos by Toyota)

The goal in creating a revolutionary green car is fairly simple: it must have roughly the same utility as an average passenger car, yet consume far less fossil fuels in manufacturing, end-of-life, and on the road. It also must introduce much less GHG to the atmosphere than current small cars. A slightly less important feature is the ability to use multiple types of liquid fuels, because it’s not at all certain than any one bio-fuel will dominate the future market.

Getting there is much harder than defining the goal. There are three ways to make a much greener car:
1) consume clean fuels like electricity or hydrogen
2) consume far less of a somewhat cleaner fuel, like bio-fuels or bio-diesel, and clean up the exhaust
3) combine 1 and 2 – the hybrid

There are numerous technologies on the way that follow number 1, but electricity and hydrogen are not yet widely available from clean sources, though even coal-fired electricity is quite a bit cleaner than gasoline. But storage and supply are still major technical and cost issues for these fuels today.

In order to follow number 2, you have to build a lighter car for stop-and-go driving, and an aerodynamic car for highway driving. Engines are already very highly developed, so not much more efficiency can be squeezed out of them, so the weight, or inertia, side of the equation must be addressed.

Number 3, the hybrid, actually adds weight and complexity, but it provides a way to recover the lost energy from braking. In a pluggable hybrid it also uses electricity as a fuel, by charging the battery pack from the wall socket.

Of the OEM cars on the road in the US today ( including January 2008) the Honda and Toyota hybrids, and the two-seat Smart microcar are the only vehicles that achieve the first step of getting to 45-60 mpg on gasoline. The Smart car gets its efficiency from light weight, small size, and a small engine. The hybrids get theirs by maximizing other efficiencies, and storing and reusing braking energy in a battery pack.

Even the Smart weighs about 1600 lbs, and the Toyota Prius, most popular of the hybrids, weighs almost 3000 lbs. When my 1957 MGA weighed about 1500 lbs, why so heavy today?

an MGA roadster

Well, because a 1957 MGA did not have sound insulation, roll-up windows, or any comfort amenities at all. The seats were just shells, the top leaked, and there were no door locks. Crash standards were not discussed. The fragile and temperamental motor made less power than any of my last four motorcycles. The electrics were by Lucas, Prince of Darkness.

The fact is, given the demands of modern buyers for crashworthiness, electric accessories, comfort, and quiet, the Prius is about as light as a 4-5 seat car can be made if it has a complex drivetrain with gas and electric motors and a battery pack. That is, it is as light as conventional steel unibody construction can make it. The Smart weighs less because it is much smaller, seats two, and uses an unconventional steel system where the chassis is also the roll cage and is visible.

Smart ForTwo

The Toyota 1/x uses an utterly unconventional body-chassis made of CFRP ( Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic), a newer composite related to the exotic carbon fiber of airplanes and Formula One cars, but cheaper and much easier to manufacture.

Roof of Toyota 1/x notice the thin pillars and struts.
.
What about the Hypercar?

The Hypercar concept was developed and promoted by Amory Lovins’ Rocky Mountain Institute in the 1990s. Its basic tenets are:

A Hypercar® vehicle is designed to capture the synergies of: ultralight construction; low-drag design; hybrid-electric drive; and, efficient accessories to achieve 3 to 5-fold improvement in fuel economy, equal or better performance, safety, amenity and affordability, compared to today’s vehicles.

What about the Toyota 1/x? ( source: press release )

Toyota 1/x

1/X
The 1/X (pronounced “one-Xth”) is a concept vehicle that redefines from its very roots the idea of what it means to be environmentally considerate. Among its attributes, the vehicle—with a design that aims to harmoniously coexist with people and society—weighs only “1/Xth” that of other vehicles in its class.

* Maintains an interior space on par with that of the Prius, with an aimed-for fuel efficiency that is double and a weight reduced to 420 kilograms (about one third the weight of the Prius).
* Combines fossil fuel consumption-reducing FFV* technology and a plug-in hybrid powertrain with a displacement of only 500cc that allows charging from an external power source and a longer electric-motor cruising distance; thus, in addition to being adapted for energy diversity, emits less CO2 and contributes to the prevention of air pollution.
* Locates the power unit beneath the rear seat (for a midship, rear-wheel-drive system) to contribute to an innovative and highly efficient package.
* Adopts light but highly rigid carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) throughout the body frame to ensure superior collision safety, while allowing narrower pillars for a better field of vision.

* Flexible fuel vehicles: Vehicles capable of running on gasoline and ethanol, etc., mixed in arbitrary proportions

Sounds the same doesn’t it? Now Jawfish likes to think that our staff is “environmentally considerate” and “aims to harmoniously coexist with people and society” and we could come up with a better name, but our current fleet can’t match these proposed figures from the Toyota 1/x:

Twice the mpg of the Prius ( but adding pluggable electric power)
A weight of less than 900 lbs

doorless view

If you drive 10,000 miles a year, a little below the average, in a minivan or small SUV that gets 20 mpg, the 1/x concept would save you $1200 a year. Plus you would be saving a lot of GHG, and looking very cool.

Minivan: 20 mpg 500 gallons burned, about $1500 USD
Prius: 50 mpg 200 gallons, about $600USD
1/x: 100mpg 100 gallons, about $300USD and far less GHG, plus some added electricity cost

But is it Vaporware?

Well the CRFP is a real product, with a lot of development. The numbers make sense, if the weight can be held that low. Since even racing motorcycles weigh 250-350 lbs, it doesn’t seem likely that a true car could be lighter than 800-900 lbs. Even if it weighs 1200 lbs in a production version, that would be less than half the weight of a Prius. Is it a stalking horse designed to upstage the competition who are still putting first generation hybrid systems into conventional cars?

Let’s hope it’s got some engineering reality behind it. If they can build it and sell it for $30k USD, I predict they’ll sell every one they can build.

What do you think?