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Feb. 23rd, 2003 12:20 pmInteresting article on hydrogen-powered automobiles from the New York Times (you have to register, but it's free. Give them a fake email if they ask.)
Excellent -- a quote from a GM official: "We're doing this because we're going to make a boatload of money." This is the perfect attitude for an automaker to make. Don't worry about tree-huggers or global warming, do it for the profit. Especially as GM cannot profit without making (and selling) millions of these cars. I'm hoping this official gets to keep his job for a long, long time.
The environmental and political damage we are in today isn't due to oil directly, it's due to the side effects of transportation and energy. Transportation and energy aren't bad per se (I'd even wager that they've made the world an astonishingly better place). Oil is destructive, but we don't drive all over our respective countries and heat our houses as a means to burn oil. We burn oil because we drive all over our respective countries and we heat our houses. Tell oil companies, politicians, and automakers that they must change to hydrogen because oil causes pollution and hurts the environment, and they'll ignore you. Convince them that to change from oil to hydrogen will make them more money, reduce the risks of making that money, keep them in business longer, stabilize the industry, and reduce supply problems, and you might get an ear or two. Long term planning...but hopefully some motion.
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Here's the negative, though:
Why do alternative fuel vehicles have to look like something from Blade Runner with wacky new controls? Make a hydrogen-powered Ford Taurus or BMW Z3 or Jeep Grand Cherokee and people will buy it. Make some weird bubble-like thing that looks like the Orgasmatron 2000, and only Woody Allen will buy it.
Excellent -- a quote from a GM official: "We're doing this because we're going to make a boatload of money." This is the perfect attitude for an automaker to make. Don't worry about tree-huggers or global warming, do it for the profit. Especially as GM cannot profit without making (and selling) millions of these cars. I'm hoping this official gets to keep his job for a long, long time.
The environmental and political damage we are in today isn't due to oil directly, it's due to the side effects of transportation and energy. Transportation and energy aren't bad per se (I'd even wager that they've made the world an astonishingly better place). Oil is destructive, but we don't drive all over our respective countries and heat our houses as a means to burn oil. We burn oil because we drive all over our respective countries and we heat our houses. Tell oil companies, politicians, and automakers that they must change to hydrogen because oil causes pollution and hurts the environment, and they'll ignore you. Convince them that to change from oil to hydrogen will make them more money, reduce the risks of making that money, keep them in business longer, stabilize the industry, and reduce supply problems, and you might get an ear or two. Long term planning...but hopefully some motion.
----------
Here's the negative, though:
Why do alternative fuel vehicles have to look like something from Blade Runner with wacky new controls? Make a hydrogen-powered Ford Taurus or BMW Z3 or Jeep Grand Cherokee and people will buy it. Make some weird bubble-like thing that looks like the Orgasmatron 2000, and only Woody Allen will buy it.
