At the recent meeting of the world's elites in Davos, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and former Mexican President Felipe Calderon circulated a proposal to ban cars in all major cities in the world by dense-packing their layouts. The cost, as I noted on Monday: a mere $90 trillion (that's right, trillion). It's telling in a foreboding sense that the pair's idea wasn't laughed off the continent.
Enviro-nutty ideas such as these trace their origin to Gore's 1992 book, "Earth in the Balance," in which Gore called the internal combustion engine "the mankind's greatest enemy." In reality, it is arguably the greatest enabler of human progress in the world's history. So readers should take some delight in articles appearing two years apart — one at Time.com, and another at the Wall Street Journal, where the authors predict that the odds seem to be in favor of the evil internal combustion engine continuing to outshine the enviros' favored alternatives for at least the next couple of decades. Gore and his media enablers surely wail and gnash their teeth when such inconvenient items rear their scientific heads.
In January 2013, Brad Tuttle at Time.com weighed in as follows (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Why the Car of the Future Will Be Powered by … Gasoline
The consensus among auto insiders is that hybrid cars that run on battery and gas have a much brighter future than vehicles powered by electricity alone. And hotter still in the decade or so ahead? Cars that just use plain old gas.
The advisory company KPMG surveyed 200 car industry executives from around the world, including 22 in North America, and compiled the findings in the latest edition of an annual report revealing where auto insiders think the industry is going.
The results show that few anticipate a major impact in the near future from purely battery-powered plug-in vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and Honda Fit EV. “Just one in 10 of all survey participants think that battery electrified vehicles will be the next big thing,” the report states. On the other hand, 85% of those surveyed said that downsizing and innovating the traditional gas-powered internal combustion engine offers automakers the best chance of boosting fuel efficiency and lowering vehicle emissions.
What’s more, “in the 12 months since the last KPMG automotive survey, the optimism over electric cars has dampened considerably among automakers,” the report states. When asked about which electric vehicle technology would attract the most customer attention over the next 5 to 15 years, 16% pointed to battery-powered plug-ins in the 2012 study, compared to 11% this year.
... Things have gotten to the point that automotive writers who dreamed for decades about the possibility of electric cars are now admitting that the “honeymoon is over.” That’s how Drew Winter from Wards Auto put it. Sitting behind the wheel of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf for the first time were “among my most memorable in more than 30 years of automotive journalism,” Winter wrote. And yet, in terms of purely battery-powered cars: "The shortcomings are impossible to ignore."
But environmentalists usually act as if they don't exist.
On Friday, Steve Levine at the Wall Street Journal had a similar take, with a specifically longer-term focus. And in an intersting irony, though I personally don't believe they are as influential as Levine, government-mandated fleet fuel economy requirements may be helping Al Gore's nemesis along:
The Car of the Future May Run on Gasoline
For all the talk of electric cars, the old-fashioned internal combustion engine is proving to be hard to beat
When most of us picture the high-tech personal mobility of the future, we tend to imagine a sleek, dead-quiet electric car, packed with voice- or motion-directed gizmos and self-driving features. We see ourselves gliding around almost effortlessly, free to talk, work or text as we see fit.
What few of us conjure up is having this sort of experience in a gasoline-fueled car. But that may be changing in the face of recent design advances. The internal combustion engine—the workhorse of the industrial age—is proving to be much more than a stubborn technological incumbent.
More than a century after becoming the dominant way that people move around, gas-powered cars are challenging ostensibly more advanced electric vehicles. It has proved hard to beat engines in which fuel is ignited, drives pistons and propels a vehicle. Even in 2040, according to forecasting agencies such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration, cars with gas- and diesel-powered engines will still represent some 95% of the international car market.
One reason is that refinements of combustion-engine technology are mandated: U.S. government standards require cars to average 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025, up from 25.1 mpg last year. To get there, car makers are improving efficiency with direct fuel injection (which allows gasoline to burn more efficiently), aluminum bodies and smaller engines. Scientists are making progress on a super-battery that may some day push aside combustion, but they’re a long way from making electric cars competitive in the mass market.
... Today’s mass-market diesels probably have the world’s most efficient combustion engines: As much as 45% of the fuel ends up being used to propel the vehicle. But 55% of it still just burns off as wasted heat. Gasoline is worse. Just 18% of its energy actually reaches the wheels; a whopping 82% goes into the ether. Even today’s best combustion engines aren’t so terrific at turning fuel into motion.
Still, for now at least, they continue to advance, maintaining gasoline’s lead.
Imagine that.
It should be fun showing these items to environmentalist zealots who wants to end any and all forms of fossil fuel use for transportation.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
