Gazoline is dead! Get it through your head!
or
Mutiny in Motor City
By Remy C.

Impromptu editorial intended for the delegates of EVS-20
(Nothing you don't already know, just wanted to re-iterate...)

Friday 14th November 2003

Global Warming, Oxygen depletion, Iraq, all have one thing in common: The burning of fossil fuel. Most of all our environmental and social problems have at their root oil.

And yet, while this should have been the "moral equivalent of war", as President Carter's Trilateral advisors once helped him coin, 30 years later we're still dancing around the issue with smoke and mirrors.

The original Trilateral Commission charter at the moment of its foundation back in 1973 was, and I quote: "to orchestrate a smooth transition away from oil." Well my friends, it's been so "smooooth", we haven't even noticed or made a dent yet!

California's newly appointed EPA secretary Terry Tamminen's EnvironmentNow organization hires the same web design company as the one for the Council on Foreign Relations. So my question is this, should we believe anything Terry says? Will he be a friend or foe, again, of the EV industry?

Why this fixation with hydrogen and the development of a whole new long, tedious and costly fuel distribution infrastructure to shuttle more molecules, when we already have electrons flowing from every wall outlet in America? Why transport the molecule when we can transport the electron? Just a silly question folks. A question the government still refuses to comment on.

EVs? The EV1 failed, that's their answer. Don't get me started. Never mind GM spent a billion dollars to prove to the world EVs wouldn't work, and then tried to destroy the evidence. All the while knowing full well battery and motor technologies were improving so quickly, it wouldn't be but a matter of months before someone built a car with the tZero's amazing performance.

All our attempts, as an environmental movement, as an EV industry, to keep our eye on the ball, to stay focused on the prize: "The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight" still get mysteriously side stepped by the corporate world and the mass media.

The answer to air pollution? Anti-smoking laws!?! Never mind the major cause of asthma and other pulmonary lung disease in metropolitan areas is not tobacco, but vehicle exhaust emissions! Never mind MTBE leaking from gas stations is poisoning our ground water. Never mind ocean tanker spills destroy the coastlines of entire nations! Never mind the platinum in catalytic converters is now rumored hyper-toxic when released to the atmosphere. Never mind the automobile industry and the oil companies pay for half the advertising on TV and in magazines to perpetuate their sick culture of death fantasy.

Overkill? You bet... and even then, it still hasn't sunk in. So what are we doing about it? What's the master plan for all the planet savers? Where's the "green" Kiss Army Eco-Warriors when you need them? Amusing themselves to death while the planet's life support system gets methodically trashed by fat cats living on the hog in plush mansions all over Greenwich and New Canaan?

It's a big responsibility we have as an industry, the EV industry. The future of mankind lies in our hands. Scary thought isn't it? It's one hell of a heavy load resting on our shoulders. So we can't afford to blow it. We're the last hooray. We're the cavalry. The world is looking to us for a solution, for a rEVolution.

But why bother if the deck is stacked so high against us? Why not just quit and go home to join the evil polluting hordes? Why not just keep throwing your SoBe bottle out the car window like everybody else? There's a hundred car magazines like that on newsstands, Electrifying Times is not one of them! We're  anti-matter to their what-ever.

If you can't see the opportunity the Schwarzenegger governorship can lend the electric vehicle industry, then you have not been paying attention. You've been living under a rock, stuck in a time warp.

Arnold and what Arnold should and will do for the EV industry needs to be the major topic of discussion at EVS-20. We have the technology. We have the solution to air pollution, and to much more than this. We are the future of the automobile industry. We can do for the automobile what the Apple 2E did for computers.

Why? How? Because today the technology has caught up with the dream. All of Detroit's con men couldn't put that cat back in the bag again. All of Hollywood royalty wants to own a tZero or a Venturi. "Own", not "lease", not "rent", "own"!!! Never mind the sticker price. Who cares when you can over take every single half-a-million dollar muscle car in City traffic?

Yesterday Tango announced it has joined forces with Lotus to give AC propulsion a run for its money. The race is on... There's room for 700 million of them.

This should be making headlines all over the world. But it's not. At least not yet.  We know why it isn't. They're still only talking about hybrids, fuel cells and pie-in-the-sky hydrogen. They left 100% pure EVs for dead! Well, they got another thing coming. That's why we have the Internet.

We know better batteries - better motors are just an "economy of scale" away, and that there is
no limit to just how efficient they will become over time, forever making liquid or gaseous fuel storage obsolete, a thing of nostalgia.  We've already won the war. The news just hasn't reached Detroit yet. They're in denial. But they won't be after EVS-20.

The message to Arnold's green team is clear? If you don't let us build them in California, we'll just go do it in Shanghai. And instead of "Made in America", the next-gen of "rice rockets" will read "Made in China." (Or maybe Made in Connecticut... stay tuned!)

Remy C.
—ET webed