I Want a Modular Pod-Car for My Bailout Money
The Big 3 Auto industry bailout is all the rage now on blogs and news sites. Though many raise the question of why the car companies have not produced more desirable vehicles (UAW drives up prices and kills profits for affordable fuel-efficient cars, bad management with no vision, car companies force consumers to believe they want SUVs through advertising, etc., etc.), I have a different question:
What could the car companies be making that would reinvent our current scenario?? Solar-powered pod cars of course.
Even a decent hybrid would make me happy, but can you imagine the massive coolness of a WPA-like effort that created modular pod cars, solar-powered, that ran on rails for long-distances? In the software industry, modular development isolates the flaws in a program to a specific function that can be retooled as needed without crashing the entire program. Modular transportation would provide as-needed resources without the all-or-nothing approach we have now. For example, my family goes up to Tahoe fairly often in the winter. We decided we needed all-wheel-drive for safety on those trips. Not to mention a car that could slam a snowbank and we’d survive. But that leaves me driving a 20 mpg car on a daily basis. We could give up our trips to Tahoe, but my sanity would suffer! (Mountains… snow… ahhh…) It would be sooooooo groovy to be able to unhook my personal pod for day trips to the grocery store. To tack on the 4WD engine-assist only when needed. To take the rail at least 50% of the way: hook the pod to the rail and go, via geothermal or solar or some other non-coal, non-petroleum renewable source.
I have never understood why we get so brainwashed into our current scenarios that it seems like we have no other options. Yes, it would be really freakin hard to institute a change of that scale. But we have huge problems that need solving in new ways. We need more cooperation and much, much less “every man for himself” thinking. We tend to think of state-imposed programs as unAmerican and bad. It would be great if the Gates Foundation or Buffet’s money took on this task. Heck, I bet the Ikea guy could kick some ass with this! GoogleCars anyone?!?! Open source. With third party add-ons.
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. ~Buckminster Fuller
Pain Aversion: The New Economics
According to Henry Paulsen, the economy has stabilized. Investment bankers are all cozy and happy now. Next up, US auto giants are hurting. After them, people in pain from expensive mortgages and foreclosures. Though I lean liberal, I have limits that apparently the US government does not. Where I come from, Americans work hard to earn what they can. Government provides a leg up on occasion, but the bulk of the effort lies with the individual. Corporations operate in a free market and should not be artificially emboldened or protected by governmental interference. Healthy competition has always fostered innovation.
Except where US automakers are concerned. Though the US automakers share of the market has been in a continual decline since the 80s, somehow they failed to wake up to the fact that people were buying foreign cars for a reason. Somehow US automakers forgot to ever do the reality check that other companies do: are we still competitive? And naturally, what can we do to become more competitive? Instead, US car makers kept pumping out suboptimal fuel efficiency, boxy fifties-era “American looking” styling, obscenely over-sized SUVs, and all with plenty of cup-holders rather than blue-tooth enabled. According to CNN Money:
If the Big Three carmakers were to cut U.S. operations by 50%, 2.5 million jobs could be lost in 2009, according to a study released Wednesday.
The Center for Automotive Research reported that the total employment impact includes nearly 250,000 jobs lost at the automakers and nearly 800,000 at suppliers.
In addition, the organization estimates another 1.4 million job losses outside the industry, such as those caused when stores go out of business in communities hit by plant closings.
That is pain. And the pain is compounded by the sudden lack of mobility of a large sector of the workforce who can’t relocate to better or different jobs because they’re tied to their horribly overpriced mortgages!! The thing I can’t understand, is why more people don’t just walk away when the value of their house is underwater. So you rent for a while. On the positive side, 
even if you have to declare bankruptcy as an individual, you’ve retrieved your mobility and are free of a huge burden of debt. Is this one more example of pain-avoidance? Do people consider it too painful to just let the house go?
If the automakers do receive a bailout, maybe Congress can enforce some sanity: require that the automakers use the funds to retool their factories to produce a hybrid car on par OR BETTER than the Prius. The minute they do, you better believe I’m buying American.
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