When it comes right down to it, an automobile is only as viable as its energy source. If your car has a range of 300 miles, you are limited as to where you can go if there isn’t a dependable network of spots to replenish your supply.
Nor is it any fun having to go to the internet to find these remotely located stations as you’re planning your cross-country trip. And some more remote locales will have none at all, making them inaccessible.
Yet this will be the dilemma for people 50 years from now who are still driving cars with internal combustion engines as they hunt for the few remaining stations still selling this thing called gasoline. The Sinclair brand, with its logo featuring a dinosaur, will seem particularly apt.
Earlier this year, the automotive press waved dismissively when General Motors announced it would stop making gas-powered engines by 2035. It had to be either a pipe dream or a PR stunt.
These silent little electric buggies were fine for snowflakes or MIT grads, but for middle America, you could have its spark plugs and pistons when you pried them from its cold dead hands. Then the Ford F-150 Lightning happened, and truck fans in America leaned forward in their loungers, jaws agape at a pickup that could run an array of the most amp-thirsty power tools, electrify the whole house in the event of a power outage and come within seven-tenths of a second of a Corvette in its 0-60 time.
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Instead of incrementally chiseling away at the fringes of the car-buying public, Ford launched a Hail Mary, going after the last segment of the public you would expect to be interested in green energy. Ford instantly had 150,000 pre-orders for the Lightning. America has always been about results, and coal rolling doesn’t seem like quite as much fun when the pickup next to you at the traffic light can smoke you off the line like you’re stuck in a primordial tar pit.
Last week Ford essentially joined GM by shoving all its chips into the electrical arena, announcing an $11 billion investment in electric-vehicle and battery factories that will employ 11,000 people.
As Congress wrestles over public spending, it’s this private spending that is more worthy of attention. Retrofitting a petroleum-based nation with green energy will most certainly lead to a second Industrial Revolution, roughly 150 years after the first.
In the process, we will save the planet, no thanks to the world’s governments. It’s amusing but factual to think that the builders of the Olds 98, the Mark IV, the Mustang and the Camaro will be the ones leading us to a greener future. But once these dominos begin to fall, they fall fast.
Those who have not yet reached the age of 50 will not remember that in 1970 a thick milky haze of what they called smog hung over every American urban center. This was a mild improvement over coal, which in the 1800s turned the sky over American cities black.
Much of this smog was cleaned up with the introduction of the catalytic converter (known by the irreverent as a “cataclysmic perverter”) which was good for the air but ruined vehicular performance for about a decade.
Drivers of the Chevy Bolt who have been advised not to park near other cars in case theirs should spontaneously catch fire will understand the technological growing pains. But consider the long-term effects of the catalytic converter and other mechanisms that scrubbed pollutants from fossil fuel consumption.
In 50 years, cities have gone from dirty, lung-stinging hellscapes that were abandoned each weekday at 5 p.m. to desirable, economically vibrant communities. And all it took was breathable air.
If we could see the gases that are responsible for climate change, we would have done something about it a long time ago. Smoke, exhaust, litter, smog and other visible byproducts of human existence are easier to fight than is an unseen enemy.
But even those who still believe the whole climate change thingie is a hoax might want to think about this: Cleaning up the planet has always been one of the great economic engines of the last 150 years.
It hasn’t just allowed cities to thrive, it has pushed the demand for new fuels and new technologies and new companies that provide good jobs with high pay. The Ford factories are just the beginning.
The entire bone, muscle and sinew of transportation, industrial and energy components are about to undergo a great retrofit the likes of which have not been seen since the introduction of steam engines, electricity and wired communications.
And it will little matter who holds public office. The first dishwasher was patented in 1850. Which is regarded as more consequential today, this occurrence, or the presidency of Zachary Taylor?
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.