Greentech

My travel to Fremont got all messed up this morning — because Mitt Romney decided to have a photo-op in front of the Solyndra building.

It is funny how the mainstream press will closely frame these PR stunts:

Here is a wider shot:

It would save everyone a lot of time and money if these candidates would just learn to use Photoshop.

And not to defend Solyndra, but a cost-benefit analysis of the Energy Dept’s investments should be based on the totality of the program, not a single failure. Romney understands this better than anyone, as surely his vast investment portfolio had a few stinkers now and then.

Like any other Venture-Capital effort, one major success can more than compensate for a string of losses. So, does the Energy Dept. have any big winners in its portfolio? Well, perhaps you’ve heard to these guys…their factory is practically next door to Solyndra. How could the assembled reporters not have noticed it when they were bused in?

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Carmageddon

Here is Carmageddon as envisioned in a General Motors commercial (or should I say Truckmageddon?). GM, which spent $4.5 billion on advertising last year, depicts gas-guzzling trucks as the only vehicle to survive the (oil) apocalypse.

In reality, the only functional transport will be the bicycle. Though GM seems to believe otherwise: the commercial opens with a shot a crushed bicycle.

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Think of the Children

Politicians will go to any length to protect children from underage sex, predators, and abductions. But when public health professionals suggest children should be protected from speeding automobiles — well, get ready for a whole lot of stupid:

Asked if the city will drop speed limits, as suggested earlier this week by the city’s chief medical officer of health [Mayor] Ford told reporters on Friday the idea is “nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. No.”

The report — Road to Health: Improving Walking and Cycling in Toronto— released by Dr. David McKeown recommends speed limits be reduced by as much as 20 km/h, saying the slower speed limits will protect pedestrians and cyclists.

If accepted the speed limit on Lakeshore Boulevard might be reduced to 40 km/h. On most residential streets traffic would be reduced to about 30 km/h.

Ford, who has many times referred to what he calls the ‘war on the car’ in Toronto, said the proposal is “absolutely ridiculous.”

30 kph is quite sensible for neighborhood streets, with many European cities following that standard. This BBC report goes into all the reasons why speed limits need to be lowered, especially for the reduction in fatalities among young children.

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Creepy Toyota Advertisement

Kids have a biological urge to explore the world. Running, playing, biking. So being cooped up in the back seat of a car for hours at a time can be the worst kind of torture. It is like a sensory-deprivation experiment.

But don’t worry: the automakers are coming up with goofy schemes to make it a bit less unbearable.

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The Return of Tailfins

Never thought I’d see the day when tailfins make a comeback. Yeah, I know, the marketing droids euphemistically call them rooftop or sharkfin spoilers, but tailfins are what they look like.

And like their predecessors, tailfins are found mainly on gas-guzzling brands such as BMW and Lexus.

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GM’s Aging Demographic

Actually, “Reality Sucks” is the perfect slogan for GM. It survives on government bailouts, and the 20-something market abandoned the brand.

And GM knows this better than anyone, as evidenced by this advertisement targeting their few remaining customers:

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Suburban Whiners

Lately, there is trend among “Big City” newspapers to feature columns catering to the suburbanites. Perhaps it is just a lame attempt to attract a more affluent demographic, but the columns have a boring predictability. Each week one can expect a gripe about the usual urban failings — lack of parking being the biggest complaint.

But even with that mind, this column from Chris Johnson deserves extra special mention for his gripe that the Oakland Coliseum should have provided parking for 70,000 U2 concert goers:

U2 fans who drove to the stadium assumed there would be ample parking for the event, and they were sadly mistaken. And Coliseum officials – and apparently BART operators – who assumed that Coliseum visitors were aware that parking options are limited and that BART always runs late for Coliseum events – didn’t hold up their end well either.

Pity the poor out-of-down yokels who didn’t know there was a modern train service, and tried to drive to a venue with limited parking.

Crowds Walking from BART Station to Coliseum

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Failure of US Traffic Safety Policy

As a follow up to yesterday’s blog post on the trade barriers to European automobiles, let’s dig into the traffic fatality statistics. The whole point of these trade barriers, after all, is to prevent Americans from driving “unsafe” automobiles. We should expect to find a huge improvement in US road safety, relative to foreigners, right? Especially given that “record” decline last year in annual highway fatalities.

This graph comes from a 2006 paper by General Motors safety researcher Leonard Evans, titled (appropriately) The Dramatic Failure of US Traffic Safety Policy (“TR News”, Jan-Feb 2006).

Evans examined the overall safety trend beginning in 1979. Some may notice the graph stops at the year 2002. Taking into account the “record” decline last year, the US is still doing poorly. The 2009 normalized value is 66, well above the level other countries achieved back in 2002. The trend has not gotten any better.

Evans hypothesizes US traffic safety policies began to diverge from those of Europe starting in the late 1970′s. Instead of accident avoidance, America’s approach shifted to technological gimmicks (air bags, etc), and roadway improvement. The result has been catastrophic in terms of injury and loss of life. If the US had matched Britain’s declines, there would now be 10,000 fewer annual fatalities.

The graph above only measures total fatalities — could this just be a consequence of increasing VMT? Not according to Evans. Here is the graph of fatalities per VMT:

Traffic fatalities per 100 million miles of vehicle travel in US and Great Brittain

The obvious conclusion is that Federal traffic policy has not only prevented the sale of fuel efficient cars, it is killing tens of thousands of Americans.

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How ‘Safety’ Regulations Impede Fuel Efficiency

SUV and small truck sales are booming again, and Detroit automakers have returned to their bad old ways. But when prices surpass the $4/gallon mark again, what plan do they have for the next gas crisis?

One simple answer: re-brand fuel-efficient cars they already sell in Europe. Believe it or not, both Ford and GM do quite well selling gas-sipping cars in Europe, where the price per gallon can easily double US prices.

But alas, it is not so simple. Under Federal “safety” regulations, it is illegal to sell European automobiles in the US market.

Back in 2008, an AP article went into all the difficulties:

But introducing the cars to the U.S. market isn’t as simple as changing the speedometer from kilometers to miles. Ford has to reconcile American and European safety regulations — everything from the color of rear turn signals to the positioning of crash test dummies — that will keep the cars from hitting U.S. highways anytime soon. Competing interests among automakers, governments and the insurance industry are hampering efforts to standardize safety requirements worldwide. That means extra engineering to make different versions of vehicles for different markets.

As noted in the article, there are dozens of minor differences in safety regulations. And those differences don’t necessary make vehicles any safer for the American consumer:

Medford said NHTSA’s test to make sure cars are safe for unbelted occupants is important in the U.S. market, where people who weren’t wearing seat belts make up 45 percent of all traffic fatalities. “The data that we have really drives the direction and the nature of the standards we develop,” he said. But car makers grumble that NHTSA’s requirement makes cars less safe for belted occupants, since protecting people without seat belts requires more powerful air bags and other changes.

Another major shortcoming in the American regulatory framework is in the design of bumpers. American bumpers only have to protect the car; whereas Europe bumper tests simulate crashes against pedestrians.

Smart car sold overseas for 9 years before reaching the US market

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Supersized Dummies

In a new paper to be published next month (Influence of obesity on mortality of drivers in severe motor vehicle crashes) Dr. Dietrich Jehle finds that obese drivers make up a disproportionate number of automobile fatalities.

Might one simple explanation be that fat people drive more than their more physically-active counterparts? It isn’t clear from reading the abstract whether researchers considered this possibility. Instead, Dr. Jehle hypothesizes that seat belts and airbags are not tested for plus-sized adults.

“Crash test dummies have saved lives and provided invaluable data on how human bodies react to crashes, but they are designed to represent normal-weight individuals. If they represented our overweight American society, there could be further improvements in vehicle design that could decrease mortality.”

Needless to say, his proposed solution does not involve crash diets.

He argues that crash test dummies should be ‘super-sized’ to reflect our rotund reality. And cars would be re-designed to accommodate super-sized drivers.

Dr Jehle said extending the range of adjustable seats and encouraging obese people to buy larger cars with more space between the seat and the steering column could save lives. ‘The rate of obesity is continuing to rise, so is it imperative that car designs are modified to protect the obese population, and that crash tests are done using a full range of dummy sizes,’ he added.

This country already suffers from an overabundance of SUV’s, to recommend supersized car designs as a health measure would be stupid and ironic. At the rate we are going, cars of the future will come standard with insulin pumps and heart monitors.

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