This Is Who We Are

Another example of why we fail:

As it happens, Ford, the struggling American car company (in certain ways, probably more centrally "American" to most citizens than even longtime industrial titan GM, nay "The General"), has a new model of the Fiesta coming out that seats five (well, five people the size of Winona Ryder, anyway) and gets 65 mpg. You're saying "wow, they've finally gotten the message and are going to deliver 'Mericans a car that is relatively inexpensive and gas efficient."

Except that you'd be wrong. Only selling that car in Europe. You see, it runs on diesel. Ford doesn't think it can sell enough of the engines (they put the break-even number at 350,000/yr) to warrant building an engine plant (in Mexico, natch); the dollar is just too much of a banana republic currency to merit the importation of the engines/cars from England where they're made.

All quite sensible. Except that Ford is going to go out of business (at least as we know it today) with this model. Time to bet the company, gentlemen. You are not going to be in a better position to do so next week or next year. As the article notes, VW and Mercedes are investing heavily in clean diesel, as is Nissan. They'll be first to market in the US, and it is they that will reap the rewards. Create your market. Engage in risk. Figure out a way to sell those 350,000 motors. Otherwise you'll be a division of Tata motors before you know it.

It seems clear now that it will take the utter obliteration of the US auto industry to save the US auto industry. And, in the not-too-distant future, Silicon Valley will be more associated with cars than Detroit. That's where people are taking the chances, after all.

Win one for the Zipper

This is a nice enough idea, separating the battery from the car, linking power generation and distribution, and then essentially selling you the "minutes" rather than just the car and then going your separate ways.

But they need to go one step further. This model won't scale in the US; we're too big, too mobile, and nobody is going to stop 18 times to replace a battery just to relocate or haul the family truckster across country (talk about running out of gas; you'd need a forklift to bail you out).

What they need is for a business model here is a sort of Ultra-Zip Car. You don't buy anything other than a use-privilege. You're a member, and, in fact, ultimately not that many cars are privately owned. A few gas-powered cars or clean-diesel hybrids are in the fleet for edge tasks that just don't make sense on 100% electric supply. When you move, you leave the car right where it is. There will be thousands just like it where you arrive. Something like that could genuinely be deal-changing and, over the course of many years, could fundamentally restructure how we think about transportation in this country.

Tie this model to green energy (as they note they're specifically doing in Denmark) and suddenly you've gotten around the generation/distribution connundrum of technologies like wind. Just store it in all the cars and get it back later (if you need it in a pinch) from the cars plugged in. Texas suddenly becomes the Saudi Arabia of wind energy.