Car Crazy: Al Gore, automotive engineer
July 31, 2000
By Henry Payne and Diane Katz
Copyright 2000 National Review

Oil is the enemy, Al Gore insists, posing a threat more deadly than any military foe. He says so on page 325 of his book Earth in the Balance, the green equivalent of the Book of Revelation. But Candidate Gore knows that limiting fuel consumption by hiking gasoline taxes would be political suicide. So he's trying tax bribery instead, proposing $150 billion in federal subsidies for the development and purchase of alternative fuels and vehicles.

Automakers have yet to design a marketable vehicle without an internal-combustion engine. There's no fathomable reason-environmental, economic, or otherwise-for them to do so. But Gore is convinced that if Detroit only builds it, buyers will come. Or, in this case, the government will buy it using our money. Under his plan, taxpayers would pony up a $6,000 subsidy for every "clean" vehicle purchased. We must do this, says Gore, because America is captive to "Big Oil" and "Foreign Oil"; and Earth will turn hotter than a V8 in rush hour unless greenhouse gases are severely curtailed.

Unveiled just as summer pump prices peaked, the Gore energy policy consists of tax credits, grants, and other giveaways to offset the uncompetitive cost of solar energy, windmills, and methane gas sucked from garbage dumps. Some $12 billion is also set aside for the vehicle-purchase subsidies, and hundreds of millions more for automotive R&D. The biggest chunk would actually forgive royalty payments due the government for natural-gas exploration, thereby enriching the very corporate giants the Clinton-Gore administration is now investigating for price-gouging on petroleum.

Every premise underlying Gore's plan is flawed-which is typical of government remedies, of course. More troubling is the vice president's obvious mistrust of market forces to optimize resources and spur technological innovation when supplies run thin. He prefers 1970s-style central planning, the futility of which should have been thoroughly demonstrated to all.

Anticipating a world in which the central organizing principle is the Kyoto Treaty, Gore is determined to reimpose on consumers engine technologies that Americans long ago rejected in favor of the internal-combustion engine. It is not without reason that only 0.2 percent of the world's 650 million vehicles are powered by energy sources other than gasoline or diesel fuel. Around 1900, electric and steam-powered engines were common, and demand held steady so long as they were easier to start than a balky gas-powered model, which had a crank. But by 1912, the advent of the electric starter-along with an abundant supply of petroleum-had settled the contest, and the internal-combustion engine has dominated the roads ever since.

That drives Gore and other environmentalists around the bend. "It makes little sense," he says, "for each of us to burn up all the energy necessary to travel with several thousand pounds of metal wherever we go" (never mind the freedom this mobility provides us). Thus the Clinton-Gore administration has in the past six years poured more than $1 billion into its Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, under which seven agencies, 15 federal labs, and dozens of universities are working to design a "clean" car.

The Big Three automakers, too, have spent billions on this project, the aim of which is to produce an affordable sedan capable of achieving 80 miles per gallon by 2010. Consumers aren't clamoring for such a vehicle-light-truck sales, in fact, now constitute nearly half of all new sales. But "partnering" with the feds is simply the cost of forestalling higher fuel-economy standards that would inhibit sales of automakers' most profitable products.
Onerous environmental mandates, in fact, are a major factor in the consolidation frenzy that has featured the merger or acquisition of some 13 auto companies in just two years. Smaller manufacturers such as Suzuki, Nissan, and Mitsubishi simply can't afford the regulatory burden prescribed by the Kyoto Treaty.

The truth is, today's new cars emit but a fraction of the air pollutants spewed by models of the 1970s-97.6 percent fewer hydrocarbons, for example. And average fuel economy has greatly increased, growing from 14.2 miles per gallon in 1974 to 24 today, light trucks, sport-utility vehicles, and minivans. Even the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that air quality has vastly improved.

The Gore scheme invites the very miscalculations that characterized the recent electric-vehicle fiasco. Forced to produce a zero-emission vehicle to satisfy California regulators rather than the market, automakers spent billions on products that lacked comfort, power, and convenience. General Motors, for example, spent $350 million to develop the EV-1. GM discontinued the car last winter, then recalled hundreds of the vehicles because of a design defect in the charging system for which the company had no fix. Honda, too, abandoned its electric-car effort last year to focus on improving the efficiency of its conventional fleet. So impractical was the mandate, in fact, that California regulators have postponed their zero-emission requirement until 2003.

Even the massive funding proposed by Gore cannot sidestep the technological dilemmas that still confront alternative vehicles. Closest to production is the "hybrid," which runs on a small engine-typically diesel-coupled with an electric motor charged by energy created when the vehicle brakes. Its fuel economy is impressive, but at a cost of greater concentrations of nitrogen oxides and particulates. The prototypes of the hybrid unveiled earlier this year at the Detroit auto show-Ford's Prodigy and GM's Precept-would, in fact, violate California clean-air standards. Nor are consumers likely to be won over by a car that sacrifices cargo space to make room for a rear-mounted power train-and in which the air conditioning runs only when the car is in motion.

Car and Driver in its July issue says that a Durango hybrid from Dodge is "within a tax credit of profitability." That is, DaimlerChrysler officials will manufacture the truck only if a federal subsidy is forthcoming. What we have, then, is a spanking new model that nobody will buy without a $3,000 bailout from taxpayers. We note, however, that it would take 120,000 miles (at $1.50 a gallon) to recover in fuel savings the $3,000 premium.

Ever the model for government/industry partnerships, Tokyo is reportedly offering subsidies approaching $8,000 on two hybrid vehicles-the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. But Toyota is expected to lose some $20,000 on every Prius sold when it is introduced in the United States this August, with a sticker price of $19,995. Meanwhile, Honda's Insight has been in American dealerships for seven months, costing $20,080 (a comparable gas-powered Honda Civic costs only $12,000)-but Honda has used it mainly as an environmental showhorse, shipping only five per dealer.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Volkswagen grabbed headlines across Europe last year when it introduced the Lupo "3-liter" car (so-called because it can go 100 kilometers on three liters of gas-about 90 miles to the gallon). Such a vehicle does not require a massive government subsidy in Europe because there is actually a market for it. The socialist governments there levy massive gas taxes, driving prices into the neighborhood of $5 a gallon. Still, American environmentalists frown on the Lupo: Its diesel engines emit far too much particulate matter for their taste.

Supposedly holding greater promise are fuel cells. These rely on a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity for horsepower. DaimlerChrysler, for example, will invest nearly $1.5 billion in fuel cells in five years, and all the major automakers have entered joint ventures for fuel-cell development. Were they the least convinced that the investment would yield a commensurate return, it's likely they would go it alone.

But cost is a problem, with a fuel-cell engine-at $30,000-costing ten times more than a conventional engine. Also, fuel-cell components are big, which cuts acceleration, and noisy because of the air compressors necessary to force oxygen through the cell. But the biggest drawback is the volatility of hydrogen. Few drivers would relish the idea of cruising the highways with tanks of this explosive stuff in the trunk (Hindenburg, anyone?). Engineers have devised onboard "reformers," which can extract hydrogen from more benign fuels such as methanol. But these, too, are heavy and bulky, interfering with performance. Nor does a refueling infrastructure-on the order of gas stations.

There will be collateral uses for all of this technology, of course. But affluence is the best ally of innovation. And to the extent that we misdirect resources, we forego potentially life-saving and life-enhancing technological advances. And that is far more dangerous than any of the environmental threats conjured up by Al Gore.