The internet has changed how American businesses operate, none so much as the news business, we tend to believe around here at 125 N. Johnson St. If there is a business that has been turned on its head nearly as much, it is surely the car business.
How people get their news and how people shop for and buy a car has changed a bit in the past 20 years. OK, a lot. Upside down. Topsy turvy. The thing is, the car business is being turned on its head once again. This time not by natural market forces and technology but by government decree.
The latest diktat a couple weeks ago sparked a Saturday morning rant on this page that triggered a few discussions and then a few more which resulted in a couple of extremely interesting conversations with Bluffton’s new-car dealers that I hope were properly reflected in an article last week.
Dealing with an issue that’s this complicated and has so many “moving parts,” as more than one referenced, there is always more than can fit into a single narrative. Or some details are enough of a side issue as to not make the cut or is more an opinion about all of the above by either the subjects or the writer. To wit:
• No irony is lost in the fact that much of where we are today had its beginnings in Republican administrations — the supposed party of limited government.
It was under the watch of California Gov. Ronald Reagan that the California Air Resource Board (CARB) was established, which set new auto emission standards in order to battle the truly nasty smog, especially in the Los Angeles basin. Good intentions. Auto manufacturers had to comply since that state is about 11 percent of their market. The standards were, over time, adopted by other states and those choices impact the entire industry.
I think it is safe to say that the auto industry would not have worried about smog and emissions to the extent to make a significant impact without those requirements. But, methinks, everybody got carried away.
As referenced in my rant two weeks ago, President George W. Bush decided he knew better than us what kind of light bulbs we ought use. Good luck finding an inexpensive incandescent light bulb these days. Thus, we’ve come to not be surprised, let alone object, when the government begins telling us what to buy.
• Here’s a good analogy: “EVs (electrical vehicles) is a niche market,” one of the guys told me. “So are convertibles. We sell maybe three or four all year. So telling us we have to sell so many EVs a year is like forcing us to sell so many convertibles. Only so many people want them.”
• Which segues into another point. Our conversations were more like discussions than interviews. They would wander off into “Why don’t they do this…” or “Why not that…?”
“There you go,” one of them said more than once. “You’re thinking logically again.” Nothing about the plans are logical. The decisions are made on emotion and “saving the world.”
• Which segues into some speculation: “Can you imagine everyone in Bluffton plugging in their cars every night?” one of them asked. “Or trying to find a charge station around town every day?” And then multiply that exponentially across the state and nation. The electrical grid to support the changes desired is impossible to erect in the foreseeable future, let alone in the stated time frame of eight years.
A side rant would be timely here about how traditional power production via fossil fuels and nuclear reactors are being phased out by solar and wind production and how logical that is … not. But I digress.
And another side rant about the environmental (and human) impact of mining the minerals needed for the batteries. One estimate puts the carbon emissions of producing an EV equal to the fuel used by a Chevy Suburban for 10 years.
• And there are always new terms to learn. Have you heard of MPGE — Miles Per Gallon Equivalency? It has to do with hybrids. It’s complicated. And I’d not heard of a PHEV — a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. They exist and many have been sold. “Hybrids,” I am sure you know, have both an electric motor and a gas-powered engine and clearly make the most sense as a transition from the old way to the new.
“But the government wants zero emissions,” it is explained. “And besides, there you go thinking logically again.”
• Technology, we are told, will be our savior. And indeed, the three dealers — Brent and Greg Hiday and Todd Reimschisel — can share a number of truly amazing advances already made and others in the works, that some day — some day — will make EVs feasible.
• A final question: “Would a change in administration make this all go away?” There is some disagreement among the three. Some say “no,” some say “yes,” but it may only make a difference in the schedule. “It’s coming, one way or another,” one said but continues: “Not all of it as soon as they want, and some things not in our lifetimes.”
I like to think that someday, even the most adamant EV and climate advocates will realize that the battery issues aren’t solved at both ends — production and disposal — and that people really don’t want all this and that the charging infrastructure isn’t in place and that we don’t have the electrical grid in place and …
“There you go again, thinking logically,” I’m told. Or dreaming, which may be the same thing.
miller@news-banner.com
