Cars, Cars, and More Cars– the Future of Transportation?

The personal jet packs promised in animated media from the 20th century are just not going to happen. Can you imagine tens of thousands of jet-packed individual commuters descending on downtown San Diego? Who thinks up this stuff, anyway?

Perhaps the worst part of all this malarkey is that it’s still going on. The CoolDown published a listing of supposedly visionary transportation initiatives in April. They include stuff right out of a Jules Verne 19th Century novel: Flying Air Taxis, Driverless Railpods, Airpowered Airplanes. Flying Electric Passenger Ships, and Solar-powered Cars. 

Our economy and society have been built around the concept of individual (sometimes with a passenger or three) transportation. Like our economy and society, that premise is failing and the proposed solutions require difficult choices many people are unwilling to make.

Let’s start with the gasoline powered automobile. The average age of a passenger car in the US is 14 years, throw in trucks at 11.9 years and you’ll come up with an average of 12.6 years, according to a new report by S&P Global Mobility.

The auto industry has priced itself beyond what its target markets can afford, the average drive-off price of a personal vehicle increasing by 60% over the past decade, according to the ZeroHedge newsletter at OilPrice.com.

Boosters and apologists for the supremacy of personal transport like to point to enhanced safety features, supply chain issues, and changes in consumer demand as the cause of higher prices.

Even if you buy into these excuses, the fact remains that a new car purchase is no longer possible for an ever-increasing portion of consumers. At drive-off-the-lot prices near $50,000, payments start at more than $700 monthly, depending on interest rates and length of loan.

The average monthly pay (@$30 per hour) in California (net) is about $4100; the state’s median rent is $2481, according to Redfin. That leaves a little more than $1600 monthly for other expenses, which may include $1200 (CA Average) for groceries and $400 (ditto) for utilities.

That leaves $0 for transportation of the new car persuasion.

Of course, there are less than the average auto prices, and used cars are always an option. The overall picture for new car sales is still not great.

Foreign competition, particularly from China, is something the US industry pours millions into lobbying and campaign donations to prevent. American dealers, keenly aware of the threat to their bread and butter, are not interested in Chinese cars, which are gobbling up a rapidly increasing market share in Europe.

Via Spectrum News:

• Most of the cars made and sold in China right now are priced at less than $20,000, including electric vehicles which can be bought for as little as $10,000. The lowest-priced cars currently sold in the United States are the Nissan Versa, starting at $16,390, and the Mitsubishi Mirage, starting at $16,695. Both run on gas. The lowest-priced EV for sale in the U.S. is the Nissan Leaf, starting at $29,255.

The urge for larger vehicles in the domestic market is largely driven by the self-defense instincts of drivers. Find yourself in a sedan between two F150 trucks doing 75mph on the freeway and you’ll understand the need to be seen.

Moving to the bigger picture outside the current marketplace, environmental and political concerns are influencing the increasing production of hybrid and EV cars. The Biden administration’s new rules for automakers tailpipe emissions might also be a factor, depending on the results of the next election.

This week brings news of Asian automaker innovation that has potential to change the vehicles we drive.

China EV giant BYD has unveiled a new hybrid powertrain that’s capable of allowing a car to travel more than 1,250 miles without recharging or refueling. 

In Tokyo, Toyota showcased development of an “engine reborn”; lean compact engines that also run on so-called green fuels like hydrogen and bioethanol, or get paired with zero-emissions electric motors in hybrids

Via the Associated Press:

• Toyota’s Chief Executive Koji Sato said the “engine is optimized for the electrification era” with hopes of helping push the world into “carbon neutrality.”

• Toyota already has a well-known hybrid car — the Prius — with a gas engine and an electric motor. It switches between the two to deliver a cleaner drive.

• In future hybrids, the electric motor is set to become the main driving power, and the new engine will be designed to take a lesser role and help it along, according to Toyota.

• Domestic allies Subaru Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp., both preparing ecological engines designed to meet the inevitably upcoming stringent emissions standards, joined Toyota ‘s presentation billed as a “multi-pathway workshop.”

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Gasoline-powered cars have become part of the war on woke. Donald Trump promises to preserve the status quo, along with slapping huge tariffs on imports. 

While less-than-extreme reactionaries are willing to allow ECV/Hybrid cars to exist, anything threatening car supremacy is considered the devil’s handiwork. The dirty energy conglomerates financing right wingers want people to keep buying their poison at inflated prices. 

In oil-rich Texas, the Republican Party even included a bit in the party platform, as Hamilton Nolan opined upon in his point-by-point critique:

• Casting Texas Republicans as cranks ultimately lets them off the hook. Viewed in totality, what comes through in their platform is a dark, dark vision of what America is and should be. It is a Taliban-esque vision of a place where white Christian men enjoy ultimate freedom and power, true democracy is non-existent, and you will one day be shot by a poorly educated but heavily armed person, probably while standing in front of one the state’s ubiquitous oil wells.

• Texas Republicans dream of more highways:

• “We oppose climate mandates like Net Zero, Vision Zero, or declarations of a climate emergency that threaten our freedom to travel, impose any sort of state or federal mileage tax, or institute diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on taxpayers and drivers. We oppose anti-car measures that punish those who choose to travel alone in their vehicle.”

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“Cars don’t kill people, people do” is the premise for our highway infrastructure in the US, and the auto industry has focused the attention of lawmakers away from the inherent dangerousness of cars to the actions of the person behind the wheel.

From a BBC profile of Swedish innovations that have significantly reduced highway deaths.

• From the 1930s, the Automotive Safety Foundation (ASF) – a US body created in 1937 that was backed and controlled by car manufacturers until it was merged into the Highway Users Federation in 1970 – sponsored films, posters and TV items about the importance of driving responsibly, and they lobbied for driving tests.

• "There was a lot of blame directed at the driver, and they were quite willing to go after reckless drivers aggressively because they were a threat to the reputation of the industry," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. "Traffic enforcement principles were really developed by the auto industry themselves directly. They sponsored traffic enforcement training for police officers."

Shifting the focus of highway safety is part of the program for Vision Zero, whose goal of reducing traffic related deaths and injuries has led to creation of city agencies nationwide. 

The City of San Diego flavor of this outlook maintains a web page headlined Zero Traffic Related Fatalities and Severe Injuries by 2025. That particular goal is a joke, as crossing many major thoroughfares throughout the city will show.

Other groups, like Circulate San Diego, are taking small bites of the bigger transportation pie, and I wish them well.

It’s not that these baby-steps are worthless, it’s that the public’s perception of how we get things done needs to change. With suburban developments built around cul-de-sacs and elected officials who believe that adding more lanes to a highway will resolve traffic jams, there’s a lot of mind changing ahead.

Somebody needs to step up to the plate and declare the end of this auto-centric era is coming. That’s the real bigger vision we need to have, and even hinting at it is a political death trap for elected (and non-elected) officials. The mere suggestion of collecting taxes based on car mileage turned into a crusade led by bottom feeders like Carl DeMaio.   

The far right ear-worms increasingly holding sway in the electorate are saying changing auto-centric thinking is part of a world wide conspiracy, led by the Marxist-Communists or the United Nations or maybe even Antifa. 

So, today, let my words typed here (I can’t vocalize) be one of many voices saying there’s a better way, if for no other reason that our national isolation of self can be treated by actually communicating.

Traffic is like weather, most everybody’s okay with chatting about it. I say, let’s get subversive!

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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Trump Boasted About Sex With Stormy in Tahoe, Athlete Says via The Daily Beast. 

• The celebrity athlete, who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, citing fear of harassment or retaliation, said he was close to Trump and Daniels while they socialized at the 2006 American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

• Though Trump sometimes referred to Daniels indirectly as a “porn star,” the athlete said, he emphasized that it was understood among the golfers who heard the boasts that Trump, at the time best known as the host of reality TV show The Apprentice, was saying he had slept with Daniels.

• “It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, adding that Trump encouraged other celebs to try to have sex with Daniels, behavior the athlete described as “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”

SPOILER ALERT: Odds are the athlete is former Pittsburg Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger

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Mexico’s Noisy, Colorful, Unserious Election - (We’re About to Elect Our First Woman President, But Most of Us Know Real Change Isn’t Coming) by Maria Guillén at Zocalo Square

• Idealists might say that these elections are a decision between two visions for Mexico’s future. In my mind, they are something less profound: a reaffirmation of a movement that prophesizes extraordinary morality while sadly copying previous governments’ vices. It feels as if today’s Mexican political system is run by the idea, rather than the reality, of electoral change. Through elections we can put a woman in power, an outsider in power, a different party in power; we can punish the ruling party, or the traditional parties.

• Change alone is not hard. What is hard—extremely hard—is change that makes things better.

• The elections are all people talk about here, but they feel like background noise to me. More competition does not necessarily translate into more democracy, or better democracy. It’s the scramble for power that truly drives Mexican politicians. Little can be said for the exercise of power itself, or if leaders care at all about what happens the day that follows the election.

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For Wall Street Billionaires, This Election Is About One Thing by Timothy Noah at New Republic

• Biden’s plan is to let the tax cuts expire. At any rate, that’s what he’s been saying lately. In fact, Biden intends to keep the tax cuts for people earning less than $400,000, which will increase the budget deficit by $1.5 to $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Trump intends to keep the tax cuts for everybody, which will increase the budget deficit by $4 trillion over the same period. If the donor class were really concerned about inflation, it would oppose Trump’s plan on the grounds that a $4 trillion deficit increase is much more inflationary than a $2.5 trillion deficit increase. But they’re silent on this point. Biden would likely seek to reduce the cost of keeping some of Trump’s tax cuts by imposing new taxes on inherited wealth, by increasing the Medicare tax on high incomes, and by taxing carried interest. But don’t expect these gentlemen to thank Biden for such budget-mindedness.

• Not even Trump appears to buy the specious reasons that respectable plutocrats give for supporting his candidacy. In The Washington Post on Tuesday, Josh Dawsey reported that Trump said the quiet part out loud at a recent meeting at the Pierre Hotel while shaking down this crowd for $25 million contributions to his super PACs. Trump bluntly told them that if Biden is elected their taxes will go up in 2026. (Actually, make that two quiet parts, since it’s against the law for Trump to solicit on behalf of his super PACs.) “He’s not going to renew them,” Trump said of the 2017 tax cuts, “which means your taxes are going to go up by four times.” Actually, they’ll go up by less than that, but let’s don’t quibble. Trump was forcing his audience to acknowledge that they will support him in 2024 not because they think a second Trump term will be good for the republic—most know it won’t be—but because he will make them richer.