I spent 15 years as a paramedic first responder in urban and rural areas of Michigan, wearing a flack jacket down to the east side of Saginaw to grab-and-go with gut-shot gangbangers, hip deep in an icy ditch at 3 in the morning, dodging drunken fists while trying to tape down a bloody IV, and covering people with my body while volunteer firemen hosed down the carcass of a blazing Blazer.
Here’s one thing I learned.
There are a whole lot of ways gas powered vehicles can and do explode and catch fire, even a bunch that have nothing to do with a tank full of premium Iraqi high test.
So when I read the current nonsense narrative about the made-up, media-mythical non-problem of fires in electric cars, it merely serves to reinforce my long-held belief that our elite journalists not only don’t care about what’s real and what’s important, they don’t have the slightest idea how one would even determine it.
Randy Essex for the Rocky Mountain Institute:
Which brings us to one new story the media are telling that is counterproductive to solving our oil addiction: That the launch of the first mass-market electric cars, the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, is fizzling. Under the headline “Are electric cars losing their spark?” USA Today this month focused on Chevy Volt fires that came only in tests and on Volt and Leaf sales falling below projections this year, reaching probably about 17,000 between the two. In naming the Volt one of the big product flops of the year, Yahoo Finance made much the same arguments.
This narrative simply lacks context. Gas-powered vehicles catch fire nearly 200,000 times a year—on the road, not in labs [chart here]. Toyota, which has now sold more than 1 million hybrids in the U.S., sold only about 5,800 of its Prius hybrid to U.S. customers in 2000, the first year it was offered here. Selling 17,000 EVs in the first year may not be so bad.
To be sure, pricy EVs face obstacles to consumer acceptance. So did the car. The Literary Digest (not to be confused with the USA Today of its time), proclaimed in 1899, “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”
I want to stop buying gas. The patriotic alternatives, with no loss of comfort, safety or convenience, are on the road.
So I see an EV in my future, just as I see EVs becoming as common as hybrids within a few years. But Iran’s latest threat reminds us that we need to go further faster, for example while the Saudi royal family is able to maintain power without direct U.S. military intervention, even as repressive regimes around it collapse.
For my part, I have more faith in a U.S. energy future in which resources from above the ground power homes, industry and EVs than I do in the long-term stability of Saudi Arabia.
The Washington Post and the elite east coast media have many years to go, in my estimation, before they can make up for slavishly shilling a jingoistic war for oil that has destroyed our economy and eroded our constitution. One good way to start might be to get a story, any story, right, and tell it the way it should be told.
Rolling out an innovative product like the Chevy Volt, that addresses a significant global problem, selling every unit you make, and ending the first year with a waiting list of customers, normally would be a success story in a rational world – but for the journalists who are still wiping the yellow stains of WMD hype off their collective muzzles, apparently there is a need to spin things another way.
A good look in a mirror might help, or, failing that, maybe some time off in the real world.
It’s a good point, there’s a very distinct lack of perspective in these Volt fire stories. I wonder how much of a role oil company advertising dollars play in it.
My Nissan Leaf is the best car I’ve ever driven. Nissan did a great job with the car, and it’s also great to see all the advertising they’re putting into it. Yet it seems like all I hear about the car is that it’s “only” sold under 20,000 units. It’s a relatively new technology – what do people expect? How many cell phones or personal computers were sold in those technologies’ first years? As you note, the Leaf smoked the Prius’ first year sales, and hopefully the Leaf will be the Prius of EVs.
I need more info to fight all the Natural gas pumps Love’s gas stations are putting up inOklahoma…I think Energy Justice said just go for electrica car plug in structure…I guess towns could/should develop NG for big vehicles….I think I am against any NG use…we can just go without..better than burning up and fracking the planet
We have a Nissan Leaf, too. We put full solar on our house, enough to charge the car.
It drives beautifully, it’s in constant use all over town, zero emissions and zero trips to the gas station. What’s not to love?
I know these cars don’t perform as well in cold weather and there is the issue of limited range.
Our everyday lives have not changed, really. And that’s what I keep pointing out to others. Can you imagine what a difference it would make if millions converted their houses to solar and had electric cars? I know everyone can’t- it’s not feasible for people with long commutes or who have to haul work equipment in large trucks. But the majority of people do in-town or suburban driving.
We waited forever to get our Leaf. Months. There’s a dedicated group of owners who meet up around town- in fact, that’s how I learned about the car. Rows of shiny new cars in the parking lot of a home improvement store and we went over to check them out.
The test drive sold us- I suggest to everybody over to the dealership to take a test drive. “It’s not a golf cart. Not at all.” My husband test drove it like a bat out of hell- salesman likely needed a change of pants- but he wanted to see just what the car could do.
I feel like a woman on a mission here but I’m trying to convince the conservative middle class members- especially climate change deniers and the religious ones. I tell them, See? My life is still the same! Except I don’t pay hundreds of dollars for gasoline every month! If they can’t accept the reason for reducing greenhouse gas, they surely understand saving money.
The media is unusually lazy feeding off of the t-GOP’s debate of biggest losers and Vietnam draft dodger circular firing squad. For example, the decaying Russian Mars probe has still gotten less coverage than the women whose bungee cord broke over Victoria Falls. And the woman suing in small claims court for less than advertised gas milage fits in with the Looter Limbaughs’ and the George Noorys’ filling the public airwaves with Esso-Koch paid propaganda.