Avoiding a pointless auto industry bailout: The RIGHT FIRST STEP on the green path

JeanetteHR Can you believe the uninspired, hopelessly pointless direction that this auto industry bailout is going? Granted, the list of directions for better ideas is crowded with options, most of which are barely off the drawing board and crash tested so where do we turn. Why not turn to the ideas of the most ingenius, inventive and marketplace/system savvy advisor to energy industries, the military and to energy users whether it's we individuals or the industries we depend on. Amory Lovins demands that We Must Win the Oil Endgame, and he shows how!! In this mere 20 minute youtube video. Perfect to circulate. It seems to me that Lovins' ancient -- 2006? -- statement on our choices in re-engineering the auto industry are again vital to consider! We must insist the Lovins' insights be adopted for these bailout negotiations. Without it, we should balk on bailout moneys! And if we don't push as hard as we can, where ever we see opportunities, this Washington, DC exercise will be a pointless, painful billion dollar re-engineering game that just continues on the same miserable path as far as we're concerned... when it could be the crisis moment for genius in switching to the CARBON-FIBER BODY cars that would be the right first step to get us

• free of foreign oil,
• make cars safer,
• reduce pollution and
• put the US automakers (and their remaining workforce) on track to meaningful use of resources.

Lightweight carbon-fiber is the shortcut to jolt this transportation problem into the right orbit. And it's more economical for the industry than the current miserable path, financially viable or not. We can do better on vehicle performance and less expensively than the current models. JeanetteHR


JohnR As for the new auto taskforce (a car czar is apparently not enough), why aren't we looking at this the OTHER way around? Like what I keep saying about how much oil SHOULD WE USE? Recall my old notes about the average American driver using 800 to 900 gallons per year, based on data I found for a decade ago. Then the data shows that we supposedly import at least 60% of our oil, which means we must not be importing 40%. That 40% of the oil we'r using now is our oil to use as long as it lasts. Keeping us running on our own resources for at least another 40 years, last research (Science News on bacterial extraction success). Take 40% of 800 to get 320 gallons per year per driver. That's what I'm suggesting should be the FIRST goal for us drivers using oil for our vehicles. Use no more than that 320 gallons/year, or pay a new "oil alternatives tax" which then would build a new and needed R&D + subsidy moneys fund directly available to alternatives projects like Lovins'. Let's assume we drive 15,000 miles per year. We'd need a Prius to stay within your share of US oil and avoid the tax on using foreign oil, since that's the only vehicle which averages about 47 mpg, high enough to allow only 320 gallons of annual oil use. If we are driving 9000 miles per year, we can get by with no less than 28.1 mpg. A fairly normal car. Consumers already know mpg, so this just puts that knowledge to practical use. Every car purchase could include a new clear disclosure sticker of how many miles can be driven per year before the "import oil tax for alternatives" kicks in. It could be a sticker as big as the typical mpg label. To enforce this, we implement a new national oil-import tax on car registrations. I've already submitted written recommendations about a similar plan for KY, where I said it would replace the current annual vehicle property tax (currently paid by KY and Indiana vehicle owners, but not OH). Each "household fleet" vehicle annual mileage is divided by its EPA-official average mpg. Add up the gallons theoretically purchased for the year. Divide by the number of drivers. The tax is only on the gallons purchased above 320 gallons per driver per year, times the number of drivers. Easily implemented. The reasons I like this are:

1) it puts direct incentive to use less oil on the drivers, not the mfrs
2) drivers now see direct higher cost for import energy
3) cars already have no-tamper odometer laws
4) the auto registration process is already setup, including tax collection
5) incentive to use less oil benefits all alternatives & solutions equally
6) mfrs will certainly hear more consumer demand for higher mpg than now

Contrast this with the current system where -- achieved or achievable -- CAFE is outside the realm of the mfrs since they don't know in advance how many of what kind of vehicles people will buy. Right now average buyers seem to prefer lower-than-CAFE mpg vehicles. For whatever reasons... Mfrs pay the CAFE fines, not the purchasers of the poorer-than-CAFE vehicles. I think this is one reason why consumers pay so little attention to it, and the same mfrs which pay CAFE fines pay them year after year, just a cost of business. I'd prefer to see my proposed new fund moneys (as well as any economic stimulus moneys) fully denied the big 3 unless they complied with CAFE and passed the crash tests! Heck, did I hear right, that not one new Chrysler vehicle even got a passing score in the latest round of crash tests? JohnR