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Honestly, when I first became a book editor an eon ago, if you had told me that the pen and the typewriter would go the way of the dinosaurs and that, almost 50 years later, I would be sitting at a computer able to dispatch (yes, as in TomDispatch) things I had written or edited almost instantaneously more or less everywhere on Earth, I would have said you were delusional.
And if, back then, when I was at a pump filling my car with gas, you had assured me that someday -- a day I haven't personally quite made it to (as, in New York City, I use public transportation) -- the gas pump would be a thing of the past and cars would run better and more cheaply on electricity, I would have thought you just as crazy.
Finally, if you had told me, that the gas I was putting in my car then, when burned, would actually help heat this planet to -- yes! -- what would, in some ever less distant future, become unbearable, I would have just shaken my head and paid you no further attention.
Of course, if you had also told me that, almost 50 years later in the science fiction novel you were then writing, Americans, knowing that the coal, oil, and natural gas industries were all too literally destroying this planet, would nonetheless elect as president a man wildly intent on producing yet more oil and natural gas, I would have thought you were creating the worst futuristic novel imaginable.
And yet here we are in the country that now produces more oil and exports more natural gas than any other on this planet of ours, with a president, who, with six bankruptcies to his name, is now set to potentially bankrupt the United States and the planet. (Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up, could you?) With that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, author of a classic book on an imperial planet, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, introduce you to a world that, at least when it comes to cars and trucks, might be heading in quite a different direction, even if that direction could produce what he calls a "carmageddon" for the U.S. auto industry. Tom
Detroit's Death Spiral?
How Trump's Climate Policy Could Kill the U.S. Auto Industry
By Alfred McCoy
It came upon a midnight clear, a vision both complete and quite specific -- not from any of those "angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold," as in the Christmas carol, but from a long line of trucks on the Indiana Toll Road.
On that cold winter's night about five years ago, the 18-wheelers were playing their usual game to stay awake, passing each other endlessly and slowing me down to 60 miles an hour when I wanted to do 70 or, I'll admit it, 75. When I pulled into a rest stop to gas up, about 50 of those big rigs were parked there. Their drivers were taking the federal government's mandatory 11- or 12-hour rest breaks.
A quick bit of mental arithmetic told me that 50 big rigs, each costing $200,000 new, meant that $10 million in working capital was snoozing profitlessly by the side of that road. Back on the highway in a radio-dead zone, my mind wandered as I wondered just how many trillions of dollars in capital were tied up when America's three million big rigs spent half their working days functionally asleep. Surely, I thought, there must be a better way to run the world's biggest consumer economy.
As I hit the Chicago Skyway with its rough pavement and rusting guard rails, a vision of America's automotive future came to me in a flash, complete in every detail. One day in the not-too-distant future, the left lane of every Interstate highway across America would be filled with platoons of a dozen or so 18-wheelers, all electric, all driverless, going 70 miles per hour only 10 feet apart to draft in the slipstream and cut their energy consumption by 30%. In the right lanes, electric passenger vehicles would be driving, hands-free, until they reached their exit ramps. To keep the navigation signal constant, the highway reflectors would have become wireless transmitters, linked by fiber-optic cables to ensure safety.
Then, as I merged into that crazy-fast nighttime traffic on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway, I came up with what I thought was my really big idea. Outside every major city, those all-electric big rigs would pull into an automated depot to exchange their standard-sized batteries, allowing a full charge in five minutes. There, human truckers, probably more of them than ever before, would take over, navigating crowded city streets and tight loading docks with hard-won skills that no robot could ever replicate.
When I got home to Madison, Wisconsin, late that night, I went online to test my vision with some quick numbers. In 2020, the costs for a big rig's driver, fuel, and engine maintenance were as much as $2.20 a mile, so a typical thousand-mile run from Port Newark on the East Coast to Chicago could cost $2,200. By contrast, a driverless electric semi-slipstreaming in a peloton would make the same trip for just $70 -- with the cost of drivers at near-zero, energy outlays down to five cents per mile, and maintenance reduced to tire replacement -- not to mention the incalculable gains from doubling each rig's driving time to 24/7.
Vision Becomes Reality
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