Writes Farhad Manjoo in "Gas-Powered Cars Are an Environmental Catastrophe. I’ll Miss Them Anyway" (NYT).
June 30, 2023
"Gasoline cars are among the last remnants in our daily lives of the pistoning industrial age — machines powered not by quietly streaming electrons..."
"... but by noisy, fiery explosion, by sequential gears and timing belts, by the primal growl of thermal expansion. America’s overreliance on cars has been ruinous, but... let’s remember, too, how the gas-powered car helped realize a quintessentially American idea of liberty: the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please.
Yes, I’m romanticizing the automobile.... But as critical as I’ve been of cars, I can’t deny loving driving and loving it in a primal way — loving the thrum of a revving engine, loving slaloming in and out of turns on a windy country road, loving simply going very far, very fast, conveyed by fire.
And here’s another confession: I’ve never felt anything approaching this sort of exhilaration in an electric car...."
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He should drive someplace less gusty so he can experience a winding country road in peace.
"....the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please."
And that's why the libs hate the car. It's the freedom aspect. It's certainly not the environment or they would be eliminating the modes of travel for John Kerry and Bill Gates.
Meanwhile, until they pry my cold, stiff fingers from the steering wheel, I will continue to rip though the gears in my '66 Vette, top down, with not-so-quiet side pipes. Screw 'em.
Parading your ignorance on the pages of the NYT is not journalism.
The people that never took calculus, and physics, and are frauds like Joe Biden.
I'm keeping my ICE cars until they pry the keys...
I remember reading this a while back when Popular Mechanics was still popular, and the article had a ton of data to back it up, so it has poignantly stayed with me: All of the motor vehicles in the world produce 1/3 the emissions daily all the watercraft in the world produce.
It seems unbelievable until you realize there are about 30 million watercraft of all sizes from the biggest ocean going tanker to the smallest Sea-Doo. It's the hundreds of thousands of ocean-going tankers and freighters burning thousands of gallons of heavy bunker fuel, probably the dirtiest fuel source apart from raw sweet crude, a day that are producing the lion's share of those emissions. But no one is griping about these ships because international trade and commerce are 10x more important to the people who pay to have these articles written than you're freedom of movement facilitated by a 4-cylinder combustion engine. It's easier for them to shame you for driving your car than to shame Maersk and COSCO for shipping millions of tons of Chinese goods to the port of Long Beach, CA.
It's true, the electrons are generally set to streaming via the burning of fuel, boiling of water and then sending the stream of dry, super-heated steam into the blades of a turbine, which turns a generator. Of course, they use a fossil fuel generator to provide the initiating voltages to the steam generator.
The reason EVs don't give the same feeling is because they are very heavy vehicles in comparison to a sporty ICE vehicle.
"Similarly the American who has been humbled by poverty, or by his insignificance in the business order, or by his racial status, or by any other circumstance that might demean him in his own eyes, gains a sense of authority when he slides behind the wheel of an automobile and it leaps forward at his bidding, ready to take him wherever he may personally please.
...
In 1950 the civilian labor force of the United States was estimated to number a little less than 59 million men and women; in the same year the number of drivers in the United States was estimated to be a little larger: 59,300,000.
...
Never before in human history, perhaps, had any such proportion of the nationals of any land known the lifting of the spirit that the free exercise of power can bring."
----'The Big Change: America Transforms Itself 1900-1950' (1952), Frederick Allen Lewis
"America’s overreliance on cars has been ruinous"... Boilerplate lib idiocy and exactly opposite of reality. America's commitment to automobiles, petroleum, and roads has been instrumental in America's rise as the preeminent economic power in the world.
Machines powered by quietly streaming electrons.
And where exactly does Farhad think those quietly streaming electrons come from?
The automobile: autonomy + mobility
You can't miss them if they won't go away - and they won't!
But as critical as I’ve been of cars, I can’t deny loving driving and loving it in a primal way
The movie Singles nailed this way back in the Grunge Age.
Dude who played Steve says something like, "If you give people a really cool train, with great coffee, great music..."
Kyra Sedgwick, playing a marine biologist or something who thinks she is very green: "You're right - but I love my car."
I loved that movie so much, for its merciless (though probably unintentional, ISTM) baring of the narcissism of not just Seattle people of the time but Seattle progressives in particular. Yeah, Steve character, the productive core of the 1990s Seattle workforce will absolutely LOVE commuting by train to the dulcet tones of Soundgarden. Alllll the way from Bothell down to Boeing. After standing on a platform in the 40 degree rain - or assume they really broke the bank and built all the outer platforms inside stations: then they only have to park in a huge parking lot and schlep to the indoor part in that rain.
Dude in this article, the reason the ICE is still around is that EVs are not yet a viable alternative for everyone's needs - not even just for everyone's commuting needs. Until you've been to the great middle of the country and experienced how far things are from one another, get off your "overreliance on cars has been ruinous" high horse.
"Gas-Powered Cars Are an Environmental Catastrophe."
On the other hand, printing and distributing newspapers has absolutely no impact on the environment. Right?
Let us know when you're moving to the Brazilian rain forest to eat bugs, Farhad.
"I’ve never felt anything approaching this sort of exhilaration in an electric car...."
Try a battery-powered butt-plug.
"I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it"
Fuck, Manjoo!
I drove from Omaha to the Dismal River Club near Mullen. That's 274 miles into the Sandhills of NE. No charging stations anywhere near Mullen. And then I drove about 50 miles, in the dark, in the Sandhills. If I had run out of power, I'd been stuck.
The average price for a new EV is $64k.
The car makers all love EVs as they can make way more money on an EV (if they scale) than on an ICE. Tesla has shown that. That's why its market cap is so huge.
These fucking elitists and car makers are in for a big surprise. The American public can't afford EVs (even with subsidies) and don't want them.
I drove some on I-80. I only saw 2 EVs the entire time.
The EV crash is going to make Bud Light look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Manjoo needs to get out a bit more. Lots of people interact with machines powered by things other than electrons. Transport, farming, construction, heavy industry, energy production, chemical processes, medicine, pharma, the list could go on and on. He just happens to be a member of the elite laptop class.
EV's are an actual environmental calamity if you look behind the plug and account for the mining and the electricity generation. It is laughable that anyone things EVs are a step in the right direction.
" I’ll Miss Them Anyway"
No you won't. They're not going anywhere.
I often wonder why the environmentalists with so much power and support from our government are so reluctant to re-instate the 55 mph speed limit.
Has it been suggested lately? And if 55 is good, 45 would be even better.
Maybe ban all driving one day a week.
Turn off all lights at night, North Korea style
Lots of other simple planet saving being overlooked and under appreciated.
What an idiot ! There is no way that gas powered and diesel powered vehicles will be replaced this century if ever. The New York Times again. If you choose to be ignorant, I can't think of a better place to stay that way.
"overreliance", "ruinous". Stated without evidence.
"Manjoo graduated from Cornell University in 2000. As an undergraduate, Manjoo served as writer and editor-in-chief of the Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper.[1]
Manjoo, self-described in the New York Times as a “stereotypical, cisgender, middle-aged suburban dad,” stated in 2019 that they prefer to be referred to with singular they pronouns.
Just another Ivy League whack job.
There should be a tab for premature triumphalism. If humans want to continue eating, diesel and gas engines will be needed. I've grown quite fond of food.
Farhad Manjoo is half right. From the time I got my driver's license at age 16, the world (at least North America) was open to me. I spent a month driving across the country, confident that, no matter how far from home I was, I could always find a gas station. Maybe some day youngsters will be able to drive across the US in their electric cars, confidant that they could always find a place to refuel. But that's not true now, and I don't think the anti-CO2 folks want it to be.
The "pistoning industrial age"? Farhad?
What complete idiocy and knowledge lack.
There are >5400 container ships plying the ocean with more than 50000 other merchant ships bringing all sorts of necessities and all sorts of frivolous goods around the world. Most diesel powered- the age of steam is about over.
>25000 commercial airplanes traveling back and forth with people and goods. >200000 private aircraft, many of them piston powered.
>38000 diesel locomotives. Which are actually diesel-electric, but the diesel part is necessary.
Backup power for all those quietly streaming electrons comes from diesel or gas turbine generators that can be online in minutes. Expanding steam in nuclear plants or fossil fuel plants provides most of it.
Gas powered cars are a symbol of freedom. Only fascists who believe the elite know better than the masses want to get rid of them. By any means necessary. But only for the masses. The elite will never give them up for themselves. They’re too important.
"...I'll miss them anyway..."
No, he won't.
"America’s overreliance on cars"
As measured and judged by . . .?
ICE cars refuel quickly, go farther, weigh less than EVs, don't degrade in heat and cold, don't burst into flames when batteries get damaged, and don't depend on fickle power supplies. A catastrophe, indeed.
bicycles
motorcycles
diesel trucks
diesel buses
diesel trains
helicopters
jet airplanes
rockets (for satellites)
portable generators
lawn mowers
snow blowers
leaf blowers
to name a few
Really? And when does noble Farhad propose to begin missing them? Notwithstanding his commitments to forgo the considerable disasters of those smoking nasty airplanes and power plants, which emissions, I notice, are being pretty comprehensively overshadowed by 100% natural wildfire smoke at the present time.
but, let's Be Fair!!
Nothing (and i mean NOTHING!) can compare to the JOY of waiting an hour while your EV gets enough juice to (maybe) get to the next charging station!!
I took a short trip yesterday, to the Mississippi and up and back.. Just a few hundred miles..
Would i have found a charging station in Garnavillo Ia? They had THREE gas stations.. It took me 4 minutes to get 12 gallons ($3.24/gal)
Next week, i'm going to cedar rapids (twice) to take my mom to a knee doctor. I'm SURE she wouldn't mind waiting an hour on the way home (each time
I had a pilot's license before I could drive so was never a car guy. Bicycle to the airport and fly around.
Do away with anything using thermodynamics. Save the entropy.
A quintessentially American idea of liberty: the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please.
I couldn't say it any better than that.
I can’t remember ever not knowing about Henry Ford and who he was. When
I was young, I thought he invented the automobile. Later, I understood that he did
not. In recent years, I have come to realize that I was right the first time. Henry Ford
really did invent the automobile.
Henry Ford was not the first to build an automobile. That honor goes to the
French inventor Nicholas Cugnot with his 1769 steam-powered tractor. George
Selden, in 1879, even received a patent for the idea of a motorcar and charged other
manufacturers a licensing fee. (Ford refused to pay it and was ultimately vindicated
in the courts.) There were others in Europe and the United States who were building
automobiles in limited production quantities. Henry Ford, as the slogan goes, had a
better idea. He thought he could make the automobile into a useful tool.
John R Henry - Intro to My Life and Work, 2006 edition
Vision Statement of Ford Motor Company, 1908
I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family
but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the
best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern
engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good
salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours
of pleasure in God’s great open spaces. – Henry Ford
Note that he founded the Ford Motor Company, not the Ford Automobile company. His overriding vision was to motorize everything. Somewhere I read that an early tagline for FoMoCo was "Motors in motion" However, I've never been able to find it again. Someone told me that Honda had (also?) used that as a tagline but I've never been able to find that either. In any event, it is what both companies did, making pretty much anything that could use a motor.
Henry Ford also invented the famous Toyota Production System often known as lean manufacturing back when Toyoda was still making textile machines. His book, My Life and work, the best book ever written on lean manufacturing IMHO was out of print in English for 70 years. It was never out of print in Japanese.
The commercially accessible internal combustion engine was probably the second greatest invention of all time, after Boulton and Watt's commercially successful steam engine a century earlier.
Battery cars are a step forward in one sense. They are much simpler mechanically. But they are a several HUGE steps backwards in a half dozen other senses. Freedom most of all, perhaps.
And battery cars are still mostly powered by internal and external combustion engines. Just much less efficiently than regular ICE cars.
John LGB Henry
Let's get rid of commercial flight first.
The exhaust from today’s cars is cleaner than the air that enters them. Today’s cars are air cleaners. Where’s the catastrophe?
Bwahaha.
His dope is better than mine.
Note, he implies cars with internal combustion engines, but he writes “cars” because he means cars. EVs won’t be enough, because they too offer a measure of freedom. My own observation is marxism is worse for the environment than cars. We need to ban Marxist.
"a quintessentially American idea of liberty: the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please.
The Progressive Dream is to crush this freedom. You will live where you're permitted and go to places where you're allowed, when you're allowed (and not elsewhere).
The musical group Rush had a song years ago lamenting doing away with cars.
"Red Barchetta."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LXKZq0fYDw
I support electric cars, but there should be no government coercion, such as laws outlawing ICE engines.
Regarding the CO2 produced by watercraft, especially cargo ships, CNN said could be reduced to zero by employing giant kites to pull the ships. Think that's a been there, done that idea?
Manjoo should spend time at a working farm, where the diesel is delivered by tanker trucks. Imagine how much the infrastructure (big thick power lines, onsite chargers, extra generation capacity) would cost, not to mention replacing the equipment.
Journalistic math.
Today I heard a npr article about "gray water" reuse. Focus person, a resident of Carlsbad CA, had spent $30 K on a refrigerator-size recycling machine. He's bragging about how much water he's going to save with it, while I'm trying to estimate how much water was used to make that machine-full of steel, plastics, electronics, etc.
I'd bet it's about the same number. But for him its (probably) all good because that happened somewhere else.
"I had a pilot's license before I could drive so was never a car guy. Bicycle to the airport and fly around."
Maybe the only book I can remember reading from my elementary school library was "Ann Can Fly!" about a schoolgirl who learned to fly. It was probably actually aimed at enticing boys to learn to fly.
John Henry, find if you can the chapter about Detroit in Peter Hall's "Cities in Civilization." Ford saw a way to combine the elements of location, technology, and finance that were there already, but not without some false starts. (The first mass-produced car was the Oldsmobile Runabout, 1901-07.)
FWIW I'm not much of a car guy, but IMO the hinkiest aspect of the great genius Musk is his infatuation with EVs.
It's not about gas powered cars. It about the gas powered equipment that harvests the fields and feed the world. And the trucks that drive that food to market.
The world STARVES without God given fossil fuels.
You want to get on an electric airplane???
Henry Ford gets credit for using the assembly line, but he learned it from hiring a Danish immigrant that learned it at the Singer Sewing Machine company. The secret was the interchangeable parts that used perfect tolerance machine tools. Check out Wm S Knutsen. He also was the man that voluntarily organized the WWII miracle mass production that won both the European and the Asian wars.
"...how the gas-powered car helped realize a quintessentially American idea of liberty: the freedom to roam just about anywhere you please."
I suspect this desire to roam where one pleases can be found in many non-Americans around the world. Back when I worked with SE Asian refugees (Laotian/Cambodian) I was shocked at the speed at which the newly arrived would buy cars - and treat them like the most amazing treasure ever. Where on earth did this desire stem from, considering they were not born/raised as Americans?
Best to have impoverished African slaves dig your white left cobalt cruelty cars.
The magic electrons he posits:
Limitations of your power very much depend on the energy you can exert and what your powers can move. A lot of what I said becomes void when you can move electrons trapped even in the potential of atoms. I would not suggest this however but only limit this to those already free roaming electrons.
As you are moving millions of electrons simultaneously you will have to have an impressive brain capability.
"loving the thrum of a revving engine"
I bet John Kerry feels this same thrill taking off in his private jet for yet another climate crisis conference somewhere nice, far away, where the restaurants are great, or at least high priced. Think of the burden of guilt the poor man bears for this sinful pleasure.
Can we at least make flying cars a practical reality before outlawing private travel?
I’ll be driving my 17 yo 170k Mustang GT with the original factory spark plugs up to Tampa tomorrow and back again on Sunday with no stops for fuel. Show me a brand new EV that can do that.
I have no problem with EVs - my son just bought a 3yo one, balancing his commuting needs against his recreational needs. I wouldn't have done the same math, but my situation is not his.
But nothing, so far, replaces the flexibility, economy, environmental responsibility, and convenience of ICEs. There's simply no argument. So their opponents will have to convince me that either EVs are markedly superior (good luck; they're not) or that the environmental "crisis" is more serious than it appears (good luck; it's not).
I'm coming at this as a geologist. Climate has been in constant flux. Show me why we have to destroy the global economy to adjust to it, rather than... adjusting to it.
Gahrie said...
I support electric cars, but there should be no government coercion, such as laws outlawing ICE engines.
Yes! Look what we got with mobile phones, iPhones, and apps. They've changed everything. But the government didn't mandate their progress or adoption. So we got natural advancement.
I'm looking forward to our new age of giant sailing schooners hauling freight around the globe. Ahoy matey! I'll get my anchor tattoo and sign up!
Elon Musk is smart enough to know that EV cars are a stupid plan for the world as it exists now. You know, the one we kind of like and enjoy... I admire the hell out of the man, but his vision of the future doesn't thrill me. He wants all cars to be self-driving, and very few people to own one. Essentially, it's the WEF vision of our future. You will own nothing and be happy. Need a lift? Hail an Uber self-driving car made by (and presumably owned by) Tesla. For city dwellers, this plan works quite well. So, I suppose our Great Leap Forward will be to force everyone into a city. Aside from a few hardy souls who work Bill Gate's cricket farms.
" ... the pistoning industrial age ... "
Which, among other things, allows modern agriculture to feed the nation and the world. And in many places keeps the lights on at night.
There's also the drive to grandma's house for Thanksgiving turkey and the buses that take the kids to school and mom and dad to work and the little jeep that delivers the mail.
And then there are the big pistons that economically and reliably power the railroads.
The late science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” EV advocates only see the magic. They don’t see the environmental and human impact of the mining needed to build the cars, especially of lithium and cobalt. Nor do they understand what is necessary to generate and provide the electricity to charge their batteries. All they see is their virtue of driving a taxpayer subsidized status symbol that poorer people help pay for but cannot afford.
"And that's why the libs hate the car. It's the freedom aspect."
Why do you dopes keep making such wildly extreme, emphatic, and baseless statements such as this? It's like a Tourette's tic or something that you (as a group) cannot control, (e.g.,"And that's why the libs hate air. It's the breathing aspect").
"Meanwhile, until they pry my cold, stiff fingers from the steering wheel, I will continue to rip though the gears in my '66 Vette, top down, with not-so-quiet side pipes. Screw 'em."
Keep up the brave fight, stalwart warrior!
I'll give them the keys to my Abarth when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.
I'm just an innumerate idiot mouthing leftist platitudes for the New York Times, but I am sure that gasoline powered cars have been a disaster. Look what they did to the dinosaurs!
“They put me in jail for driving a gas powered car; it was the right thing to do”
"Lots of other simple planet saving being overlooked and under appreciated."
One day a while back a friend and I started musing in a text exchange about energy-using items we could agree to being removed from life before the automobile. It became a very long list. My first thing was hairdryers. We'd adjust. Even for the most vain or hair-insecure, having no hairdryer would be fine as long as no one else had one either.
Here in my car, I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
in Cars.
I like to ask environmentalists how many Chinese they will have to kill to achieve their climate goals. Because that is what it will come down to, removing about a billion point six or so Chinese, along with most all the rest of us, to achieve their goals. Make them admit it, then have an honest discussion about the issues.
And Robert Cook, the thing quacking and waddling around the pond of anti-freedom, it IS a duck.
"All they see is their virtue of driving a taxpayer subsidized status symbol that poorer people help pay for but cannot afford."
Now if EV advocates could just force those poorer people to pay for their kid's college degree...
The left is an environmental disaster.
The emissions coming out of current cars is cleaner than the air in California in 1970.
We've done enough. The last CAFE proposal of 54mpg would create another 3,000 deaths annually from smaller cars admitted by Obama's own NTSB.
They don't care.
"They don't care."
Oh, they care, all right. Just not about you or anything you might think is important.
"America’s overreliance on cars has been ruinous"
Do we over rely on cars? What is the optimal reliance? How do you measure this?
In what way has this been ruinous? What I see is a generally prosperous nation which depends on personal transport for that prosperity. It's geometry: For people to have space of their own, a single-family home, with a yard--you need individually owned cars.
Robert Cook said...
"And that's why the libs hate the car. It's the freedom aspect."
"Why do you dopes keep making such wildly extreme, emphatic, and baseless statements such as this? It's like a Tourette's tic or something that you (as a group) cannot control, (e.g.,"And that's why the libs hate air. It's the breathing aspect")."
Then why do some blue states want to tax miles driven? The motor fuel tax already does that.
If you were serious about efficiency there wouldn't be alcohol in gasoline. As it stands the current IC engine in automobiles is about as efficient as it's ever going to be. The next level will be materials and fuels.
Theres a video on youtube of a guy who put a lawn mower carburetor on his 302 Ford V8 and got more than 40MPG. The trade off is performance goes way down.
Around 1905 battery electric cars had the highest automobile market share, more than either external combustion (steam) cars or international combustion (gasoline) cars. That's because battery cars then, like today, were fast and quiet, requiring little maintenance or repairs.
But, like today,they were god-awful expensive and had very short range. That's when the Model T and other lower cost cars came along and made electric cars obsolete.
EVs will prove to be an even larger environmental disaster unless TPTB can succeed in turning the vast majority of us into serfs unable to travel.
He’ll miss the internal combustion engine alright, when the grocery store shelves are empty
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