journal features

electric vehicles

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2023.08.03

I noticed this article title "the potential looming auto industry fiasco", and thought it got everything just about right. I find it crazy that we think that we're going to deliver ourselves from the climate crisis with more cars but this time extra flammable and unaffordable. The author cites some smart moves by Toyota - chief among them that we could build 90 hybrid cars with the minerals that go into the battery required for a single battery-electric vehicle. Instead of mandating that all sales must be electric, governments should be setting fuel economy standards that actually work (and don't unintentionally create massive pickups). The author also ponders the question of what happens to today's EV's with their primitive batteries when a new battery technology is expected in just a few years.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton