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Why Hybrid Cars Aren’t Selling Well An article in the March 19 issue of Business Week magazine caught my eye. "Why Hyrids are Such a Hard Sell" was the topic and reporter David Welch began by writing, "Given all the buzz about hybrids, not to mention the greening of the citizenry, you’d think they would be easy to sell. They’re not." The sale of hybrid automobiles constitutes an anemic 1.8% of all vehicle sales, down from a peak of 2.1% in October 2006. I would suggest that Americans aren’t all that "green" despite the endless print and broadcast media harangues that our wonderful lifestyles are to blame for everything from hurricanes to frizzy hair. Those who have tried to be green have found that there are considerable additional costs involved and this has proven particularly true of hybrid cars that include batteries to permit electricity to partially replace the use of gasoline.
My guess is that auto manufacturers are producing hybrid cars as a way to take some of the heat away from the endless claims that cars and trucks are to "blame" for a global warming, but that fewer and fewer people think it’s occurring or will occur. Even without a lick of knowledge about the science involved—and there is precious little to support the global warming theory—the average consumer has concluded that (a) it’s not happening and (b) the cost of a gallon of gasoline is not likely to rise dramatically barring some very bad news out of the Middle East or elsewhere. A week earlier, the Associated Press took note of an announcement by oil giant, Exxon Mobil, that "it will spend some of its huge profit on more than 20 global projects during the next three years, investments expected to add one million oil-equivalent barrels a day to the company’s volumes at peak production." The other Big Oil giants aren’t exactly sitting around either. The simple arithmetic of profits is that they are necessary if new reserves of oil are to be found, extracted, refined and delivered to the market. Oil executives get paid to calculate risk and, when it comes to finding oil, the money involved is in the billions. It is a cruel reality that much of the world’s oil reserves reside under nations whose stability is always in doubt and way offshore in deep waters. Moreover, oil is a global commodity. As a source of energy, not only does the incredibly productive United States of America need and use a lot, but every developing nation needs it as well. To lift the overall welfare of billions of people in places like China and India, oil is an essential component of economic growth. Oil transcends a lot of the interim issues that nations in the West and elsewhere devote constant debate. For example, while think tanks churn out all kinds of analysis of our future relations with a China that has dumped communism as an economic system, though not yet politically, oil companies are moving ahead with projects that will benefit China and, in the case of a recent joint venture between Sinopec, Fujian Province, ExxonMobil, and Saudi Aramco, initiate a world class project to meet China’s need for petroleum and petrochemicals. The deal was concluded in February. The Fujian Refining and Ethylene Joint Venture Project will expand an existing refinery from 80,000 barrels-per-day to 240,000 barrels-per-day. The upgraded refinery will primarily refine and process a type of oil called "sour Arabian crude." Other upgrades are included and the result will be approximately 750 service stations and a network of terminals in Fijian Province that will be jointly owned by Sinopec, ExxonMobil, and Saudi Aramco. Is the real world growing smaller and more closely integrated? Yes! That’s the real power of Big Oil. It is also part of the reason people contemplating their purchases are not likely to embrace hybrid cars no matter how loudly Greens shout that fossil fuels will destroy the Earth. The truth is just the opposite. They underwrite the enrichment of life everywhere for millions more people. Fossil fuels are a part of the Earth’s ecology, not some bogus threat to it, nor is there much evidence that the Earth is running out of oil. In a new book, "Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil", the author notes that, "Thanks to more than a decade of wildly successful discoveries by the world’s largest oil companies…Africa has been quietly transformed in policy-making circles from an insignificant backwater into a potentially lucrative new source of oil and gas for the global market." "Since 1990 alone the petroleum industry has invested more than $20 billion in exploration and production activity in Africa. A further $50 billion will be spent between now and the end of the decade, the largest investment in the continent’s history—and around one-third of it will come from the United States." "Three of the world’s largest oil companies—the British-Dutch consortium Shell, France’s Total, and America’s Chevron—are spending 15 percent, 30 percent, and 35 percent respectively of their global exploration and production budgets in Africa." The need for energy, the lifeblood of economic development, is driving nations of considerably divergent outlooks in terms of their religions and their political systems to work together for their own and the greater good of the world’s population. It is largely an invisible force at work, but it shows up at the gas pump and in the auto showroom where hybrids go unsold. The ultimate irony is that Big Oil may do more for world peace and prosperity than all the posturing of diplomats and world leaders combined. Your donation is vital to maintaining The National Anxiety Center’s website and communications program. You can participate by helping us financially and no amount is too small, though larger size donations do make a difference. If you prefer, you can send a check payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you! Losing Patience, Losing the War The fourth anniversary of the day U.S. troops invaded Iraq, March 19, was as good a time as any to wonder why we are looking across vast distances to a place—the Middle East—wondering why no one seemed to see the problems encountered since the stunningly swift and successful invasion. A week after the anniversary of the invasion, I was in New York for a private briefing by a special assistant to the President, a member of the National Security Council. He was very articulate, making his case for the strategies put in place after 9/11 and pursued since then. Like an Islamist iceberg whose great bulk is underwater and unseen, the most visible aspect of those policies is that America has not been attacked again. To the extent that projecting our power forward into the Middle East instead of merely waiting to be attacked again has worked, credit must be given. Moreover, largely unnoted by the press is the fact that many other nations have joined with the United States to thwart the efforts of al Qaeda and other Jihadist organizations. The state sponsors of terrorism face a united and determined opposition. The most bellicose, Iran, appears to be on the brink of bankruptcy. I think the current administration’s problems center on a collective public perception of Iraq, of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, of the failure to protect our southern border, and the continuing meltdown of our national educational system. Bundling these problems together suggests a level of incompetence that raises legitimate concerns. Regime change or nation building, whatever you want to call it, is never easy, but is often necessary. A lot of nations felt that way back in 2003 and still do. Saddam is dead. His two evil sons are dead. Some members of his gang have been hanged, but Iraq, like so much of the Middle East, resists the rational solution of problems that we in the West take for granted. An enigma to Americans, we resist being in Iraq with no assurance that it will ever be anything more than just another Islamic nation that cannot function without the oppression of and by its own people. Still, historians may well look back and see the Iraq intervention as one in which the Shias and Sunnis of the Middle East became so focused on their own intercine war that the potential of a successful Islamic Revolution was dramatically reduced. That is perhaps, ironically, a reason for staying. The bonus would be if some form of Western civil reform, justice, and transfer of values could be made to work in Iraq. In the interim, the entire Middle East will remain disconnected from a world where such common values underwrite economic growth and stability. This is not easy for most people to grasp. One is tempted to wonder how the first term of George W. Bush would have unfolded were it not for 9/11, but we live in a world that has been totally altered by that vicious, inhuman attack. It is too easy to reduce today’s frustrations to the fact that Osama bin Laden got away. Despite the billions expended on bullets and bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq, he’s still out there and al Qaeda still threatens the region and the West. Americans do not deal well with uncertainty. It is legitimate to ask why the Bush administration and the leviathan of our federal government appears incapable of doing anything well. I voted for George W. Bush twice because the Democrat alternative, Al Gore and John Kerry, was so clearly worse. Half the voters disagreed with me. Now that Democrats control Congress, the current Speaker of the House keeps issuing announcements that Global Warming is the real problem when the real problem is too much government, too much legislating, too much regulation, too much focus on getting power and money without any thought to exercising it in any way that suggests either sanity or a sense of reality. Ask Hillary Clinton what she will do with your money or the profits of U.S. corporations and she tells you she will take it away from you and from them because she knows how to spend it more wisely. Ask any Republican candidate what he will do and the only answer is, "I won’t be George W. Bush." Meanwhile, the global warming theory is a massive distraction. Changing the type of light bulbs we use is not the answer. No substantive science supports the theory and there are real threats in the world. Military intervention has made us responsible for Iraq. The masters of spycraft will tell you—and I agree—now is the time to apply the ancient weapons of espionage, deception, and propaganda. In combination with economic sanctions and diplomacy it takes longer, but it works. People can be encouraged and helped to rid themselves of their evil leaders. Iraq is changing. Iran can change. The Middle East will change. I suggest we need patience for a long-term and generally covert battle with Islamism and, yes, communism. It worked against the former Soviet Union over some forty-five years of the Cold War. If our parents and grandparents could be that patient, why can’t we?
A new generation of Americans needs to learn that there will always be enemies of freedom in the world, but a nation with a thirteen-trillion dollar economy—if it can just get its priorities straight—is not likely to be defeated by them anytime soon. The Center fights its own war for survival and we want to enlist you as one of our soldiers. Give what you can to keep us on the front line of the debates that will shape the future of our nation and the world.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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"One major reason is that hybrids typically cost $3,000-plus more than conventional cars," noted the reporter. "With gas at $2.50 a gallon, it would take ten years to recoup the extra $3,000 cost of the Accord hybrid." The cost of the batteries account for about half the hybrid premium and "cheaper lithium ion cells won’t appear for several years."