Yes, agreed on the phone company's robbery.

But... weren't AT&T's build-out requirements (where required locally) just completely eliminated by the feds (FCC) this week?

Talk about a step in the wrong direction!!!

Yes, we wuz robbed.

BWilde

I normally like this column, but this edition was Dvorak-esque in it's stupidity. Get back to predicting tech industry trends and spare us your statist "solutions" for all the world's problems.

I normally like this column, but this edition was Dvorak-esque in it's stupidity. Get back to predicting tech industry trends and spare us your statist "solutions" for all the world's problems.

This should be reprinted on the New York Times editorial page.

Your logic is a *bit* flawed there Bob, or as a long-time reader I'd say 'You're a Dipstick!"

The people who drive the most, drive the farthest. Long distance drivers make most of their miles behind them on highways. Hybrid cars such as the Prius get their best economy in city driving. Have a look at the Prius online groups and read the shock at people's lousy mileage on long-distance trips.

For long-distance driving the better alternative solution is Diesel. The better alternative fuel then is BioDiesel, especially if made from recycled fryer oils. have a look at the sites and forums from the tiny minority of Diesel automotive users and you will read about people routinely seeing 50 MPG or greater, on fuel that costs very little. Mind you, not everyone has the wherewithal to start home-brewing fuel, but that is where Capitalism shines. What a market opportunity!

So when your Prius batteries start going shorter and shorter distances, much like the hour I get from my laptop now instead of the three when it was new, I'll drive by smiling, with my exhaust smelling of french fries.

--chuck

Bob,
If you want a solution for tomorrow, may I suggest natural gas (aka methane). Any recent vintage car can be converted in two days and still have the option to run on regular fuels.

I have owned two cars that run on the stuff, and if govt subsidized converting any car under five years old (as has happened in Canada) and provides better incentives to gas stations to add such pumps, you would be dropping emissions that each car creates by 80%.

While ethanol is a nice idea, there is already a distribution grid for natural gas that just needs a bit more capital to be expanded.

Feel free to snoop the net for info. Italy has been running on the stuff since WW2 (a lot of the parts in my cars were made there).

And, another thing!

LEDs. Encourage people to make diffuse light for light bulbs and LED bulbs will make compact fluorescents look like energy hogs. And change every stop light to LED and watch what happens to energy.

Peace out.

Bob,
If you want a solution for tomorrow, may I suggest natural gas (aka methane). Any recent vintage car can be converted in two days and still have the option to run on regular fuels.

I have owned two cars that run on the stuff, and if govt subsidized converting any car under five years old (as has happened in Canada) and provides better incentives to gas stations to add such pumps, you would be dropping emissions that each car creates by 80%.

While ethanol is a nice idea, there is already a distribution grid for natural gas that just needs a bit more capital to be expanded.

Feel free to snoop the net for info. Italy has been running on the stuff since WW2 (a lot of the parts in my cars were made there).

And, another thing!

LEDs. Encourage people to make diffuse light for light bulbs and LED bulbs will make compact fluorescents look like energy hogs. And change every stop light to LED and watch what happens to energy.

Peace out.

"statist" eh? The Randroids are out in force.

I dunno, pretty easy to read this column as against state action, given how they misspend. Pretty amazing what we're getting for our billions, when if we just stuck to our knitting at home we'd be doing great stuff.

Natural gas suffers from the same issues as petroleum and is hardly a long term solution.

I crack up at the "solution" that is fryalator oil. Just how much do oil do you think they use? Sure, it is great for a few people here and there, but it hardly scales well.

"My major point here is that there are many ways to look at a problem and sending troops to enforce some imagined status quo isn't always the only solution, or even the best one. There must be room for new ideas."

Word!

Thanks Bob, Merry Christmas :)

Bob, thanks for the bravery in actually moving away from consumption (Power Rangers!?) and geekery to a comment on the crazed nature of our society. I'm sure this good deed won't go unpunished.

My modification of your column would be to include a link to the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Amory Lovins detailed and accurate plan for using natural gas installed infrastructure for small localized hydrogen reformation stations, to avoid the cost of moving H2.

The comments above about Prius performance on long trips are correct, but hybrids work great on stop and go, and the batteries don't fail that fast.

Mainly, we need to modify the attitude of Americans that they deserve all they want, with the rest of the world slaves to our desire (or we bash them.) I'm a longtime reader.

This logic is rendered faulty by a complete understanding of the laws of supply and demand. Most people would be surprised to find out that our energy consumption would go up just because all of a sudden it would be cheaper to go places and do things. If raising the MPG of cars would reduce demand then why has demand increased every year even with the federal government mandating for the last few decades Minimum MPG requirements for car manufactures? The is only one way to reduce demand and that is to make something so expensive that people will begin to look elsewhere for their needs.

The Prius is a marketing scam for people who want to feel good about themselves and look down on others while doing very little for the environment (see South Park's "smug" episode). Numerous studies show that they don't get nearly the mileage advertised. Personally, I drive a car that gets 16 miles to the gallon (on a good day) yet I have less of an automotive "carbon footprint" than 99% of these clowns. Why? I don't drive much. I walk to work. I walk to the store. I walk to my entertainment. I simply choose not to live in the sticks / suburbia (an expensive choice - the downtown area I live in costs 2-5 times as much per square foot as the 'burbs). When I do drive (average once a week or less), it's mostly for fun - so I drive a fairly high-performance sports car. The planet will survive the piddling number of gallons per month I burn.

If you really want to make a difference, look at improving the urban living experience (crime, homelessness, etc). Look at fuels other than gasoline (biodiesel, hydrogen, whatever). Mass transit simply doesn't work for most of the US - we're much too spread out.

And in case anyone still likes me (heh), I'm in this for pollution reduction - when they can accurately predict the temperature 12 hours from now with the accuracy they're alleging for 100 years out, I'll think about taking global warming seriously.

Foreign Policy has a very interesting piece that correlates oppressiveness of governments in oil-rich countries against oil prices - not surprisingly the first follows the second.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=3426&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com .

Is there a virtuous circle here? Lower domestic energy demand -> lower international energy prices -> remove source of funding for oppressive regimes -> ?

Bob, disable comments. They're pointless.

Both mine and my wife's cars are hybrids, and I'm eagerly waiting for the price of LED lighting to come down. We have a lot of spotlights in our house, and those things are still too expensive.

I agree with you, that all that money could certainly have been spent better. Doing as you suggest would certainly help the economy and environment. Another possible use could be to make a better cellphone network. not just a handful of companies all claiming to have the best coverage, but buy up all these towers that not only cover urban areaa many times over (there are 3 cellphone towers, all from different companies, on the same street corner near my house* perhaps the equipment on these excess towers could me moved to other areas to provide wider and more complete coverage. In addition, they could all be interconnected with fiber to produce a high speed network for internet and cell phone traffic. But most of all, provide cheaper cell phone calls to the population, more along the lines of the cost of a land line based telephone, or even Voip. This would allow many more people to work from home as you suggested, and the wireless internet service would make many tasks easier. Wireless communication is already very embedded in the way we do business, and this would only make it easier and cheaper to carryout tasks. What buisness, even just a mom and pop flower shop, doesnt use at least one cellphone? Buisnesses would be able to deliver their services cheaper, and allow everyone the flexibility to work at home if neccessary or even convieniance.

Great article Bob. Thank you for applying your understanding and experiences in the world of technology to such challenges.

Regarding Chuck's comment above. My own experience with the Prius is very different than his comments suggest. My brother's Prius has over 150K miles, and is still going very strong and still gettting great mileage. When we travel from Boston to Detroit, fully loaded over the holidays and with four people, two of us being 6'4" or bigger, we would get between 45 and 50 miles per gallon. And yes, we've done that trip many times, in different seasons.

Regarding Chuck's comment on Diesel. My understanding of diesel fuel is that it is cheaper to produce than unleaded, and individuals can in fact purchase equipment to create BioDiesel. However, if you purchase diesel at the pump it runs you significantly more per gallon than Unleaded. So in fact for the vast majority of drivers it is more expensive today. The problem with individuals (or startups) creating BioDiesel themselves is not the creating part, its the distribution; either the distribution of raw sources of finished product. In business, in general, distribution can often be the biggest challenge to success.

One reason gas is here to stay for a while is the distribution and convenience factors. But then... entrepreneurs have a great track record of changing the status quo :)

Bob, this may be the most boring column you've ever written. Your arguments fall short of the intellectual rigor of a South Park episode, and are far less entertaining.

While some may argue details, the gist of your argument as constructive rhetoric rings true. Throw the money (away) at the status quo -- something especially entrenched leadership often has a significant investment in and in maintaining. Or invest it (thoughtfully) in new opportunities.

As for the telecommunications giants, I agree that they are self-serving crooks. All the more criminal, in that they actively inhibit progress and growth by other parties, such as legally, and through lobbying, obstructing alternative build out programs.

My big challenge with the major telecommunications, cable, etc. providers is determining the least evil ones from which to purchase my services. Trying to exercise my alleged free market choice to in some small way influence the playing field, I find a dearth of good choices.

The point about the Prius not operating well on long distances is a valid one, but biodiesel and natural gas are not wise alternatives. Biodiesel has a very limited supply which would get quickly consumed by 10M converted vehicles. And natural gas is even more scarce than crude oil, and takes much more energy to tap, refine, and distribute. If you were to utilize either for such a massive shift as Bob suggests, you would create unsustainable markets with demand curves which would quickly outrun supply and that would leave you in a worse predicament than you have with $3/gallon gasoline.

But I think Bob's point is that this is money that was squandered and has essentially been lit on fire for the benefit of our society. What is the return that we've gotten for 'gifting' $200B to the telecom industry and $500B in the War on Terror? You could argue better returns for shareholders of telecom stocks and their supply chains, Halliburton, ICI, and Bechtel. But that's about it. That hasn't helped society overall really.

Over the last five years, our education system is collapsing. Our throngs of poor are swelling. Our health care costs have doubled. We're standing on a pile of 250,000 dead bodies with no end in sight. Oh, and one of the greatest cities in our nation is still in shambles. STILL! Our grandchildren will still be paying off this debt, with less resource and opportunity to do it with.

You could've almost just given $700B to each and every American citizen and had a better benefit than what we've chosen to spend it on at this point. So I think the contemplation for us all is this: what are we going to do with the next 5 years which will somehow try and repair the damage of the last 5 and position us for something positive for the 5 after that.

Ok, I had to add another one. My Prius gets 50MPG in warm weather and 46 in cold. Sure, I can kill the milage with jack rabbit starts and slamming on the brakes, but any car will get terrible milage that way. You have to drive a Prius like you ride a bike: you want to coast as much as possible. I know that's anathema to everyone in their monster trucks, but a tank of gas for me is $25 and can run for two weeks. Dis it all you want, I'm happy with it. When something comes out that's better, I'll switch (deisel fumes stink too much for me.)

steve must work in the bush administration.

Verizon is pitching multi-megabit DSL on my monthly statements but the only broadband service they offer in my area are the capitalistically unaffordable leased lines (T1, T3 etc.).

Wish I lived in one of theose "statist" countries like South Korea where broadband is nearly universal and cheap.

Oil companies can afford to buy up most of Nebraska, North Dakota and other depopulated states so they could grow enough non -edible fiber crops to produce the ethanol needed to eventually replace oil imports.

Bob,
While hybrids are a great solution for city driving, highway travel is best done with diesel, or diesel hybrids.
The most feasible near term alternative fuels are biodiesel, which produces about thirty percent greater fuel economy than gasoline and propane, which burns very clean, is easy to convert vehicles to, has twice the BTUs per pound as methane, and is a liquid at normal temperatures. Unfortunately, propane has no lobbiests, but methane does.
The stongest forces against the importation of Brazilian/sugar based biodiesel are the corporate welfare recipients known as agribusiness, espicially the one that sponsors all of the Sunday AM "talking heads" television shows. The Brazilians claim that they produce thier fuel for "under $30 BBL equivalent", but we can't import it.

Bob

BTW: the new piston aircraft engines are going diesel too.

Nice idea in concept but this all relies on us believing the goverment actually wants to make things better. Why would they? Politicians and their cronies are all getting filthy rich off these programs (our tax dollars) so why would they possibly want to "change" the status quo? They don't and it will never change. Just look at all the scandals with top executives and politicians. It's all a game and they are all in bed together. There is just too much "free" (our) money to be had by these criminals, er, I mean politicians. The only was to solve it is to stop "giving" them more money to waste and line their, and their cronies, pockets with.

Your hybrid idea might also improve the economics of the electric industry. See this article.

Take a look at what the EAA (Electric Auto Association - http://www.eaaev.org/) has to say about how a variation on the Prius – the plug-in hybrid – which users would plug in and recharge using excess electrical power grid capacity at night, would set our nation free from oil imports. Relevant links at http://drivingthefuture.com/97pct.htm and http://www.calcars.org/calcars-technical-notes.pdf (a tech presentation on energy consumption, its sources, and emissions).

No need to wait for a hydrogen economy. And you wouldn’t want that, as the catalyst you need (Platinum) largely comes from Russia (a dependence we don’t want), and H2 gas negatively impacts the ozone layer.

And the battery technology has finally caught up with the need. See http://www.a123systems.com/html/products/cells.html. High energy density. Withstand abuse. And its chemistry not owned by a major oil firm (as are the NiMH battery patents), restricting its in-vehicle use.

Some clever folks have already converted a few Prii into Plug-ins: http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/PriusPlus. Yes, they are ahead of the curve, but an energy-independent future, with all the economic benefits that go along with it are possible… if only we insist that Washington actually leads.

I believe Bob makes a good point. He doesn't claim to know how to fix the energy problem. But a least he recognizes it, which is a hell of a lot more than what the current administration does about it. What has Bush done about oil other than increase the price with mayhem in the Middle East?

And Erik, your simplistic Rush Limbaugh inspired barbs are meaningless. It can be far easier to predict long term trends over temporary short term movements. If this concept is too much too handle, I suggest you stick with your FOX News channel and South Park for your world views.

Bob is obviously not expecting or asking the government to buy 10 million Prius cars. But he has given us a wonderful "What If". A just suppose. Imagine if the government actually spent our money on improving our world instead of trying to conquer it.

Attacking the post because you don't like the Prius is simple minded.

I agreee with your general principle that we must look at things from different angles and consider solutions that don't seem obvious to us. Is the "war" on terror a shooting war or a public relations war, and what stategy would be most effective? What would happen if everyone sitting in traffic during rush hour were driving a plug-in hybrid-electric? What if we added a dollar to the gasoline tax and spent it all on railroads? What if the government paid everyone to install solar panels on their roofs (where appropriate) and required power companies to buy excess electricity? And so on. We seem to be afraid to try anything different from what we always have been doing.

I think you have our government confused with one that is 'for the people' and not 'for the corporation'. The bottomline is that what is right for humanity takes a back seat to what is right for the shareholder time and time again.

If the same amount of money that was spent into Neuroscience research on consumer buying trends, the 'reptilian brain' and other scaremonger tactics used by big oil and big car manufacturers that makes the average soccer mom want to drive around in a 8,000+ H2 to feel 'safer' while she is unwittingly killing off humanity, increasing sea levels and creating more of a problem for the kids that she is trying to protect when they are 40 yrs old, and put that money into promoting eco-friendly fueling for cars, revising the Californian initiatives for electric cars, etc. then I'd say we might have a chance at a future here.

But when the decision comes down to 'profits now' vs. 'the human race later', why is it that people are so short sighted, and that they won't open their eyes to look THROUGH the media to the actual stories being told. I've never seen society become so enslaved by corporations ever.

We need a revolution - but not from governments. Its from big business and their enslavement of us all.

The bottomline - YOU ARE NOT FREE. If you have to work a 50 hr week to pay for your right to live on this planet, and have no control of how you spend the majority of your waking hours, YOU ARE NOT FREE. All attempts to move us forward as a human race by using eco-friendly cars, undermine the enslavement of the corporation to us all. I'm all for it, but I have grave doubts if it will ever happen.

Please prove me wrong (and I say PROVE here). I want to see us all less entrapped by big business 5 yrs from now. If that happens, I'll go back into my shell and you won't have to hear me preaching from the pulpit.

Bob, this was not a boring column. In fact, I find it one of your more thought provoking columns that I've read. You are correct, hindsight is always easier than foresight. There are always other things to spend money on. I thought you made great points about what could be if $700B were spent elsewhere, and it's fun to imagine the possibilities.

However, I wonder about had we actually gone down a different path, and today we were looking back to that decision point around 2001. Would we be asking what it would have been like had we spent $700B to fight terrorists? Would there be more cities in shambles than just NYC? Would we have an economy like it is now, with such a housing boom (at least in my area) and the Dow now over 12k? If we had not stood up for ourselves, would we all be living in fear every day that another plane, or even a bomb, would fall out of the sky?

I'm not saying I think this would have happened, nor do I disagree with the possibilities that may have been in line with your column. I can't even say for certain myself if the War on Terror was worth it. Only time will tell. My only point is to play a little Devil's Advocate, and ask everyone to again consider a different point of view. Thanks.

I was curious about the possibility that current rental costs at our building would someday get too prohibitive and offices would no longer be necessary. This of course would depend on creating a very fast private network, probably WiMax or fiber-based. As a rough estimate, we'd probably do well if we kept it under $120,000 (equal to 2 year's rent) of owned equipment to accomplish this. My question is, Where does one begin to explore the equipment involved for either option? If radio tower rental + hardware costs supplants office rental, it might be a wash, depending on maintenance costs for the hardware. Any thoughts on this?

So far this seems to be a guy thing. Would like to agree with the comment that public attitudes need to change to support fuel economy. When we were younger, poorer and struggling, we were resourceful and accepted shortages as a necessary fact of life. Now, with a few extra dollars to spend, car ads become convincing. This situation is so American and so complex. Also, want to thank you, Bob, for your continued, knowledgeable, unselfish dissertations. Merry merry Christmas to you and yours. Anne

I think, as a society, we definately need to act in large ways, such as Bob describes, to impact changes necessary to ultimately save us from ourselves. I think it should be described as Social-Capitalism, in which we use the force and might of our industrial complex to create excesses that will benefit us all. Year one: priuses. Year two: Solar Panels.

We are a nation of excesses. We don't save, we spend. We work hard and we want stuff. We want shiny stuff that our neighbors don't have.

We work in factories making bombs to resupply the military. We make good wages programming the guidance systems for missiles. These munitions we craft must be expended so that our important work can continue.

Our children kill on the video game field so that they can be sufficiently adjusted when it comes time for us to make them kill the people we tell them to. So they can expend the munitions for us. So we can make more.

The kids that make it through all the killing can get a college education thanks to the GI Bill. Then they can help program the guidance systems on the missiles.

Did you hear they make their women wear burkas? Their women can't vote. They're different - let's kill them.

How does your plan work again?

Bob, I like the way you introduce your Prius idea by first pointing to grand government scheme to do good lost its way a few years after it was introduced.It points out how hard it is to actually accomplish things through government intervention. Promoting conservation in general is a good idea, but giving away freebies is generally not. Many of the project apartments were not well treated because the occupants had no investment in them. I know it is hard for PBS viewers to believe, but if you gave people Priuses, they might not take care of them and drive them the way today's owners do. And Big Brother you go down a slippery slope if you start adding restrictions so that you can keep your Prius as long as you maintain and drive it properly and other conditions. Why not make the Amtrack train fare free and give away building sites to corporations who locate at stops? Once you open this up, there will be no shortage of "good" ideas that will get proposed and maybe baked into legislation. Some muckrakers will end up viewing much of this as unproductive "pork", but others will claim that they are all part of a grand conservation program. In fact, now that I think of it, I take public transportation to work everyday and believe that in the interest of public conservation my train ticket and subway fare should be completely subsidized by the folks in America who drive to work.

Bob and I usually are in agreement on things, but this time I believe that Bob has either missed the boat or at least fallen off of it. The flaws in his “Prius Saves the Country if Not the World” idea are numerous, of a basic nature, and doom this to the kind of thinking emanating from Hollywood types.

1.) The drivers of two-ton SUVs, luxury cars, and performance cars, drive those cars by choice, not by economic necessity. They can all already afford a Prius, they don’t want one. You ask, “who would refuse a “free” car?” The folks for whom the price of one is insignificant to the loss of prestige, practicality, comfort and safety they enjoy in their current vehicles. Other than the Prius and its limited consumer group that wishes to be “seen and recognized” in its weirdly styled shape, hybrid cars are languishing unsold on dealer lots today. (By the way, things paid for with taxpayer money are not “free” anymore than the information superhighway was free.)

2.) The tax-payers who do not get a government-paid-for car would revolt. Think of Boston, 1770s. If you think voters revolted in 1994 and 2006, wait until they don’t get a government car.

3.) As to environmental impact, the disposal issue for these half-ton batteries loaded with virulent toxins has not been addressed for the limited production of hybrid cars now. A sudden addition of ten billion pounds of toxic acids and chemicals would hardly be a good thing for the world’s landfills.

4.) The price market for oil doesn’t work like that. A sudden drop in demand from the US, would probably drop oil prices in the short run, making it more affordable to other consuming nations. They would be able to buy more of it until they drove the price back up to a level they could not afford. These would most likely be developing nations in the Third World, and of course, China. These places would burn the oil in engines without the same level of pollution controls used the US, thus increasing drastically the hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere. It is good to remember that a 2006 automobile sold in the US emits one one-thousandth the pollutants a 1966 US automobile did. Just to give you a sense of scale there.

5.) Ethanol suffers from two significant problems. First, it only contains about 70% of the energy that gasoline does, so you burn more of it to go the same distance at a greater price, and you also create an even bigger demand for larger engines to make up for the very significant power losses that result. Secondly, it competes with the food supply for grain, driving up the price of food and increasing the demand for petrochemical fertilizers to maximize output.

6.) The largest contributors to global warming are output by the sun (totally uncontrollable by us) and water vapor in the atmosphere. CO2 is responsible for a small fraction (something on the order of 5% or less) of the warming effect, so this solution is then advocating throwing $700 billion at reducing some minute fraction of 5% of the problem. If throwing $700 billion at telcos and such was a waste, what would this $700 billion have done?

7.) Finally, there is nothing to suggest that oil was the cause celebre for the 9/11 terrorists. Islamic fundamentalists are interested in forced conversions, with death to those who do not renounce their own beliefs in favor of a particular sect of Islam. Oil independence by the US would not make us any less of a target to the Bin Ladens of the world.

Bob, as usual, a great out-of-box column! One thought though, can we get back some of this money that has been spent...on what?

Stick to computers and IT. Your assessment and assumptions concerning energy and related technologies are all wrong, and your understanding of economic concepts such as the substitution effect as well as unintended consequences are also highly suspect.

First, the Prius doesn't save enough gas vs. other currently available mature technologies to offset its higher cost. Just read last week where Nissan, upon introduction of their new Hybrid made a public admission of this fact. If it's about saving fuel, a three-cylinder turbo diesel powerplant can outperform the Prius real world. But it's not sexy technology that the greenies can latch onto as their feel-good grand gesture for the environment. And neither one will sell in the US to Joe average because he will only buy a fuel efficient car when fuel gets really expensive.

New testing procedures by the EPA will go into effect next year which will see those window sticker gas mileage estimates for the Prius fall by 30%, to better reflect the real world hybrid performance. So even the greenies will come to realize that the perception of the "green" Prius is just that, only a perception.

Your assertion that a drop in US consumption will solve the world's dependance on mideast oil is also wrong. Any unilateral move by the US to drop consumption will just be offset by a corresponding fall in market prices, triggering the rest of the world, especially developing countries like China and India, to increase consumption. The price of their goods falls (due to lower energy costs in production and transportation of goods) while ours rise, due to higher transportation cost due to using less cost efficient transportation means.

People like to talk about "energy independence" like that is something we can achieve. but energy is just one more commodity in a world economy and even if we didn't import 1 gallon of fuel, how much equivalent would we continue to import. that's used in the production and transportation of the other imported goods we consume? And I'm confident even you would agree that we cannot close the borders to all foreign trade. We are now part of a world economy, and highly dependent on whatever goes on even on the other side of the globe.

Which is not to say that we shouldn't be doing something about fuel consumption, just not because of some national security concerns. But any initiative to reduce consumption has to be taken on a world scale in order to have any effect at all. Otherwise we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

The typical US solution is to have your cake and eat it too, so I guess in that point of view buying more cars to solve your problems looks great.

But I think you've got the wrong car. First, the Prius and other hybrids are designed outide the US and that won't do because of the NIH syndrome you have. Second, the Prius will never look good in a car chase in any movie and that disqualifies it from the start.

Face it, the only possible candidate for your scheme is the Tesla Roadster, and the other similar cars that will follow.

And your scheme also needs an Internet and digital gadget hedge, which it currently lacks. The scheme is necessary for geek appeal and to make a more efficient grid and electricity market to power all those all-electric speedsters. Something like a net-connected water heater which makes the water temperature go down a few degres everytime (several times per day) the net-based semi-automatic electricity market decides that watts are costlier than usual and makes it go to normal when prices go down at other times of the day.

Best wishes to all and a merry bunch of geeky gearhead holidays!

It's very good to see someone like Bob talking about the importance of energy. We sure have a long way to go in educating ourselves about this subject. Talking about how $700 billion could have been better spent is all good fun but it leaves the impression that that money has simply been lost or wasted. While huge sums have been pilfered and extreme waste of lives and property has occurred, be assured that some are getting very wealthy while all this waste is going on. It's fun to think about how we could improve our lot with $700 billion, but those responsible for these expenditures never wanted that money spent on the general population anyway. Better infrastructure and health care are not on the agenda of those who want to spend these billions. The goal of these big deficit spenders is to keep the American public barefoot and pregnant at all times. An easy hypothesis to discount.

Bob, you start your article asserting that taxpayers have been robbed, but then go on to fantasize about how the money could have been spent differently. You seem to have no problem with the original theft, and just wish that you had been one of the lucky thieves who decided how to spend it. I'll side-step the Prius speculation, but I will suggest that the money would have been best utilized by the taxpayers themselves. The theme of Hazlitt's classic, "Economics in One Lesson," is that economics is often the study of what is not seen (i.e. purchases not made). It's easy to see the results of big spending like the war in Iraq, or the NII, but it's impossible to see the millions of stories of how the taxpayers would have used the money that was taken from them. Many undoubtedly would have put the money toward the purchase of a Prius on their own, instead opting for a cheaper, less-efficient car. Others would have replaced their modems with high-speed internet. And so on. Instead of seeing tax revenues as a plaything for bureaucrats, how about looking at it as millions of lost opportunities for the taxpayers themselves? They were the ones who were cheated by the NII scam.

A small problem with one of the arguments. The people who do the most driving also seem to have boats or RVs and need the bigger, gas guzzling monsters to provide the lifestyle they feel entitled to. So giving them a Prius would have as much effect as a urinating in the middle of firestorm while the rest of us pony up for the higher prices forced on us through their profligate waste of natural resources.

Great columns for the year.

Sorry, I agree with the premise that we were robbed, but you're letting one of the "perps" walk. The fox was guarding the hen house. Any Libertarian with half a brain could have predicted the outcome here. There is nothing novel or unique about this scenario.

This happened because of government involvement, not in spite of it. They were the accomplices. This was pork barrel politics, pure and simple. The Telecom lobbies wanted it and the Congressmen they had in their pockets delivered.

There's no mystery here. What do expect when you turn money over to a bureaucracy? Great efficiency? Is it a surprise that they "waited" until they started bilking us out of our money?

Do you honestly believe the oversight stopped because of circumstances? This was criminal, and it will dissipate into the vapor just like the Savings and Loan scandal; with full bi-partisan blessings.

Our history books already provide a case study for handling things like this. We need another James J. Hill, not more politicians and mercantilism!

I have to agree with Paul M.
Millions of people making their own choices are better at selecting the best technology in the future than even the Bob X. Cringley himself.

Many perceptive comments here, particulary those advising getting the goverment out of our wallets to begin with. If we don't give them the money, then they can't waste it. And you can bet that the vast majority of Americans watch their pennies better than the government does.

So Bob, please write your next column suggesting how we citizens can *effectively* reduce the size of government at all levels, and then bring the government that's left closer to us so that decision-making tends to flow down to the lowest or nearest level, rather than up and away to the most distant - and therefore most disconnected - level. After all, it's tougher to spend our money when we can keep an eye on ya!

While you're at it, tell us how the government might best fulfill it's extremely limited role of honest referee. Period.

Because we are simply drowning in rules, regulations, laws, and taxes.

The Nanny state continues to bloom like algae gone wild in a healthy pond, distorting nearly all our economic decisions, and driving up the cost of nearly everything, and choking off private innovation nearly everywhere.

The smartest, wealthiest guy I know tells me: "If only you Americans would radically reform your tax system, you'd conquer the world all over again."

Of course he means that the individual American's energy, ingenuity, and determination to succeed are unmatched anywhere in the world.

Thanks for all the interesting columns, BOB, and Merry Christmas!

Wait a second - where are all those dead PRIUS batteries going to go? Chemical batteries are an ecological disaster - let's develop nanotube capacitors first.

Better bet today would be replacing icandescent lights with Compact florescent bulbs. Bigger savings faster.

Bravo to the free-market/"Libertarians" here: gov't intervention, as "Robbed" shows, has side effects that can be quite nasty.



But now stop smiling. ESPECIALLY for collaborative / network / common good items, "free market" approaches are often worse than the Evil Government.



(If you refute that, please preface all your remarks with a call for eliminating all US governmental units, so we understand where you're coming from. Good Luck getting much traction. Otherwise, as they say, we've established your perspective, and now we're just haggling over price.)



My issue -- Bob's, too? -- is that we frame our thinking in the status quo, making it hard to see new ideas. Should city-dwellers continue to subsidize high-cost POTS and internet to rural Oklahoma? Rural Americans have made a perfectly legitimate choice to live not just where it's cheaper, but also where farther away from all those other sweaty American bodies. Initially a Good Idea, maybe, that all America be connected, now essentially subsidizes connectivity for people who have made lifestyle choices NOT to be so connected, nor to support public communities where that's the norm.



Likewise for the Prius argument. I love ours. But if US oil demand costs hundreds of billions in defense and foreign aid to prop up "friendly" states (maybe more) atop the black gold's price, we should not subsidize the biggest users with free Priuses for their teenagers or 2nd cars, but pass those surplus costs fairly to the very same consumers of all that energy: gasoline, heating oil and electricity taxes.



Oops, that'd never fly; we need some of Cringely's creativity to make a negative tax on everybody else. Otherwise, we're doing exactly the wrong thing: subsidizing gas-guzzling lifestyles, whether ranchers, 50-mile-a-day commuters, suburban soccer moms or 2-ton pickup urban showoffs, even helping them to zoom around in their Suburbans, Mercedes or old F150's.

Why stop with just the autos? Hell, lets give everyone "free" E85 gasoline as well! And I hear that hemp is the commodity of the future. Its uses span the scope of human activity from cooking oil to medicines (ha ha) so while we're at it throw in $100 billion to jump start that industry. Kum ba ya my lord, kum ba ya...

The sad truth is we borrowed most of that $700B Cringely wants to re-spend on his Utopian goals. True wealth is control of the means of production. Think about what that means in the context of our industrial, agricultural and intellectual infrastructure. We are rapidly becoming a beggar nation, and beggars shouldn't be shopping for new cars.

If only Bob, if only... I'm very concerned about how we dispose of the battery in the Prius and it's cost and effect on resale of used Prius autos. I wouldn't buy one.

I just test drove the Miles ZEV vehicle (SMUD is getting a few as is the military for its US bases in place of golf carts for utility vehicles) see http://milesautomotive.com/. Made in China, a good vehicle for China (drive one here on the road and you'd get killed by an SUV or F-150 pickup in a crash. No thanks!

In New Hampshire (in my spare time) I'm a MPO transportation commissioner. Our task is to get the air cleaner using CMAQ fed gas tax funds from you gas guzzlers. We encourage public transportation (in NH gas tax is only for buses not rail unfortunately - it's in the state constitution), biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, CNG, propane, you name it.

Many of us think that we need far better battery technology before we go off and invest millions in ULEV vehicles like the Prius. We'd be far better off if we invested more in biofuels which are renewable and the best way to capture the sun's energy (fuel cells are decades off as are better solar panels to make electricty to make hydrogen). Which reminds me - forget about hydrogen for decades to come.

A low NOx biodiesel burning engine coupled to a generator supplying electricity to motors in a vehicle would make far more sense. Millions of this kind of vehicle would also mean cash crops with local distribution to consumers for farmers (who are starving trying to compete with overseas food producers).

Take that idea for a spin, why don'tcha?

Big used cars are much safer, and more honest in their actual cost and pollution. When I fill my 1995 Chevrolet Caprice 9C1, it hurts. By putting gasoline in it, I'm not buying 5 movie tickets, 20 gallons of milk, or a Christmas Prime Rib (a little one). The high cost of filling reminds me of the high cost of driving instead of biking or walking. If I keep adding 6000 miles a year to the car, it may last another 30 years, preventing at least 5 cars and 30 years of car payments from going to wrecking yards. A 1992 Caprice saved my life once, when a Prius or diesel Golf would have been a coffin. Size and weight do matter, when high-performance acceleration and braking don't help. The Caprice is just metal and glass with a little plastic, after the fluids are drained. Nothing toxic, all-recycleable, no nanoparticle disposal problems. No Ni-MH, Ni-Cd, or Li-ion 700 pound waste pack to dispose of every 4 years.
When you have an electric sedan that can pull 5000 pounds while seating 6, top speed about 155 mph, range 450 miles and refill in 10 minutes, give me a call.

'Bob',

This sort of rational analysis is quite easy to do. For example, putting money into alternative energy sources was quite logical as far back as the early seventies, politically and economically. The problem is that the majority of people do not think rationally, as they are ignorant and/or stupid. We can hope for sensible policies over the long run, but it is certainly not guaranteed. Unfortunately, the current crop of public policy leaders seems to be of very poor quality. The US is still blessed with many intelligent people with good, sound ideas. But, at present, they seem to have very little power.

How about letting people keep and spend their own money instead of trying yet another futile attempt at central planning to "make the world a better place." If "alternative fuels" are economical, then private industry operating in a free market will find a way to harness them. If we should've learned one thing from the example of the 20th century, it's that free markets bring the greatest benefits to the greatest number, and that state-planning inevitably fails.

I thought bob was getting into dangerous territory here. Deliberately or otherwise the subtext could be read as Ibsen's 'An enemy of the people' or Orwell's '1984'. Big business is bad big government is bad. Whichever way, the population, Native americans, Dust bowl migrants , Motown black workers in the 60's, etc etc always gets screwed.
However the population really gets screwed when big government and what may seem to be free liberal economics happen on a common agenda.
So, Bob is right, whichever way you believe his argument - you have to believe both at the same time.
In the UK in the 70s the then socialist government in a period of economic stability started to think about the next 30 years. From that arose the concept of broadband britain, and as was the practice at the time, a group of experts in the subject were commisioned to produce a report. But - we had a change of government - to 'Thatcherism'. Suddenly, things called cable companies were to deliver that vision by running co-ax and optic fibre cables as a new local loop. Anybody in the Telecoms industry with degree level understanding of economics knew the figures didn't add up. But the whole thing went ahead and a few years later the Cable companies were bemoaning their fate -. The construction and civil engineering companies didn't seem to do too badly out of it, neither did the merchant banks.

Why do you think the traditional modem manufacturers in Europe missed the boat on 56K dial up. They had all closed down their R&D and production thinking that fiber and cable had the edge because the government told them so. These relationships go wrong just as often as they go right. What a surprise when MCI found they could not install a local loop and make a return.
I have to confess that I used to be fairly hard line socialist until I smuggled myself into Ceaucescu's Romania in the late 70's for a 'holiday.' The UK government was then quite well disposed to Ceaucescu, but I just saw, first hand, things that had not been reported, even in the academic and political writing of the time. The point I am making is to emphasise Bob's last point. These illogical and stupid things only happen when there is insufficient scrutiny of ideas and policies. Don't know how you fix it tho? Maybe the guys at Google who always say they have our best interests at heart should set their minds to it.

Here's what I think might be a better and even more efficient way to use scarce resources. Let people keep their own money and spend it as they wish. ;-)

Why go with Toyota Prius? Go with Tesla - http://www.teslamotors.com We may have to build a few more electric plants but that has to be cheaper than oil!!

Hmmm, so I guess I have to pay for other people's free car? Me, the guy who bikes to work?

Talk about bad incentives... Offering free cars to the "Heaviest" drivers would have some b-holes out there working in shifts to up their mileage. That's like offering free prostitutes to rapists... Rewarding bad behaviour leads to bad behaviour. Duh.

Look at the welfare moms who had 12 kids just to get more welfare money if you don't believe me.

And sure, the A-holes who drive Hummers are really going to Jones for a Prius. In fact, here's a suggested name for the program... "Buy a gas guzzler and get a free go-cart!"

Heck, now I can afford to get the bigger engine in my car since that'll get me a free one for the wife. Yee-Haw. I can get the Audi RS4 instead of the A4. And I'll make sure I drive it as much as possible so I get that free Prius... In fact, this house in the city is getting a bit cramped...

You want to cut down on fuel consumption, spend you $700 Billion building and encouraging public transport, heck, offer a $100 Billon dollar prize to the citizen with the lowest gas mileage for a year. Let people compete for that slab o' pork.

Finally, how do you propose we track who drives the most? Honor System? Or perhaps the government could just monitor us everywhere we go and keep it all in a big database....

He had been drinking too much egg-nog
When he mailed this column in
But he was on some medication
So he put in the box and not the bin

While this sounds a little like Swift's "Modest Proposal," it probably makes more sense than most government spending. . . Of course, if the government runs true to form, a bureaucracy would be organized to make sure that only the 10 million households which used the most gas got one and that they turned in their old car and it was properly disposed of, which would absorb about 125 out of the 200 billion. . . Of course you could still build a lot of Priuses for $75 billion. . .

Great article. Though one may quibble about the details, the piece CLEARLY demonstrates that solving the climate change/energy problem is feasible with existing technolgies. To the Rand-ians: who cares if the Govt or private enterprise does the job as long as SOMEONE does? It seems we have all been trained like monkeys to expect NOTHING from our tax dollars! Personally, I trust government, awful as it is, over private enterprise, in that it is somewhat easier to effect "regime change" in government (by voting).

BioDiesel is only 80% power-per-litre as Diesel, if I'm not too mislead, but 50 litres of BioDiesel is still 40-fewer-litres of Diesel.

I don't know where to find proof of this, though.

Are there available stats about the "drive the most == drive the farthest" argument?

What is the savings of converting the long-haul truckers to BioDiesel?

As well, what's the cost of converting freight-rail to Bio, and causing long-haul truckers to pay the same-per-mile that rail pays to maintain the railway's "interstates"?

Allan

This is probably the first article I have seen you do Bob, which I think you are really way off this time. There is no solid proof that humans cause global warming, only group think and conjecture. No one monitors the Sun, which is believed to be the root cause of this normal cyclic temp change on earth. We have lived only a very small portion of earths lifetime. Also, some scientists say that oil is constantly produced deep in the earth through convection, not created from dinosaurs. I am all for the tax breaks, but breaks to those who work for a living. Give tax breaks to tax payers who choose to install fiber lines. Companies would stand up to get all that business when consumers demand it. Please no more piggyback taxes on the phone bills or cable TV bills. If gas won't last forever, lets use it all up until we really need to create an alternative, then economics will create opportunities and alternatives. Also , I don't want a Prius put put car. I want a large "dangerous" SUV that can pull a load or tow a trailer, or cut through snow a foot deep. Your computer tech stuff is brilliant, this one was wacko. ;-) If the US government would cut taxes, I mean real cuts, not cuts in increase proposals, real cuts say 50% of our tax burden, the money spent by us on tech would skyrocket. The market would determine that fiber gets installed, due to demand, companies go where the money is.

A ha'porth worth to the biofuelers - the last time I looked - if you planted the entire cultivable surface of the planet with biofuel source plants annually you'd get 20% of the present energy derived from oil - now that IS a gauge of how fast we're burning fossil fuel.

The shame of it all is that we don't appear to make much effort to make what we've got go futher - in the developed world the governments are so addicted to the tax from the fuel that their protestations about fuel efficiency and global warming sound like a bunch of junkies fantasizing about when they'll get clean....

Nukes + electric cars - just watch the French!

Will: Bob didn't really claim this would solve any sort of global warming, real or imagined. He claimed this would lead toward energy independence and the political wins (complications?) that would come from it.

The only time he mentioned anything global warmingish was the Kyoto agreement, which agree with it or not affects our standing in the "global community" (for what that's worth).

What's nice about reduced energy consumption is the benefit that we create less pollution, which may or may not cause this "global warming thing." Of course we do know it causes acid rain and smog and black ickiness on buildings. So we'd get those taken care of.

Cringely, you are batty. It would be a terrible idea to give away 10 million Priusi. There is no fair way to accomplish this. Either you give it to the people least fortunate who benefit from it least, or you give it to the fortunate who will benefit from it most but need it least. What a terrible, communistic idea. Centrally planned economies are a dismal failure.

The argument made by Will Wagner that global warming is due to increasing solar insolation is false, because any increase in solar luminosity in the past 50 years is inconsequential, and is certainly not "cyclical" (perhaps you were thinking of the Milankovitch variables, which could be a possible cause). The scientific community has also agreed that the increase in carbon dioxide levels is definitely due to human influences, and the real question is if the current warming trend is caused by this increase in CO2 or something else. This is sort of beside the point though, because the Arctic is melting be it because of our oil consumption or Milancovitch variables. I'd also like to see the reference that says oil is made by in-earth convection, because this is the first I've heard of any such report.

We've also had real cuts from the Bush administration, but Reagan Republicans have learned by now that blind tax cuts without careful thinking hurt, not help. This is especially true applied to tax cuts to the rich, because the money saved gets saved not spent (which is why a graduated tax is necessary).

Cutting taxes by 50% would have far greater implications for our economy and the value of the dollar than some short-sighted consumer buying frenzy; we're already trillions more dollars in debt, and halving our national income seems like a bad way to get out of it.

And wasn't the whole point of the article that telcos *didn't* upgrade their networks even when the government paid them $200 billion to get them started? Free market demand didn't do it then, and it won't do it now.

I will bet anyone any money that in 20 years from today, there will be no noticeable climate change, nor any noticeable rise in sea levels due to human effect on global warming.

The year will be 2027. If any of you reading this remember then the hysteria of 2006, take a run down to the beach and see for yourselves. In 1980 these same hysterics were in a panic over an impending Ice age (an easy Google search or trip through the archives of Time, Newsweek et al will give you a good laugh). They'll be back in a few decades to scare you about whatever's next. Love ya, Bob, but don't look to Al Gore, or any politician for that matter, for answers.

Spend the $700 Billion on NASA and the education system.

We need dreams as well as jobs, and a healthy space program will provide both. Missions to the Moon and Mars will inspire kids to take science and engineering career paths. Losing our technological lead will not only cost us in economic terms, but losing our best brains to China and other countries will leave us in an even deeper fix in trying to apply new technology to repair damage to our world caused by old technology.

Just put realistic disincentives (taxes) on fuel.

Double the price, heck quadruple the price.

Then spend the next 10 years trying to get the taxes re-invested elsewhere.

The 'save the world by consuming high-tech stuff' argument is attractive to us geeks, but flawed. On average, half of the emissions generated in the lifetime of a car are created in its manufacture, so building millions of new cars (even more fuel-efficient ones) that wouldn't have otherwise been required, and scrapping old ones would add to the problem, not help to solve it.

However you could use the money to ensure that all new card with hybrid engines were massively subsidised, and tax petrol guzzlers off the road. Maybe while offering incentives to convert older cars.

You'd think that there's no problem on earth that couldn't be solved with $700b. The US government shows us otherwise.

Bob... do I detect a note of libertarianism? You lament the waste and innefectualness intrinsic to any government program, and talk of how private money is always better spent. Money is a representation of value. You produce something of value for other members of society and get money in exchange. The government robs us through taxation and spends the money they did not earn on what they arrogantly believe to be better uses than we could choose for ourselves. As they do this, more resources are wasted to produce what has no value (unused dark fiber in your example). If we simply let people choose for themselves what is valuable to them, we'd be a lot further down the road towards self-emerging economic solutions to our many social problems like education, alternative energy, the mythical fiber to the home, etc...

Bob... do I detect a note of libertarianism? You lament the waste and innefectualness intrinsic to any government program, and talk of how private money is always better spent. Money is a representation of value. You produce something of value for other members of society and get money in exchange. The government robs us through taxation and spends the money they did not earn on what they arrogantly believe to be better uses than we could choose for ourselves. As they do this, more resources are wasted to produce what has no value (unused dark fiber in your example). If we simply let people choose for themselves what is valuable to them, we'd be a lot further down the road towards self-emerging economic solutions like you describe to our many social problems like education, alternative energy, the mythical fiber to the home, etc...

Rob stated: "Just put realistic disincentives (taxes) on fuel. Double the price, heck quadruple the price."

In Europe they pay about double the US price at the pump. The difference is all tax and excise. As Bob's article showed, taxes and tax rebates do not go where you want them to go UNLESS you make them go that way...

Which is something you obliquely acknowledge when you post your following comment: "Then spend the next 10 years trying to get the taxes re-invested elsewhere."

I don't think that you have thought this out. I'm not a proponent of Hummers or other similar gas guzzlers. In fact, I drive a 1991 1600cc Miata and my wife drives a 2000cc minivan (we have 3 kids). BUT, doing what you suggest would throw the US into a recession for nought.

By all means, make a plan that's going to stimulate the economy and/or reduce our energy dependency/consumption and then go ahead and implement it with the tax funding that it requires...

However, to plunge the US into an economic recession today in order to reap some unspecified rewards in 10 to 15 years is even more foolish then doing nothing...

Guys... GUYS.. Bob isn't saying that it is a good idea for the government to give free cars away. Its just a thought experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment). It's a way of pointing out how dysfunctional our government has been. I can sympathize, because I have been quite frustrated also. I began to watch politics more closely starting in 1999. In the run up to the 2004 election I determined that the administration is incompetent to run the country. Sadly, this has been confirmed in the last two years. Congress and the Federal agencies such as the FCC have not been doing their job of oversight and corruption has only gotten worse. Unfortunately, I think fixing it will require campaign finance reform, independent ethics panels, a change to media regulations, some method of ending earmarks, and some serious prosecution cases.

I say unfortunately because that isn't what I really wanted to spend my spare time one. But without more citizens becoming involved I just don't see that all those things can occur. With the level of informed voter participation then the politicians will only make token changes. The poll results on simple questions are frightening.

From what I have read the hydrogen economy doesn't look like it will work. One of the more interesting tidbits to look into is whether there is enough platinum group metal on Earth to make all the fuel cells needed for a hydrogen based transportation system to work. The two main places are South Africa and the rim of a meteor crater in Canada. Interestingly, this leads to another reason to go to the moon.

It costs $35 to convert a car to burn ethanol mixtures. Making ethanol does not require using grains. Venture capitalists are investing in cellulosic ethanol because it uses the parts we currently burn or discard. Conservation and adoption of appropriate technologies will win. Like any other technology shift those countries that make the shift first will benefit the most and oil is the number one commodity. Being on the right side of this shift will be measured in trillions.

For more on platinum group metals, fuel cells, the hydrogen economy, and how estimates for amount of oil left are made I recommend Moonrush by Dennis Wingo.

http://www.amazon.com/Moonrush-Improving-Earth-Resources-Apogee/dp/1894959108

May I suggest a viewing of the film "Who killed the electric car?" as a must-see for interested readers of this article. I got mine from Netflix. It occurred to me to send a copy of this film to every residence in California, if I had the money. I was shocked to see (in the film) GM forcefully prying a whole fleet of UV1's out of the hands of happy lessees, then literally shred these vehicles, and effectively killing the electric car. I've never been a political activist, but the more I am see power abused by greedy people, the more I feel stirred to action. Commenting here is a small step forward.

Or just require all new cars to work on either methanol(vs petrol) or bio diesel(vs diesel), require petrol stations of a certain size to have a methanol pump, and use the money on cars that work on methanol which the Prius probably already does. Then the U.S. would be in the unusual position of actually be ahead of the curve on emissions.

How about incentives to build communities that don't rely so much on cards to begin with? How about encouraging people through tax incentives, effective marketing, etc., to live where people can walk or ride bikes or take transit to access more of their daily necessities or work? Yes, my wife and I each have a car (small ones), but we live in a neighborhood a short walk from a train station and from a downtown. We still have to drive places, but we really wish we didn't. I find that the less I use my car, the more I actually enjoy driving it.

This idea is brilliant.

Maybe someone would take it up as part of their presidential election campaign.

Would also reduce indirect funding to terrorists. Money paid on petroleum are indirectly funded to dubious organizations.

Me again.

One last comment.

Maybe we should setup an open source movement to design and manufacture a hybrid vehicle based on the Prius engine and chasis design.



Any takers?

All this assumes that you are applying common sense and logic. Since when have you ever been able to apply common sense and logic to anything the government does?

I love the idea, except as a fat guy do you realize how uncomfortable I'd be in a prius? I'll keep my old cadi (at least I'm not a 5 foot jerk in an suv so big I could live in it).

Better yet, A Telsa Roadster

Stick with what you know, Bob - getting off into the fields of politics and energy make you look like a liberal believer of a utopian society. I'm surprised that your analysis didn't include giving thousands of dollars in exercise equipment to the most obese people so they could lose weight, allowing their vehicles to get better mileage since they would be carrying less of a load.

Bob - after reading some of the nonsense comments about the Prius and mileage -- I feel it necessary to inform the uninformed -- the Prius REALLY does get GREAT mileage -- on Regular gas.

I'm in my 2nd Prius. Have a rather HEAVY FOOT and consistently get about 45 MPG. On a LONG trip -- Grand Canyon, Bryce, Arches and all -- 105 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit constant air conditioning -- up and down to and from 9000 ft altitude -- 2800 miles -- TOTAL gas cost -- at over $3 per gallon -- was $158 at trip average of 46.5 MPG. OH -- and I drive FAST!

My ONLY concern with your column was that I would HATE to think of having a company like -- Ford Ughhh!!! -- mucking up the quality that is the hallmark of Toyota's manufacturing ability.

The Prius is not merely a brilliant technological and packaging (it's a Hatch Back) design -- but it is marvelously BUILT! And HUGE fun to drive -- AND -- can do 109MPH with SOMEWHAT!!! reduced gas mileage.

George

Another great column Bob. I own a 2004 Prius and I love it. It is a great piece of engineering. Craig, I don't know how big you are, but I have a family member who only feels comfortable in a Lincoln SUV who doesn't mind riding in the Prius.

I've always thought that the president should focus on our oil depencies rather then this wacky mars initiative. Hybrids are supposed to be a stepping stone to fuel cell cars so I would think that if we were to spend that much money we might as well skip hybrids altogether and go directly to fuel cell vehicles and build a hydrogen infrastructure.

Rent the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (NetFlix has it.) Who would ever think that guys from the oil industry would result in higher oil prices and a lessening of alternative fuels?

The problem with private industry is that it only looks at the short term. Therefore this is something that has to be done with government funds.

Personally, I am all for NOT funding terrorists, which is what we do when we buy oil. I like your ideas, and wish we would have done that instead of all the killing and maiming we have done, and will continue to do, in the name of profit for a small group of people.

The contradiction I see in this week's column is your criticism for current government policy juxtaposed with a solution that uses government policy. You want to see our government spend $200 billion on Toyota Priuses for 10 million homes? Sounds alright until reality casts it's shadow: Toyota lobyists turn the $200 billion into $300 billion (not to mention an increase demand for Japanese Yen will push up exchange rates, so really, the cars will cost more), Congress adds an additional $100 billion in earmarks, the United Autoworker's Union soils its self because you've handed a huge government contract to a foreign company, I soil myself because you think I want a new Prius and you're using my tax dollars to buy it when I really want an even more energy efficient electric car (Tesla Roadster) that I can't afford because you think you know how to better spend my money than I do, so you take it in taxes., etc.

The best way to fix our economy is to let the free market work. Instead of spending $700 billion on failed government policy, give the $700 billion back to people and let them decide what's best for themselves. And if you really believe in market failure, pass tax credits on energy efficient automobiles, and energy efficient buildings, etc.

I happen to believe in free markets, and the success of the Toyota Prius is a shining example of demand for cleaner automobiles, which will continue to be fulfilled. Do a google news search for "electric car" I found several articles about them and how interest is being sparked because of high oil prices.

As for pushing fiber out to everyones homes. That's nonsense. Broadband is cheap. If people want it they sign up for it. Forcing it upon them is just a waste of money.

As a Libertarian I feel that the necessary evil of government usually does more harm than good. I have also come to realize that people in general usually look at things in extremes. In this case everybody should be driving hybrids, or we should all be using natural gas powered vehicles. In most cases there is rarely a silver bullet type of solution.

Since this is usually a tech related forum I think one of the answers may lie in broadband over power line (BPL) technology. BPL isn't only about providing internet service to electric customers, there are also many features and benefits to the utility provider. Remote metering, load balancing, etc. Why not exploit this technology to the fullest when coupled with energy efficient smart homes and hybrid electric cars.

Imagine a insulated concrete home equipped with photo voltaic panels and mini wind turbines, LED lights, energy efficient appliances and a hybrid car plugged into the grid in the garage. When and if the home is generating extra electricity it is pumped back into the grid and you get compensated. If your hybrid car is plugged into your home and extra energy is required in the grid, the utility company can remotely start your car and utilize its generator to help with the increased demand and you get compensated.

This type of voluntary system would entice people in many different ways. The free market system at its best. Just a wild thought.

Small problem with your concept.

When you give people a $20,000 free Prius, they then have a free car and more money to spend on gas.

Result: they'd drive MORE, not LESS - and we'd have pissed away $200 billion and spend MORE on ME oil!

I can think of better ways.

Your point is correct, overall - we pissed away $700 billion (hell, it's really going to be a trillion or three before Bush goes down, you know that - wait until the Iran war starts if you want to see gas prices soar!) on nothing.

"give the $700 billion back to people and let them decide what's best for themselves"

Hasn't this been what the Bush (W.) administration has been trying to do? Well ok, insert "the wealthiest" in front of "people," append "and corporations" after it, and reduce the total value a bit... The Bush (W.) administration has proven two things, though:

1) Besides being really bad at knowing how to spend money, government is ALSO really bad at knowing how to GIVE IT AWAY.

2) "Trickle-down economics" (aka "Voodoo economics") DOESN'T WORK.

Probably one of the few things the government gets the least wrong is collecting taxes. Asking them to cut taxes, or worse, give tax money back, is directly contrary to that strength. Probably the most efficient way the government could help free markets is by only giving tax credits or rebates, since then the government tax machine still gets to be involved by keeping track of them (in effect they become "virtual taxes").

If free markets are so great, they really should be able to succeed regardless of what the government does. Tax credits or rebates would simply be a nudge in the direction the government believes is most promising. They don't act as a driving force, merely an easier slope to proceed on.

This reminded me of somehting that was going on in Colorado? about 5 years ago. They had roadside 'emissions exhaust' analyzing equipement. They found it was cheaper and easier to pay to fix the 10% of automobiles that produced the most emissions than make everyone pay for emissions testing, or something like that.

Also, there is no guarrantee that the recipients of the 'Prius'es would abandon their old gas guzzler. They would probably still use it to drive the family around. You'd need to take their old vehicles away, but you didn't say that.

IIRC, the EV1 project was killed because it cost GM enormous amounts of money, perhaps a billion.

The lease payments charged to the EV1 users were mere tokens that did not come close to covering even the variable costs of maintaining the EV1 vehicle.

All I can wonder is where GM would be today has they spent the EV1 money on developing hybrids (preferably diesel hybrids) instead of subsidizing a lucky few with the failed EV1 project.

Bob;

A good start, but. Free (cars, lunch, medical ...) may have unintended consequences. Maybe make the cars to be paid for by higher gas taxes for the rest of the fleet. In the UK & most of Europe gas is US$1.50 +. Per liter... Diesel is half that; so many of the formerly gas powered cars are sipping (less) Diesel. Also, that many pseudo-electric cars require mucho lead (or nickel or...?) for batteries, which have to be replaced rather often (and put where?). Ethanol is a pig in a poke. The Economist has said for years that the crude oil energy input (including fertilizer, transport, water etc.) to get ethanol from corn is higher than the energy output from the ethanol. This would change if ethanol could be made from sugar, as Brasil does. But one has the ex-Cuban mobsters over in Lake Okechobee (The Fanjul "family") who subsist on $$ extracted from taxpayers at gunpoint; making US sugar 3 times the world price. Also: if you've ever tried to make a pot of coffee on an alcohol stove, you know there ain't much heat there in the first place. Better to skip the coffee & just make a mimosa or a screwdriver...

Bottom line: if fuel of whatever sort has a high enough price at the pump the free ? market will quickly provide a practical alternative to crude oil derived fuels. Without holding you up to give me a "free" car. (Whassamatta? you don't like my Deux Cheveaux??)

Ciao 4 niaow

Kata

Believe it or not cars represent a smaller percentage of the greenhouse gas we emit when compared to the greenhouse gas our homes and businesses emit. For those interested in the impact our built environment has on our planet and what we can do about it, I suggest you visit www.architecture2030.org.

Nice rant, but maybe you dont see the forest for the trees. The real problem is in ignoring history. The only role of government worth putting up with is to protect us from the bad guys. Any more power given is sure to be abused, whether for telecom or whatever. Since the founding fathers recognized this classic human failing they limited federal authority by constitution, altho we have allowed politicians to circumvent for well intentioned ideas like yours. The free market is the only safe course. Still.
As for the idea that the Iraq war is an expensive folly, think again. Those of us who lived thru the 60's and 70's remember the smug intellectuals who claimed the Red peril was just a better alternative when in fact it threatened the very roots of civilization. Only when we had someone in power with the guts to stand up to them was the threat finally contained (Reagan). The civilized world has been threatened by Islam for quite a few centuries now but until recently had not the wherewithal. As it is, we have done too little in Iraq, due mostly to stiff opposition from the whiners. Actually, whiner is not quite correct; the effective opposition has been from those cravenly exploiting national security for personal political gain. Pity they wont live to see their children taken back to the 7th century under the world caliphate. The most legit role of a government is to prevent such travesties. A few billion bucks now is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost and civilian casulties in engaging mad Islamists with nukes. How's that for a rant?

From the automotive repair perspective, Ethanol is a poor substitute or additive for gasoline. It is hydroscopic and absorbs excess moisture from the atmosphere, thus lowering the combustion efficiency of the fuel.

If the gas level in the tank is allowed to drop below the 1/4 tank level, you run the risk of having a faltering, stumbling, and dying engine because of the excess water in the fuel. Furthermore, water doesn't compress well in our typical internal combustion engines and if this condition persists, you run the risk of damaging some critical reciprocating engine parts.

Here in Hawaii, they have been adding Ethanol to our pump gas for over a year now and we are experiencing a number of problems. Apparently this additive shortens the shelf life of the fuel. So the Ethanol + gasoline mixture that has been stored must be "dumped out" and replenished after a two month period of time. In comparison, regular "pure" stored gasoline can maintain it's combustion qualities for a three month period of time.

As other posters have noted, the energy efficiency of Ethanol is low, considering the copious amounts of water needed to grow suitable crops. Since water is becoming our most valuable Earth resource, Ethanol isn't our best hope to solving our future energy crisis. The Toyota Prius running on regular gasoline might be our current best alternative.

Bob, always love your views; looking forward to your predictions.

josh

Jack Dixon,

Way to cut down those trees!

'Twas not a rant but the truth.

It's a beautiful Christmas wish Bob. Similar to one I've had for... a long time. But it's a really big wish. It's hard for Santa to grant really big wishes like cars. But maybe, just maybe if WAY more of us had the same wish, and wished for it REALLY hard, maybe then Santa would grant wish.

Here's hoping Santa gives you, and your family, everything you wish for.

Bob why is not the likes of you in a high political position.... where ideas are absent! We just saw a documentary about piracy at sea, and we thought of you and your brain trust! Best to you and yours!

Another example of a good idea, only FUBAR. The sad part of this tale is, I would expect a good lot of that $700 billion went to finance projects and funds and other such things that are in no way, shape, or form related to telecommunications.

But hey, someone enjoyed Christmas for a few years, right? I'm sure at least a few Escalades were bought with that dough...

Thank you Bob, for focusing attention on this issue. But there's an even larger issue which this is only a symptom: Corporate control of our government.

Read "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann. Pay particular attention to page 215 where the author quotes Thomas Jefferson "[The corporation] penetrating its every part of this Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under th vassalage of any self-constituted authorities."

Being a baby boomer and having grown up in the '60s I think it's time we took back control of our government before it's too late. Anything we can do, like what you suggest, is a step in the right direction, but unless we can restore this country and the planet to one run "by the people, and for the people" we may soon find ourselves living as hunter-gatherers.

I don't think giving away anything would work. It never makes anything except an ephemeral change; on the neighborhood scale to the national scale. Economics don't work that way. Give away an LED light bulb, and the guy uses it until it breaks and then buys an incandescent because it is still cheaper in the short run.

Here are a few ideas that are less flashy but might work:

1) Fund research in areas that are underserved by the free market; particularly research by universities, with the proviso of public licensing. The path to some of the solutions to the energy crisis and oil dependency may not be immediately profitable. One goal of the research should be to make technologies that currently cannot compete in the market place more competitive. Government funded research should be done only by scientists and companies that have surrendered all profit interest in their results and are agreed to making all their results public without strings. They get the grants and a good salary for the work, they get journal publication credits, and that's it -- Their inventions are not patented and not patentable, they belong to the public. (Much as research by universities really was just 30 or 40 years ago).

2) Put a few extra dollars in tax on a gallon of gas. Spend the money on factors that alleviate the problem; like better (and safer) public transportation, and the above mentioned basic research. Higher cost means less use; and the money can go to make us oil independent. I know this unfairly impacts the poor, but so does every solution. Hence the public transportation; perhaps with a uniformed cop on the bus. Currently PT underserves the poorest districts; it doesn't match their schedules for work, daycare, or life tasks. These are the people that would use PT gratefully if it ran frequently and was reliable (more and smaller fuel efficient buses) and it might even increase employment.

I disagree with all those that think "let us keep the money", you won't do these things with it. Only government can engage in non-profit-oriented collective action. No number of individuals will get together and spend $50M to build needed public roads with no profit motive; or do research that wouldn't pay off for ten or twenty years; or bus the poor to work at Walmart and make sure they arrive at midnight when their cleaning shift starts.

I also observe that realistically, the money is not $700B. After 9/11, we were going to spend money on some kind of "war on terror". I believe we would have been better off stopping at utter destruction of Afghanistan; and truly rebuilding that country as a democracy and ruthlessly stamping out the opium trade. That would have cost $100B or $200B. And would have served as a stronger example: People would still believe that if you attacked the USA, your country would be found out and destroyed. The "with us or against us" ultimatum would still have teeth. Iran would still be cooperative, Saddam would be a bit more scrupulous in avoiding terrorists, and so on.

Instead, we squandered our money on a useless war and accomplished the opposite. By proving we can lose (note that our current big plan for "victory" is to try and hold just one city in all of Iraq), we have emboldened terrorists and that increases the probability of fresh attacks on US soil.

I like the idea in theory. However, one problem that I see is that, historically, as the cost of gas has gone down, the amount of traveling by consumers has gone up. By how much it woulg go up I don't know, but we can't assume that the amount of fuel saved is a constant.

I wouldn't license the Prius design and farm out manufacturing to all the automakers; that would stifle innovation. Nor would I gift a Prius to 10 million households. I'd pay out that money through subsidies and tax credits over a ten year period.

Give a subsidy to the auto manufacturers and scale it so that the more fuel efficient the automobile is that they sell, the higher subsidy they receive. That would spur more innovation. There would also have to be a price ceiling on the vehicles produced with the subsidy, so that the automakers don't just take the money and run.

Then boost significantly the tax break that's already in place for consumers. Start big, and slowly phase both it and the subsidy out over 10 years.

Helen,

Did you put catnip in Bob, err... Santa's cookies again?

I couldn't agree more. Great ideas put forth.

Merry Christmas Bob!!

I'd be interested in a similar analysis for solar collectors, i,e., massively subsidizing installations. Since so much of electricity is generated by burning coal it should drive a similar CO2 reduction.

Of course, utilities and mining interests would not be interested in such a proposal.

Bob: Knock ONE off that 10 million new Toyota Prius' list--we just subsidized your agenda with our family purchase. I fully agree with your overall thrust here--however, Americans can reduce individual oil/gas consumption NOW without waiting for a massive new political energy policy or "they" "them" "him" "her" to "do something" about our energy use. I can do something; WE can do something--NOW. "My other car is mass transit" "My other car is a motorcycle".

Bob: Knock ONE off that 10 million new Toyota Prius' list--we just subsidized your agenda with our family purchase. I fully agree with your overall thrust here--however, Americans can reduce individual oil/gas consumption NOW without waiting for a massive new political energy policy or "they" "them" "him" "her" to "do something" about our energy use. I can do something; WE can do something--NOW. "My other car is mass transit" "My other car is a motorcycle".

How about just using hydrogen? The technology exists and has been proven even in automobiles. Just the energy monopolopies were succesfull in surpressing it.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=stan+myers+water&hl=en
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hydrogen+car&search=Search

Alec: Hydrogen must be created and that requires more energy than you get so it acts just like a battery. Hydrogen is not a energy source, is is one type of energy *transport* or storage. It is nice that the coal burning power plant has one smoke stack to control instead of trying to control a million tailpipes, but the multiple transformations from coal to electric to H2 and back to h20 is inefficient.

Clint: (way up) - Yes diesel is more per gallon but there is more energy in it so your mileage is higher. What you need to look at is $/mile.
Diesel is best
gas is good
E85 is not so good.

Diesel is easier to make than gas and Europe has shown us how to make good little cars that use diesel very well. It pollutes more but that problem is almost solved to the point of allowing U.S. to get those great BMW's here that will cheaply kick butt.

I've seen a Prius modified to become a poratble generator for a house (http://www.priups.com/). Since we depend SO MUCH on electricity and the quality/reliability of power is going down, I'd say all of your Prius' should be modified in this manner.
I know, however, this will never happen: people would install a microwave in the car, start living in the car, sell the house and then the housing market would crash. ;)

Well, while we're at it, why not redesign the Prius to be a true hybrid that is truly efficient at all speeds and distances. Using a gas-engine in the drive train is just stupid - make it pure electric with a small gas engine to charge the batteries using 1 gallon of gas for a full charge while the car is running and add in a power plug as an alternative. With the right combination of existing electric motor technology, we could easily start seeing 1000 miles per gallon and/or see cars never using gas.



Yes, the 'plugged in' cars would still pull electric from the grid and that electric would need to be made, but that electric can be provided a lot more efficiently than it would be made in the car - and the plants can be upgraded over time for better emissions yet.



The prius is good and all but it's not good enough. And on a long haul drive (WDC to NYC, for example) it's no better than a non-hybrid. If we were to really do something like Cringley is suggesting, than do it right - and that's not the Prius.

In response to comments about letting the "free market" get things done, about ECON 101 supply and demand economics, etc, the US does not really have a free market. For smallish companies, it's sort of free. But as corporations become large, they exert a lot of influence on the government to establish policies that are favorable to themselves. This influence takes the rational out of economic analysis.

As long as corporations heavily influence the government, you will not get honest government, nor will you get a free market. We have to find a way to set the allegiance of our elected officials back to those electing them.

This is one of the silliest columns I've ever read. Bob attempts to solve a major world problem by proposing an idea that would:
1) require a great deal of legislation affecting a huge number of people
2) require a huge expenditure of funds
3) create huge opportunities for fraud and waste
4) treat only a tiny source of the problem.
Sounds like Bob would be a perfect fit in D.C. Bob, are you running for office?

A much better solution (i.e., fewer funds, less regulation, smaller chance of waste and fraud, far bigger effect) would be to regulate emissions of power plants (or go nuclear) and to require all those using private jets to use fly commercial.

Right on, Bob! I've been saying for years that if we'd paid attention in 1974 and refocused our efforts on weaning ourselves from oil or at least reducing our usage, we'd be much farther ahead today. Instead, like a common addict, we simply keep on buying...and the price rises, but not quite enough to get us to kick the habit. And, when shortages loom, we rob a convenience store, 'er convenient country...but we got caught and now we're doin' time and billions are down the drain!
mark.

Bingo BOB!

I actually like the idea. However, the biggest hurdle is the lack of ACTION.

We, the US, could do a hell of a lot of things that would be in the best interest of our "collective", yet we don't act on these ideas.

Great ideas without earnest ACTION means nothing ever really changes. But, at least you keep the dream alive by writing about it!

Let's see....Scrap a large, expensive, wasteful government program and replace it with yet another large, expensive government program. How many failed government programs/projects have you written about over the years? And what makes you think this one will turn out any differet?

I do agree that if the money spent interfearing in other country's affairs was spent weening this country off of oil we would be in a very different position now. It is just that having the Federal government drive this is the worst solution ever.

Lets say you get your wish. Your final 2007 column will then read something to the effect that '500 billion was spent to prop up Ford and GM and the energy savings gained by fuel cell technology was spent 10 fold by the forced manufacturing and oil consumption dramatically increased'.

If gas was $5 or so per gallon, somebody would find a solution, and the goverment wouldn't have to spend a dime.

Oh no, Bob's lefty political leanings rear their ugly head.

Bob, please stick to writing about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and leave the political BS to Sean Hannity and Al Franken.

I am one Presidential candidate that remembers NII.

In fact, you might want to check my energy tab on my web site for other relationships to you story.

Karl

Oh, one more point, Bob..didn't I see you drive off into the sunset at the end of Triumph of the Nerds in a mid-60's, gas-guzzling Ford Thunderbird? And does the engine on your airplane run on biodiesel, or ethanol?

Global warming is a global event. Why then do you restrict your audience to the United States?

Larry Low

Hello Bob -
I read your column religiously every week. I work for CoStar Group - look us up @ costar.com

I'm a field photographer and we were all just given Priuses as company cars. They are AMAZING! This is the future whether anybody likes it or not - and it's GREAT. I urge everyone to just drive one. My next personal car is a hybrid. The time has come.

Larry Low> Global warming may be a global event but the US is the most guilty and has the most influence which is a shame considering its leadership status.

Batteries DONT go into landfills people, they are completely recycled.

So tell ya what - lets split up into groups
-global warming nonbelievers/capitalist flagwavers

....low tailpipe emission believers/prius lovers, etc.

Choose a belief. Stick with it, Work your better "plan"

...Then lets meet back here, and see who actually cleaned up their act.
Enough clever bickering -- DO SOMETHING!!

Me? Im buying a certified used Prius in the next week.
What are YOU doing ?? Put your money where your mouth is (and if in the meantime it happens to be anywhere near my new tailpipe, you'll thank me.) Get to work.

Your latest email informing me that your column was ready to be read contained no links to that column. Sometimes it is better not to monkey with something that works. I am been receiving your notifications for sometime now with no problems but then you decided to get clever.....

>> The result of a 20-25 percent drop in U.S. oil consumption would be a substantially larger drop in world oil prices

If so; the result of this result would probably be that Africa and South America (and probably Russia, Asia, China) are going to burn so much fuel in all the cheap second hand cars imported from the US and Europe, that the final result would be an increase in pollution by cars, worldwide. For how long?

Leon Krijnen, The Netherlands

Of course there are different ways of looking at it, but ultimately greed and selfishness wins. It is human nature to exploit whether this be the big companies or the little guys.

Everyone wants to have the cake and not only eat it too, but demand another cake at no extra charge. What am I getting at? Things are the way they are because we refuse to change.

Why do we feel the need to drive big SUVs, or why do we buy cars that suck up gas at a rate we can't afford? Because it offers convenience.

No one cares about what happens until it directly affects them. The American people don't care about what happens to their money or their country until it directly affects them. Ignorance is bliss.

It will take something big and revolutionary to change America. Something in the order of completely economic and government collapse or the discovery of a better alternative fuel.

Wonderful! Again, Robert shows that is possible to be American *and* aware that there is a world outside its borders. Thanks!

Say Bob, you're on to something here...What would $30 barrel oil do? Probably stop the insurgency and shut Iran up..