Ford: If You Shower It With Money, It Will Make Electric Cars

Posted by on 2008/12/03 Leave a comment (4) Go to comments


by Irma Arkus

In keeping up with the Joneses, I feel compelled to report on recent development in Ford bailout efforts. While it is clear that this auto-manufacturer has fallen way behind in innovation, partially fueled by the consistent lobbying efforts which resulted in some sort of industry protectionism directly connected to petroleum industry lobby efforts, it seems that the glove finally dropped — Ford has announced that it too will start manufacturing electric and alternate fuel vehicle solutions, but only under condition of a bailout.

Oh Catcar, where art thou? Oh, there you are (see photo of air car by MDI Industries enclosed).

See article here.

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  • superjaded

    Does this mean that we’ll have to change the layout of ‘mrika? Cuz I can’t get a cart of milk and my giant bulk packaged toilet paper without my car.

  • irma

    Well put. The entire layout and infrastructure of cities is geared to accomodate not less, but more personal vehicle traffic in US. And so is shopping. In order to lessen the environmental impact of personal vehicles, we are going to need some smaller packaging of goods, and some major changes to city planning and design. Namely, the Europe and Asia that US so often expresses ambivalency towards, will become the image in which America will have to work hard at achieving.

    Wait, was I talking about obesity or consumerism and city planning?

  • http://www.ep-hi.net/blog/ Ben

    The real solution is to make it easier to live car-free. I’ve heard many people opine that they need their cars to survive. This is clearly incorrect; cars are not a neccessity of life. This is an argument by emotion and exageration, and is fallacious. However, it can be very difficult in some situations, notably so in suburban and rural environments but also in some cities, to live car-free. Efforts should be made to alleviate this problem.

    The low hanging fruit here is urban living. In a well designed city, there is no need for a car. The aforementioned “cart of milk and giant bulk packaged toilet paper” can easily be brought home on the short walk from the grocer in a hand cart.

    Admitedly, areas with lower population densities are harder to live in without a personal motor vehicle, but considering that over 50% of the human population on Earth is urban now we should put some effort into making it easy for city-dwellers to be car-free.

  • josepf

    This is true, but Ben, urban living has been sold as a lifestyle, and a very expensive one. Too expensive in fact. Unless everyone can afford it, it isn’t a real solution. I think the fact that *some* people need cars is a pretty obvious one. some do, and many don’t. but most people i know are torn between having to choose between suburban existence, and that of unaffordable “green” condos that are disproportionally out of their price range.

    It is also important to note that EU has a different urban infrastructure than US does – and we can learn a lot from EU on this.