The Hybrid Hoax

Toyota is laughing all the way to the bank. I have long wondered what kind of dope pays the absurd premium for a hybrid expecting to get any tangible benefit shy of the car's 10th birthday. Now, having read a column in the Wall Street Journal today, it appears that I'm not the only one:

"Let us assure you that the Prius remains one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. Toyota applauds your willingness to spend $9,500 over the price of any comparable vehicle for the privilege of saving, at current gasoline prices, approximately $580 a year.

And should the price of gasoline rise to $5, after 10 years and/or 130,000 miles of driving, you might even come close to breaking even on your investment in hybrid technology."

Here's an idea that might offer a more practical approach to weaning the United States off its dependence on foreign oil: nuclear power. But sadly, the same dopes that drive around in Toyota Prius vehicles are the same fear-mongers that fanned the flames of nuclear fear in the 1970s. Alas, we are still suffering those ill-effects today.

I Did Not Know That

So I'm reading along an article in the New York Post about how PETA is absurd and hypocritical. It's always a great way to get myself riled up by reading about these far left groups that purport to care about the world while they sit in the back of their limousines and wax absurdly about poor ferrets and foxes bred specifically for their fur. Note the following:

"Their credibility really has gone down over the last few years," says Keith Kaplan, executive director of the Fur Information Council of America. "And frankly, if it wasn't for the use of animal testing, Pamela Anderson would not have blond hair or breast implants."

Very good point. I guess killing animals is okay as long as you don't have to see remnants of the carcasses. Anyway, I digress. The end of the article had a random fact that finally resolved a nagging question on my mind for the past couple decades: Why do radiators make that incessant banging sound? Well, my loyal realists, here is the answer:

In order to reach (and thus heat) apartments, steam has to travel through pipes that turn and bend several times. These corners can pose quite a problem for traveling steam - particularly if a few drops of water have condensed inside. Such water drops, known as "traveling slugs," can shoot through the pipes at the same speed as their gaseous counterpart, but any turns will cut them off, full-stop. When a traveling slug slams into a corner, the result is the harmless - but infuriating - clang...and another sleepless night.

Now, if anyone can tell me why they can't invent a brake pad for city buses that don't squeal or why roads in this city or so supremely poorly constructed, you'll win a prize.

You Snooze, I Lose

Here's the deal: I was once in a motorcycle accident. Why, you might ask? Simple, a driver (I won't mention the driver's sex for fear of starting a flame war) in a 'ginormous' SUV ran a red light on Park Avenue and stopped in the middle of intersection when the driver saw me. My options were to slam on the breaks and low-side it (that means slide out and crash) or try to weave around the SUV and possibly hit it if I couldn't (that means crash). As you can guess, I crashed, but walked away largely, and fortunately, unscathed.

What's the lesson to learn from this? Don't drive a motorcycle in Manhattan? Avoid intersections? Well, I don't really know. But, let's consider for a moment why the driver was in the middle of an intersection during a red light. What was she (whoops, there I've gone and blown it) thinking?

Tony Long from Wired Magazine asked the same question, and a few others:

Why is it that only a handful of states have made it illegal to talk on the phone while driving? Driving is not something you do as an afterthought, OK? You're hurtling down the road behind the wheel of a 3,000-pound vehicle (more like 7,000 pounds in that idiotic destroyer of worlds, the Hummer) and it doesn't take a physicist to figure out that if you hit a human being -- astride a motorcycle, riding a bicycle or on foot -- you're going to do some damage.

So do everybody a favor and turn off your cell phone while you drive. (It's OK. Your important life can wait while you zip over to the mall.) If you have to make a call this very minute, pull over. This ain't exactly brain surgery, but it might help prevent some of it, you know?

Then there are the vehicles themselves. Hummers aside, have you seen the size of some these, these ... well, when Paw drove to town we used to call them pickup trucks. Now? Pickup trucks on steroids, maybe. (A truck that seats six adults: What genius dreamed that one up?)

They're huge. They ride high. Too high. There's a hood the size of Rhode Island out in front of you, blotting out the sun. It makes it even harder to see what's out there. If it was easy to miss a biker when you were driving your Volvo station wagon, well, try checking your field of vision in one of these mesomorphic babies. Of course, you're probably so busy cranking up that Slayer CD that you'd miss Sonoma Sammy at full throttle on his Fatboy. RIP, Sammy.

Car manufacturers are also tarting up their vehicles with all sorts of things that, when used like most humans tend to use them, distract you from watching the road. GPS (What? You can't pull over and read a map?), high-end sound systems requiring your full attention to operate and -- what in God's name were they thinking? -- in-dash video monitors: These have no place in a motor vehicle. Cars exist to convey you from one place to another. They are not concert halls or TV babysitters for cranky children. (Teach the kid to read. Better yet, teach him to love to read, then give him a book, fer crissake.)

You mean reading is even an option these days? Go figure. In any event, on one of the busiest shopping and driving days of the year, be careful and drive carefully. I just might be out there riding my motorcycle.

Then again, who am I kidding? It's 21 degrees outside in Manhattan.

The Proper Take on Energy Profits

It often seems that the American public forgets that we live in a free market economy. Recent calls for taxes on 'windfall profits' demonstate just how little the average citizen understands the notion of supply and demand, well at least when it is removed from the ridiculous demand for SUVs or beanie babies. As usual, politicians sense an opportunity to spend other people's finances while currying voter support by seeking to take more than they are entitled to by changing the tax rules in the middle of the game. No one seemed to cry for oil companies when oil profits were in the dumpster in the 1990s. It's positively perplexing that people expect innovation to take place while simultaneously limiting the amount of profit after taxes that could then be used for that very purpose.

In today's Wall Street Journal, the editors do a nice job explaining why mucking around with profits is not just bad business, but bad in the long run as well. Here are some highlights:

Back when Jimmy Carter signed the windfall profits tax during the last oil crisis, the results were the opposite of what the politicians intended. The first adverse result, as recently documented by the Congressional Research Service, was that oil companies reduced their U.S. domestic production by 1.5 million barrels a day, or by almost 6%. Exploration for new supplies slowed because the tax, by design, snatched as much as a third of the profit from these investments.

The supertaxers claim oil companies are immorally profiting from the Katrina natural disaster and the global inflation in oil prices. But if governments make it illegal to make money from reserves when oil markets are squeezed, companies won't have the financial incentive to hold oil in reserve in the first place, and consumers will find themselves in even greater misery in the next supply shock. Where is the morality in that? What better serves consumers: the service station that has no gas at $2 a gallon, or the station with full tanks but which charges $3.19?

As recently as the late 1990s, oil prices fell below $20 a barrel. The "windfall profits" in boom years offset the down years in much the same way that restaurants make "windfall" profits on busy Saturday nights. Many Americans are selling their homes in this hot real estate market for two or three times what they paid for them. Does [Congress] want to slap a windfall profits tax on home sales?

A new report from the Tax Foundation finds that the biggest profiteers from oil aren't the companies that produce and deliver it to gas tanks, but are the federal and state governments that tax it. Between 1977 and 2004, total taxes on gasoline sales have been $1.34 trillion (thanks to average taxes at the pump of about 40 cents a gallon), or more than double the $640 billion of oil company profits -- and that's not including the taxes the companies also paid on their profits.

In Washington of late, the term profit has become synonymous with "greed." But it is the pursuit of profit that drives the technological progress that makes energy abundant and affordable -- and will drive down prices in the future, just as prices of electricity and gas have fallen throughout most of the last century.

If Americans want reliable supplies of oil and lower gas prices, they had better hope oil companies aren't prohibited from making money selling it. There's an estimated five trillion barrels of oil retrievable from the Earth. We can say with certainty that it will be entrepreneurs in the virtuous quest for profits, not gassy politicians or talk-show hosts, who will put that fuel in our gas tank.

Here here.