Grant's Auto Rants

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Albert Einstein once said, "In order to form an immaculate member of a fleet of BMWs one must, above all, be a BMW." 

Well, ok, he may not have been talking specifically about BMWs -- or even cars for that matter -- but rather that one must first and foremost be a sheep to be a member of a flock. That's pretty much what our Bavarian buddies would have you believe as well, given their most recent announcement.

BMW's "Munich Madmen" (engineers) announced this week that they have made considerable progress on the development of a marketable hydrogen-powered internal combustion 7-Series sedan. They went on further to say that the product would be ready not "sometime after 2010," but "within" a scant two years.

Heck, it takes longer than that to receive a pre-ordered Ferrari F430.

Merely weeks ago this technology was considered so pie in the sky that unless your company is significant in size, it wouldn't have even registered as a blip on your radar yet.  Alas, here is BMW happy to take the lead and not only make the "Ultimate" technology truly practical, but even produce its sedans with the advantageous capability of running on the world's most abundant element, as well as petrol (until, of course, society has tackled that pesky issue of how to farm hydrogen from other elements and build a worldwide distribution network for it).

To me, this sounds suspiciously like another example of technology becoming outdated even before you get it home and out of its liquid polymer packaging. Hydrogen-propelled vehicles are pretty much old news at this point. As a matter of fact, in the interest of staying ahead of the trend, I think I might just skip hydrogen altogether and focus on the next big thing in automotive propulsion (in case we quickly deplete our atmosphere of premium hydrogen).

After the mother of all matter, what will the next fuel be? Well, considering all the geo-political, environmental, and social issues, there seems to be an appetite for "naturally-occurring" phenomena. Mind you, though, that the requirements are grandiose. The issue BMW (and others) aspire to tackle is to fuel the world's ever-expanding fleet of vehicles. The staggering empirical measurement of resources required to complete such a task is so large (in any unit) that I can't fit it on my HP 17B II business calculator. This can only mean that it has entered the domain of exponential notation and long left my limits of comprehension.

So, to think outside the bottle for just a moment, how about lightning?

Not the wimpy-type bolts you see the guys attracting with rockets and wire on the Discovery channel, but the big ones that light up the sky over Kansas like an astronomical disco ball. These things carry some serious wallop and are peppering the earth more frequently than drivers are trading in their SUVs (roughly 100 per second somewhere on Earth, by some white coat's calculations). 

If the average energy produced by a lightning bolt is anywhere from 30 to 100 thousand amperes (or 200 to one billion volts), then we are talking about another fairly meaningless measure, 250 to 750 kilowatt-hours per strike. In more relevant terms, this amount of power equals the energy required to toast approximately 160,000 pieces of bread, or move a 2,000 pound object the equivalent of 62 miles with every flash. If that object were a Civic, then one storm will easily propel the commute of an entire Wal-Mart parking lot.

And this energy is fast, too. The flash travels from ground to cloud at about 61,000 miles per second. Just image what that could do for illegal street racing.

The only real obstacle related to this technology is harvesting the hits and developing superconductors the size of Rhode Island to store them and disseminate the power. But don't forget, at one time the task of creating a device that would allow us to talk with friends or family miles, counties, or even states away seemed equally out of reach. We already know where the strikes generally occur. The electric companies need merely set up shop in the city of Teresina in Northern Brazil, in the central most region of Africa, and behind the 7th green at Silver Dollar Golf Club near St. Petersburg, FL. 

Now, if you're thinking that containing a 6-mile bolt of electricity five times hotter than the surface of the sun might offer some logistical challenges, then you are probably right. But the fact that the word "superconductor" can be found in Webster's offers a positive to all those negative naysayers out there.

Who knows what the next fuel will be to power the Prius. Maybe it won't even power the vehicles themselves, but rather the rail (or air) they travel on (or in).  Some form of magnetized conveyance with speeds surpassing modern aircraft might be cool...though they will probably have to redesign the parking lot at your local 7-Eleven.

The point is if we can imagine it, then we can do it.

Just think, there's an entire world out there that we can't even fathom yet. We haven't even gotten to the bottom of the ocean, save the limits of our environment. Consider for a moment outer space. What contains our universe? What contains that which contains our universe? What contains that which contains that which contains our universe? Our minds simply aren’t hard-wired to process the thought, never mind breach all that may be possible.

In short, if you are going to show up to brainstorm about the future of the automobile, you had better bring a big imagination. With Hydrogen on the doorstep, all of a sudden things like wind power, atmospheric static electricity and gamma rays hold new fascination, if not to drive cars then in other applications.

And if those don't float your boat, consider solar energy, which has come a long way since the ill-fated "solar-powered flashlight." As a matter of fact, the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all human beings worldwide.

The total amount of fossil fuel used by humans since the start of civilization is equivalent to less than 30 days of sunshine. Why not fill our tanks with some of that shiny goodness?

The Law of Too Many Choices…

I am willing to argue that a person can tell a lot about the society they are living in simply by going to the store.

Which store, you ask? Well, it really doesn't matter, and here's why.

Drag a foreigner to a supermarket, home renovation center, or even a pharmacy, and if they aren't scared off by the sheer size of the place and you don't lose them, they will very likely be consumed by the vast number of different frozen fish sticks or toilet paper brands.

Conversely, if you send a North American to Europe, Asia, or even South America to get their groceries, one of the first things they will notice is the seemingly barbaric characteristic of having only six brands of dental floss to choose from.

A friend of mine once described shopping at a Wal-Mart in Guadalajara, and said that the size was big even for his standards. They had over 100 check-out lines. Alternatively, the selection and product mix was a rather different scenario. Shipments of goods seemed to come in irregularly and without much order. One day an entire aisle would be bare, but the next it would be overflowing with endless pallets of Zucchini-flavored Gatorade.

While some may dismiss this as a consequence of "development," I wonder if having so many choices is really a good thing. Author Barry Schwartz of The Paradox of Choice describes a paralyzing condition brought on by simply having too many choices, which actually leads to an indecision breakdown and, ultimately, consumers buying less stuff.

Schwartz cited a Consumer Reports associate who said that 10 years ago the magazine would spend maybe $5,000 to purchase and test the 20 available TVs on the market. Today, the TV budget alone is $500,000 to procure dozens of makes.

Professor Jagdish Sheth of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University wrote a book called The Rule of Three, which claims that people really don't want too many options. It further maintains that any category in virtually any industry will be dominated by three different players.

In essence, having only two entities creates too much pure competition, and having four makes it too expensive for everyone. Additionally, it is usually the third in the group who is the innovator. A typical defensive strategy for the others is to go into niche markets.  While I immediately believed there could be merit in this concept, I initially thought the automotive industry must be an exception.

When you break it down, though, Sheth may be on to something with this tripartite thing. 

Should you be in a patriotic mood, there are, in fact, three domestic auto brands to choose from: GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler (that they offer some 47 different "mid-sized sedans" between them is another story – see Decisions, Decisions...) Want something more "Teutonic?" BMW, Mercedes, or Audi. Prefer Raman noodles with your Budweiser? Its Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Sushi? Lexus, Acura, Infiniti. On a budget? Hyundai, Kia, Suzuki. Bangers and mash? Jaguar, Range Rover, Aston Martin. Pasta? Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati.

As a matter of fact, at the end of the day, there are really only three places of automotive origin: North America, Europe and Asia. It's almost scary how consistent the auto industry is with the The Rule of Three -- right down to that third player being the "innovative" one.

Surely Scandinavia could throw a wrench into Sheth's evil three-way…but alas, no. After Volvo and SAAB, many Porsches hail not from Stuttgart, but Uusikaupunki, Finland.

Which leaves me with Volkswagen. No wonder they are having such an identity crisis in North America.