Bromleyisms: Automobiles

I teach my students that, whenever they pick up an article or a book, they should question the source: Who wrote it? Why? What's their point of view? I ignored my own advice with this one, from Business Week, by Bradley Berman::

The Top Ten Hybrid Myths
With more of the gas-electric cars on the road, it's time to dispel some of the misinformation surrounding these alternative vehicles. Five years ago hybrid cars were an unknown commodity. Today vehicles powered by a combination of gasoline and electricity are all the rage. Like any new technology, until you get your hands on it -- in this case, on the steering wheel -- it's hard to get your mind around it.

If you are having a tough time separating hybrid truth from reality, you're not alone. The warp-speed adoption of hybrids into popular culture -- and into hundreds of thousands of American driveways -- has produced more than a little confusion and misinformation. Most industry analysts predict the continued growth of gas-electric vehicles, with estimates ranging from 600,000 to 1,000,000 hybrid sales in the U.S. by 2010, so this is a good time to debunk the 10 most prevalent myths about hybrid cars.

Started promisingly: until I got to those sales "estimates": a million hybrids by 2010? This ain't journalism, this is advocacy. So who is this author? Here's his webpage. Not sure exactly who he is, but his agenda is clear: hybridcars.com. The guy's all about hybrid cars.

A million hybrids a year? Or is that just a million hybrids by 2010? Either way, reminds me of Henry Ford's talk about selling 25,000 Model T's in 1909. To 1909, it was an amazing number. He didn't make it, either. Then again, he sold five million Model T's by 1921. Could Mr. Berman be so modest as Henry Ford of 1909? Or, is he rather like Charles Duryea, one of the founders of the American automobile, who insisted through to the 1910s that the "poor man's" car was finally upon us. Duryea's problem was that his view of the poor man's car was half a car: make it cheap and he will buy it. Ford looked at it the other way around; he made the rich man's car affordable. The Model T was more car for the money than any other.

So, come hybrids, will consumers get more car or less? Will the internal combustion engine continue to deliver the best deal, or will this combination of electric and gasoline be the better compromise? Or, will ethanol or hydrogen take off instead?

Folks, it's too early to tell. My bet is on gasoline, that it'll ever be the best way to carry around and convert BTUs into miles on instant demand. Even if there's a million hybrids sold a year by 2010, that's 1/16th the annual sales of automobiles in the U.S. alone. And if it's just a million hybrids in total, we're talking irrelevant.

And this coming from a most very ambitious advocate of the hybrid. Sounds muffled to me.

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