Getting Off Oil

I enjoy watching TEDtalks on a semi-regular basis. I think of the TED video podcast as the Discovery channel of IPTV. Normally I find the TED talks to be uplifting and giving hope in a world where people like to delivery bad news. Today I watched a talk that at once gives hope, and at the same time brings frustration that its message is being ignored.

In this talk, Amory Lovins presents ways to get the US economy off of oil while turning a profit. Amory has also co-authored a book which will be going on my reading list, Winning the Oil Endgame.

There are a few items from the talk on which I want to find more research. 1) How well does carbon fiber respond to shock (in a crash for example). 2) The cost of carbon fiber compared to aluminum or other light weight materials.

Based on the example of a friend who put 365,000 miles on a medium sized SUV and figures he has paid around $50,000 on fuel for a $17,000 SUV, I calculated my fuel costs for my Accord. I have a 2004 Honda Accord that has nearly 75,000 miles on it. Getting 29mpg that means I've run about 2586 gallons of gasoline through it. With an average cost of around $2.75 a gallon that would work out to $7,112.07 on fuel. (And that doesn't count oil changes.)

Fuel costs are a little more than 29% of what I paid for the car in late 2003. Puts in perspective what kind of premium it would make sense to pay at the car lot to save money at the gas pump. (Since I bought the cheaper 4 cylinder model instead of the six; I saved money at the lot to save even more money at the pump!)

Rise of a Giant?

Almost 3 years ago I wrote 3 blog posts (1, 2, and 3) about what direction I thought Ford needed to take to reverse their decline as an automaker in the North American market. It appears that Ford is finally considering this plan. I applaud Mr. Mulally for his decision to take this approach, even though I wonder what has taken Ford management so long to get here.

Granted Ford had problems with cars it introduces as Merkur models. But since then, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan has shown how to introduce a new style of autos as Acura, Lexus and Scion, and Infiniti. Part of the problems with the Merkur XR4ti model may have been the sale of it with an American engine available in 2 other Ford cars at the same time. Another was its radical design that was not as conservative as what American's were used to seeing from Europe. Certainly this time around trying existing North American engine options will doom the approach to failure. We need the European cars with most if not all of the European engine options to provide for the range of fuel economy vs. performance that will make the cars appeal to a public paying $4 a gallon for fuel.

There are 2 to 3 approaches that Ford can take with this. I will be anxiously awaiting the coming announcements from Ford to see if buying Ford stock (currently worth just a little more than a gallon of gas) is a worth while investment.