Columnists trash trains, electric cars

Looking for transportation solutions? Don’t look to trains or electric cars, according to commentary in the Washington Post and Boston Globe.

In a column titled "A Rail Boondoggle, Moving at High Speed," Robert J. Samuelson writes, "The Obama administration’s enthusiasm for high-speed rail is a dispiriting example of government’s inability to learn from past mistakes." Despite $35 billion in subsidies to Amtrak since 1971, he says, "In a country where 140 million people go to work every day, Amtrak has 78,000 daily passengers. A typical trip is subsidized by about $50." Part of the problem with rail in the US is lack of density, he says, noting, "In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it’s 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can’t pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can."

Those cars shouldn’t soon be electric, according to John Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at MIT, and Valerie J. Karplus, a doctoral candidate in the engineering systems division at MIT. In a column titled "Electric vehicles aren’t the solution—yet," they write, "Ever-mounting climate change concerns and oil-driven foreign policy challenges, in the wake of $4-per-gallon gasoline, have generated a stampede toward electric vehicles…. But electric vehicles will not provide an easy or quick answer to environmental and economic woes. Forcing an electric vehicle solution too soon may preclude more thoughtful actions that would improve electric vehicle technology and reduce its cost."

Heywood and Karplus cite the usual drawbacks of all-electric vehicles: they have limited range, the electricity they use will come mostly from fossil-fuel-burning plants, and replacement batteries are expensive. They advise, "Exploring the plug-in hybrid option as a step prior to full electrification seems wiser than committing to electric vehicles at the outset."

That seems reasonable, but that seems to be what’s happening anyway. And I don’t see much evidence of a "stampede" to all-electric vehicles; it’s not as if automakers are ready to unleash millions of expensive, short-range all-electric vehicles on indifferent consumers. I hope articles like this don’t dissuade investors and researchers from working on all-electric vehicle technology. I agree with Heywood and Karplus’s conclusion that "…the United States needs policies that will incentivize the lowest cost solutions for reducing vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption, instead of targeting the adoption of specific technologies." I’m in favor of anything that can help Samuelson’s suburbanites drive to the train station.

Meanwhile, the Globe has an article recounting an MIT team’s electric vehicle, and in the Huffington Post, Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm touts her state’s receipt of "…$1.3 billion in federal advanced-battery grants, going to nine companies and three universities." And finally, the Globe looks at startup Joule Biotechnologies, which is working on "a designer organism [that] looks like green Jell-O before it’s refrigerated" that converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into ethanol.