I'm what you could call a GM baby. Dad was an engineer for GM at the old AC Spark Plug turned Delco Electronics plants once in Milwaukee by North and Farwell and then in Oak Creek. As a child I remember Dad bringing home pamphlets. Some I would read, some were of no interest to a child. A child never thinks about it but now that I am a grandfather and my parents have passed on, I realize how well GM took care of their employees. Even after Dad passed away, GM continued to take care of Mom. And this is why GM and Ford are in the trouble that they are in now.  Toyota, Subaru and others never had the long term relationship with employees or benefits negotiated by labor unions. Not strapped with pensions and US automaker level benefits, it was not a level playing field and we as a country have suffered for it while we drive these cars build by foreign owned companies.

GM and Ford did for their employees what the country has voted for the government to do for all. The same can be said of Chrysler though they have been sold twice. Bailing out the automakers is not without precedence! Republican President Nixon in effect bailed out Harley Davidson when he put a tarriff on foreign motorcycles that competed with Harley-Davidson. If not for that, The Motor Company would not be in existance and would be but another ghost of American industry.

The US automakers have some great electric powered cars near being ready for production. The government must see that they are helped along and see that the playing field for them is level.

Ever since my dad took our 1964 Dodge 880, a huge car with a big V8 engine, to a diagnostic center, I’ve wondered why the need for big engines.

You see, they put it on a dynamometer to do some tests. One of them was a measure of the horsepower at the wheels while maintaining 60 miles per hour. Forty-three horses were all it took to keep the car rolling along. All the extra power was for wind resistance, extra loads, towing a boat and getting up to speed in a hurry.

Soon to be introduced electric hybrids by GM (Volt) and just announce by Chrysler, work along this concept. An electric motor is much more efficient than a combustion motor to propel a car. But when the batteries die down, it doesn’t take too big of a gasoline-powered generator to keep the power coming back to the batteries and then to the motor.

Refueling your electric car by plugging it in at your garage will get you from here to there cheaper than the same amount of gasoline. If it is done in the evening only, this is when the big electric company generators are loafing along. Most businesses are closed and the load of cars recharging overnight will be welcomed and won’t require much, if any, addition of power generators.

So it goes without saying that I’m anxiously anticipating the introduction of the Chevrolet Volt. However, my spirits were largely deflated when I read that the possible price for one will be between $30,000 to $40,000 dollars. I had expected that it would be in line with the Toyota Prius.

From what I read of the Volt, it is probably similar in size to a Cobalt or Malibu, each not getting too bad of fuel economy with a gasoline engine and selling for $20,000 and less. No doubt GM has spent a bundle on developing the Volt technology and wants to recover that investment. How often do we hear that the price of something new will come down as more are sold?

It has been said that the Toyota Prius isn’t cost effective for many people. However it is priced such that most people can afford the novelty of one and fuel savings are just a bonus. In the case of the Volt, that extra $15,000 or so will buy a whole lot of gasoline even at $4.00 a gallon! Spend a lot of money to save a little?

GM had an all-electric car, the EV1, but it failed to catch on due to various reasons. Some say GM discontinued it for no good reason. Perhaps it was before its time. But vehicles such as the Volt are needed this very day. That they sell will depend on cost effectiveness. I can only see that happening if the government gives huge tax credits for purchasing such a vehicle. With the Wall Street mess we have these past few days, the timing for more government subsidies could not have come at a worse time. However, if it helps me and the Joneses next-door move into the next stage of transportation and keeps the American carmakers in business, it will be money better spent.

 T. Boone Pickens has been spending his own money on TV commercials inviting people to visit his website and read his energy proposal for America. The man makes good sense and I signed up for his email updates.

One item I'm really fascinated with is some information regarding cars being fueled by natural gas. This is nothing new. Over twenty years ago we had a Ford van converted to run on propane. The gas station was by State Fair Park in West Allis and the oil in the engine never seemed to get dirty. Run out of gas before getting to a propane station? We carried a regular propane barbecue grill tank of gas that could be connected and get the truck another 30 miles or so. Even that wasn't really new technology. My uncle had a farm tractor, a Minneapolis Moline, that ran on propane.

On Boone's website is a link to natural gas fueling stations.  Those prices you see are called Gas Gallon Equivalent which means "CHEAP" as compared to gasoline. The Journal recently had an article on compressed natural gas and it was pointed out that there are home fuel pumps available to hook up to your gas meter. It takes a long time to refuel, but imagine never visiting a gas station again. Notice that a CNG station is here in town at the WE Energies site on West Avenue. The bad news is limited hours, probably due to their trucks being about the only ones using it, but I'm sure longer hours would happen if the public begins using it.

So while natural gas can be used to fuel our cars and trucks, what will the additional demand for it do to the price of it? Will it drive up the cost of heating our homes? There is still the so called "Carbon Footprint" that is left behind by burning natural gas, if you buy into that idea. I still believe that the solution to energy needs will be how we create electricity and the obsolescence of the internal combustion engine.

In the past I've criticized new construction as putting a load on our dwindling water resource. This, even though the business that I'm in is dependent on new construction. Briefly, I don't believe that long time residents of the city or county should be put in the same boat of inconvenience to accommodate development and expansion. Those dwindling the resource should be the ones to carry the load. Water wise, this would be prohibiting watering lawns, gardens and washing cars in new developments except with water gathered from cisterns or other non-aqufier sources. On site water recycling of gray water should be included with conservation efforts.

Preparation for the diminished used of petroleum should be implemented in the the building code too.  Electricity is the energy of the future. We will power anything with a petroleum engine with it and we will heat our homes with it. As an expert in the heating and cooling business, I can see gas furnaces going the way of oil furnaces in the next twenty years. Honda has shown a natural gas powered fuel cell generator to recharge electric cars and provide power for the home's electric furnace and heat pump/air conditioner. For those of you with hot water heat, there have been electric powered boilers so don't feel left out.

GM will be introducing the electric car, the Volt, which will run entirely on electricity, recharge at home if desired, but have gasoline back-up so you don't get stranded. In my needs, the electricity range is adequate for most all of my driving around. So the Volt can replace one of my cars and the other can be the guzzler used to pull the boat and so forth.

The building code should anticipate the plumbing changes and increased electrical service needs of the near future and require that it be install NOW in new construction and remodeling of existing homes and buildings. 

Today's front page was about an electric car call the ZENN which is all electric and plugs into an regular outlet to recharge. All well and good until I saw it had a top speed of 25 MPH. Uh, can we say golf cart here?

But it has ZERO EMISSIONS! False.  It is possibly dirtier than your Ford Explorer hoping to make it between gas stations before going empty. Don't get me wrong. Electricity is the future. The question unanswered here is how much pollution does the electric company turbines emit to create that electricity? We are an "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind" people. As long as our toilets flush, we don't care too much about where it goes. As long as our electric car is pollution free here, we don't care about how much pollution is made to create that electricity there.  Oh, it has lead acid batteries. Did you know these spent batteries often are shipped to the Pacific Rim where recycling the lead fouls the land and poisons the underpaid workers there? To be fair, perhaps the same thing happens to the nickle batteries used in current hybrids. That I don't know.

Putting all of that aside, let's encounter one on the streets. It goes up to 25 MPH. What good it is for just going around the subdivision? Oh, you are going to try to get downtown with one? Lets see, Moreland is 30 MPH and 35 MPH in places. You can't drive five over the posted speed limit without someone blowing your doors off to the right because you aren't going fast enough to suit them. Then again, maybe a bunch of these things slowing down traffic might make things safer.

The article did say that some owners of the Zenn do have wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity. Bravo! That is true green, but also the exception.  So until we know how many kilowatts these things require to move about and how much the power company's pollution output is to generate that versus that of a somewhat comparable subcompact, lets not get too excited over humming along at 25 MPH.