Forbes needs better editors it seems
Ever have one of those moments that just make you shake your head in wonder? One of our alerts notified us of a Forbes blog article post titled ” Electric Cars Are An Extraordinarily Bad Idea.” We knew that we had to check it out. When we saw the first major LEAF specific blunder in the third paragraph of the article, we knew that the author was on shaky ground. More interesting than the short op/ed piece are the comments.
Comments are in chronological order, so this particular comment should remain fourth from the top. Read Paul Scott’s articulate response in which he addresses the author’s missteps one-by-one. Mr. Scott is a long-time electric vehicle (EV) advocate, currently affiliated with Nissan as a LEAF sales consultant. Entertaining, and informative.
It’s not a Forbes article, it’s an opinion piece written by a big oil advocate. There’s no requirement for objectivity in such cases. The articles which upset me are the ones from so called objective reporters who botch it with inaccuracies. Or worse are the reporters, like the one’s from Barron’s, who purposely ran their LEAF flat in mid town Manhattan just to create news. That’s the bottom of the barrel.
Indy – I realize that it is an op/ed piece on a Forbes blog, and not a Forbes article. Still, I would think that Forbes would want to present factually correct information on their site (blog or otherwise). Lack of objectivity is one thing. Blatantly incorrect information is another.
It was a very good retort Mr. Scott made to the article – although it would have been even better if it was pointed out that the price per mile for natural gas for something like a Civic Natural Gas would still be twice (wag’ing that one) or more what the average fuel cost is for a plug-in in the US (besides loosing the entire trunk to the natural gas tank on the Civic).
The propaganda section of a certain part of the political spectrum (News Corp entities in particular) have relentlessly attacked plug ins since their release – since it threatens vested interests that pay alot of campaign and advertising contributions. The plug-in also represents a road block to large scale rollout of natural gas to small vehicles (natural gas is where alot of investment money is getting pushed these days, pushing it into vehicle applications would get demand and prices up) – but, because the infrastructure (chargers) and fuel (electricity) of are so much cheaper for plug-ins its going nowhere. The Forbes article definitely appears to be an article of that propaganda attack on plug-ins from the natural gas perspective.
On the infrastructure avenue, Chicago and its suburbs are installing an entire EV infrastructure in one year (70+ Level 3’s and 200+ Level 2’s), this year – probably not great doing it so fast but the point is that you can and its not that expensive – no other vehicle fuel infrastructure can come close to that (natural gas tanks at gas stations and supply pipe infrastructure, can you imagine the costs).
I’ve also noticed something new lately, a bit of a drumbeat by that same part of the political spectrum’s propaganda wing against green energy in general – not just ignoring (which it’s mostly done previously) but directly attacking it – they appear to be at war with all green tech. If the Republicans can sweep the three branches next year I’d fully expect them to revoke the plug-in tax credit (under the guys of fiscal austerity of course) as well as other support for green energy technologies as soon as they get into office.
I’m guessing that plug-ins are too far along and make too much financial sense to be killed at this point (it’d be better if we had Gen 2 battery tech out), even if the Federal support was killed.