THE HYDROGEN FUEL-CELL versus THE DIESEL-ELECTRIC HYBRID -- Part II

Candidate George W. BUSH mocked Democrats for having no energy policy, implying he had one, encouraging a natural enough assumption throughout the nation that Texas, surely, would have an energy policy. Of course, Washington and Austin Democrats do not have an energy policy, or a health plan, or anything else even remotely of that sort. They have deals, energy deals, health deals, tax deals, deal deals. That is what lawyer-politicians do: They negotiate deals.

Clinton/Gore had their $1.6bn "SuperCar" deal. Bush/Cheney have a "FreedomFUEL" deal that will probably cost more and yield less, less than zero, actually, compared to the worthless "SuperCar". The SuperCar, it turned out, not surprisingly or secretly, was really a minority-women bogus enterprise (MWBE) deal all along, not an energy deal, at all.

Lord knows what the FreedomFUEL thing will be. Faith-based Engineering, perhaps.

That is the way the two rotten parties of concession-tenders did things, and, now, the way one rotten party of concession-tenders will do things.

And, as it turns out, BUSH and his cronies do not have an energy policy either. The only difference between their deals and the Democrats deals is that theirs tend to be very, very secretive -- National Security!. Executive Privilege!, blah, blah, ... blah. This drives the Washington and Austin Democrats nuts because, well, they are not in on the deals and cannot even extort a little money for themselves by threatening to interfere with lawsuits or filibusters or whatever.

But, all these deals look the same, regardless of which party flogs them: A vested interest's present government concession, the larger the better, is protected or expanded in exchange for political set-asides of various sorts, legal fees and campaign contributions, of course, but at least a little show of something progressive or, maybe, just cosmetic.

After 1972, the Democrats became obsessed with emulating Richard NIXON's petty racial set-asides and patronage. As these are far and away the cheapest sort of side-deal, Democrats were wildly successful at extracting millions of dollars in such concessions from whoever they were handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in government protection or concessions to.

Republicans, though, counter-attacked successfully: First, they created four or five times the white resentment for any non-white advancement, in the end, creating a huge media effort just to make sure the Democratic tokenism was very, very widely publicized. And, second, they just underbid the Democrats promising many lobbies for free many of the concessions Democrats were extracting money for, lower marginal tax-rates instead of wider tax-loopholes, for instance. As the money in politics escalated from more and better competition for it, popular trust in and respect for government, especially government that Democratic concession-tenders apologised for but did not actually control, dropped. Republicans got and now hold a majority of the suckers who vote, running as the incumbent party for fund-raising purposes but also as the opposition party for vote-getting purposes.

Well, frantically playing a game they were bound to lose, Democrats lost whatever talent for policy they might have once had.

So, what is a policy; what is a platform; what is a plan; what is a program?

Here is what it is not: a whine, a claim, an argument, a pleading. Those are instruments of bargaining.

A policy is an orientation to action.
A platform is partisanl commitment to action
A plan is a disposition for action.
A program is a government commitment to action.

These are strategical, not rhetorical, not juridical concepts.

Now energy is a basic physical abstraction. It obeys laws of thermodymanics. It is something to estimate before the fact and calculate after the fact. It is not actually a proper or useful object of policies, plans, or programs. So, when politicians start blabbering about energy policy, they do not know what they are talking about or are lying or, typically, both.

The proper discussion for a hydrogen fuel-cell or diesel-electric hybrid car would be an intersection of environmental and industrial policies, plans, and programs. Each and both of these are proper and ubiquitous objects of political debate and action. Our government has such debates and action, but it is mostly secret and embodied in lots and lots of deals. Those deals are real and huge, nothing like thowaway stunt-projects such as SuperCar or FreedomFUEL. However, a compedium of the deals probably would not reveal a coherent policy, a logical plan, or a resourceful program.

In fact, the deals are usually not accounted for in the aggregate or responsibly managed in particular.

There is one exception: Sometimes buried way down in the Department of the Army, Navy, or Air Force, there is a project, not so much secret as just obscure, hiding in plain sight as it were from corrupt but also lazy, distracted, and just not very observant politicians.

One such today is a diesel-electric truck, a very ordinary-looking 4x6. The difference is a motor-generator where the flywheel would otherwise be and some serious capacitors. These give the truck both more torque and more efficiency than it would otherwise have. Moreover, it makes the trucks potentially simpler and much easier to maintain than otherwise, since there are fewer sub-systems, none of the of the flammable hydaulic variety. Finally, when the truck is parked, as Army trucks mostly are, it can be run as a generator-set, as a whole battery of generators, actually.

There are no technical break-throughs involved in this. There are technical, economic, and political risks in the project, though. Every little aspect of the truck has to be very carefully re-engineered. Getting a few reliable prototypes will be very expensive and labor-intensive. Then, a whole new round of engineering will be required to make the truck producable in series.

Worse, if the the new truck looks so economical and reliable as to pose a threat to existing Army truck-building concessions, then the politicians and bureaucrats will hunt it down, kill it, and kill anyone around it. For one thing, engineering such a truck in this country is a threat to converting the whole US automobile industry into an import re-branding concession, not an industry at all. So, who gave some low-paid engineer in the Army authority to undermine the whole de-industrialization program of the civilian elite that run this country?

Real industry and technical achievement are wildly popular with the American people. But, they frighten corrupt politicians and run counter to a de-industrial policy based on legal and financial artistry. Industry and engineering are too slow and too trial-and-error. It is much safer to perfect deals. And, deals are always profitable on the front-end. Moreover, in an environment of zero political accountability -- EnronWorld -- the back-end just disappears into the bankruptcy court, in the case of failures, or into the wonderful world of tax-free carried interests that generates ever more even newer deals for our political and economic elite, once two parties of them, now just one.

Yes, DealStoff is the Ultimate Fuel. It is the Malarky-Based Feedstock of Politics Today. This is what all our cars and trucks will run on soon.

THE HYDROGEN FUEL-CELL versus THE DIESEL-ELECTRIC HYBRID

President BUSH is talking up the hydrogen fuel-cell as the best alternative to our predominently gasoline- and diesel-powered automobiles and trucks.

This is a standard trick that government-sanctioned public monopolies play: They promise exotic technologies just over the horizon while maintaining their monopoly power. They use that power to extract tax-like monopoly rent and share a bit of that rent -- mistakenly called profit by far-left ideologues -- with their political protectorate. This business as collection of rent and indirect taxation lead them to fail even to keep up their old plant, much less to replace obsolete plant with new technology.

Pseudo-capitalists are no different from pseudo-socialist communist in this regard. Both clothe their self-serving avarice in the fake patriotism, altruism, or aesthetic that a half-baked ideology provides them with and corrupt or just stupid office-tenders go along with.

The oxidation of hydrogen is a perfectly pollution-free reaction, in theory. It yields water. Pure water? Well, maybe not. Depending on what makes up the cell, the water may have traces of heavy metals in it. Oops, that is a pollution problem. Then there is the source of hydrogen: It could be ultra-refining hydrocarbons? Well, that is just more, not less refining of oil and gas. Electro-chemistry? That consumes lots of electricity from ... what: Coal-fired plants, nuclear reactors, ... who knows.

This is not a serious proposal. It is a rhetorical trick.

However, while the US is closer to autarky than most countries, it is not at all so in automobile or truck production. On the contrary, these are still declining domestic industries, despite various degrees of government protection and subsidy. Maintaining the status quo behind a facade of exotic, over-the-horizon, techology concepts is very dangerous. Better alternatives will reach the US market from abroad.

The most promising (or threatening) is the diesel-electric hybrid. This is a high-speed, lightweight diesel engine with a brushless direct-current motor-generator where the flywheel would be, batteries or capacitors to store power, and sophisticated contol and conversion electronics to regulate every aspect of engine output. This technology is not any sort of breakthrough. It is a matter of extensive electro-mechanical re-engineering almost every component technology and automotive sub-assembly. The end result will not be just a more efficient and less polluting vehicle, but a fundamentally more robust one, simpler to assemble and easier to maintain.

Our public choice is not picking the diesel-electric hybrid shortly or the fuel-cell someday. Our choice is relying more and more on military might to somehow make up for a failing industrial economy. Alternatively, we can maintain our position in world technology markets by vigorously developing diesel-electric hybrid technology.

This is actually a glamorous undertaking. Americans love excellence in engineering and despise indolence in government.

See also: This fine piece by Gregg EASTERBROOK.

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