Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
June 20, 2011
As oil is positioned to surge again this summer, intelligent and informed members of society will want to reconsider our crack-like addiction to this black gold which seems to drive the price of everything, along with all major wars, famines and other world events.
We can take a look back to yesterday, 1996 to be exact, and revisit the killing of the electric car by the now defunct General Motors (GM). This was an important link in a chain of events that has placed us where we are today, and in the same boat we were back in 1978.
As a social-consumer group, Americans will believe almost anything they hear from “official sources”. No matter how outrageous or unfounded a mainstream mantra may be, like sheep, they will almost always follow the larger flock, regardless of which way it may be headed. In terms of consumer adoption in the 20th century, the litany of disinformation is endless and includes popular lies and total myths like these:
- GMO’s are safe to grow and eat.
- Nuclear power is green and safe.
- Fluoride is good for you and helps fight tooth decay.
- Mercury in vaccines is not harmful.
- Battery technology hasn’t advanced enough to support an electric car industry.
Let’s look at that last one. Batteries just weren’t good enough to power cars and free households from dependence on oil companies, right? Wrong. The battery problem had been largely solved and not just in theory, but even in 1990’s production. Then GM bought its way in as a condition for using US inventor Stan Ovshinsky’s battery in its cars. Through a legally dubious move, it sold its share in the company to Chevron/Texaco. And now the battery is gone.
This dodgy move was made possible by a team comprised of GM, Chevron/Texaco, and your elected and appointed career members of the US Federal Government, a move that undoubted pushed back the adoption of a mass electric car by a further 20 years or more.
But Washington’s impressive legacy of collusion and corruption doesn’t end there.
As far back as 1974, Vanguard-Sebring’s CitiCar mad its debut at the Electric Vehicle Symposium in Washington, D.C. It had a top speed of over 30 mph and a reliable warm-weather range of 40 miles. By 1975 the company was the sixth largest automaker in the U.S. but is dissolved only a few years later.
Two years later in 1976, the US Congress had passes the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act. The law was passed in order to help spur the development of new technologies like batteries, motors, and other hybrid-electric components. It also passed because the public will was there and innovators were ready to run with it. Sadly, Federal career-oriented politicians were not up to the task, running the risk of ruining their chances to serve on the boards of these same major industry players.
An Auto-Oil-Fed pincer move was then applied in order to bury all renewable technology trends in 1980 when Washington, under Reagan’s watch, sunk a growing popular national movement towards renewable energy research, development and commercialisation, pushing the electric car back another 20 years.
Prior to that, numerous engineers in the US, Canada and Europe had indeed developed combustion engine prototypes that exceeded 100 miles to the gallon or more, as far back as WWII. Still today, motor industry touts cars that get 30 miles per gallon as “economical” and “fuel efficient”. The famous 200 MPG Pogue Carburetor was just one example of these.
Prior to WWII, clear back to the 1920’s, the electric car was neck and neck with the gasoline-gusselling combustion engine cars. But the gas monsters eventually won way back then. Not much has changed up until today.
Again, we hear that Sad Ballad of the corporate monopolists’ victim, Stan Ovshinsky and his car battery in 1996, we can only look back and wonder, “what if”…
GM and Chevron colluded to kill progress, namely Ovshinsky’s advances in electric car battery technology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J5f9x_RfHI
.
EV1 vs the Hummer: thanks to Federal government interference in the market, he Hummer won:
.
How the Federal Government bends to the will of certain corporations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjhZAjft68
.
Mary Burgess wrote on the dawn of GM’s bankruptcy debacle:
“In the documentary Wally E. Rippel, a research engineer, points out that there is still about a trillion barrels of oil in the earth. “At $100 a barrel, that’s $100 trillion of business left in the ground”. The fat cat oil companies have so much to gain from prohibiting new technologies from taking over our current consumption of oil and gas, and they have the power to make it happen. Their pressure on the government, and the car companies, including GM, ensured that the EV1 would not survive. Under these pressures GM chose the gas gusseling Hummer over the EV1. Ironically now, GM owes over $1 million for every Hummer on the road.”
The timing of Obama’s Federalist hacking of GM was uncanny to say the least. The irony here for the clueless American voter is that many Democrats saw their Messiah as a “Green” President, and a champion for Mother Earth. The reality of course, is nothing like that. He is just another CEO on the payroll of his corporate board.
Burgess continued:
“General Motors dropped from DOW today as it filled for bankruptcy this morning. The Obama administration is to purchase the remains of the suffering company for $30 billion, with the Canadian government chipping in an additional 9.5 billion for the Canadian branch of the company. Together the two governments and the remaining GM staffers will have an arduous task of restructuring the giant company in to a leaner organization in the hopes that it can again rise to be a profitable employer to thousands.
Almost prophetically the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? was broadcast on TV the night before GM officially filled for bankruptcy. The documentary details the story of the EV1, GM’s electric car that was released in 1996… They didn’t let people buy the EV1, leasing was the only option to procure the vehicle. They even put A-list celebrities such as Mel Gibson through lengthy questionnaires prior to letting them lease an EV1. in 1999 when GM stopped production of the EV1, they pulled all of the EV1s on the road and destroyed them, an action that was made possible by their lease only policy…
GM put an inferior battery in the first edition of the EV1, even though they owned a controlling interest in a company that had a patent for a far superior battery invented by Stan Oshinsky . Sadly GM only released 200 second generation EV1’s that included the superior battery, and later GM sold it’s shares to Chevron/Texaco who were free to suppress the innovative technology.”
So this a clear, defined history of collusion between the three main players in the energy game: manufacturers, oil companies and, of course (the one we always forget to mention), your altruistic Federal Government. In this world, trends are not allowed to develop and history is diverted to an alternative reality, one which we find ourselves still on today.
THE TESLA CAR: A hint at what electric cars could be offering today had the technology been allowed to develop freely.
.
Still, naive voters, activists, and green crusaders harp on about energy policy and tax hikes on fuel, as if it were the only way to reach a cleaner, more efficient future. They speak of man-made global warming and climate change as if its something real, and not a psuedo-science invented and promoted by politicians and career charlatans like Al Gore, Maurice Strong and John P. Holdren. The reality is that its nothing more than another trillion dollar rent-seeking, corporate pyramid scam designed to enrich its elite circle of crafty progenitors.
The problem my dear Watson, is right there in front of your nose. It’s an age-old problem. The elephant in the front room that Americans, particularly for those self-professed “Liberals” in this society. The weak-minded and castrated members of your Federal government have time and time again interfered with the true free market and the natural progression of innovation in technology, in order to fix the game for their biggest corporate donors and their bookies on Wall Street, who in turn will secure the financial future of their federal government legislative fixers.
As the solar industry struggles to be born again, it could use the help of Ovshinsky’s latest battery technology. Meanwhile the Sad Ballad of Stan Ovshinsky plays on the car stereo in the background.
It’s not just a song now, it symbolises a bona fide crime against humanity that deserves the most swift and harsh execution of justice.
Green industries? What a laugh. Not until we grow a pair. Until then, the only green industry is in the bill-clip.
READ MORE FREE ENERGY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Free Energy Files
