The Moral Taco
Mar 31st
Maybe you haven’t heard, but buying your tacos from a taco truck in San Francisco’s Mission district is as bad as buying it from Taco Bell. Or worse!
This is what I learned reading Your Taco, Deconstructed at a site called Good.is. The article says that a landscape designer at an art school had his students pick apart a taco from a taco truck and try to figure out where it all came from. Turns out that taco truck owner Juan gets his supplies at a few food service joints, and they in turn get it from mass producers. One example given is that Juan’s avacados come from Chile, which the article notes is the world’s largest producer of avacados.
This makes sense given the economic law of comparative advantage, since Chile produces avacados more effciently we benefit from buying from them. According to the article, a “moral taco” would be ineffciently produced by using higher cost (and in some cases lower quality) materials which would be produced in an area near where the taco was assembled or consumed. Which would result in a higher cost, lower quality taco.
Toyotal Recall
Feb 4th
Toyota seems to be in a bit of a mess, wouldn’t you say?
We heard back in October that dealers would be modifying floormats and using zip-ties to fix an unintended acceleration issue. It seemed some customers must have had mats slip under the pedals.
But then just recently Toyota stopped production and sales of some models in the US (and later suspended some models in other markets) and instituted a massive recall. Some stories say there is a need for replacement parts, one local dealer claimed it was just a software glitch. Regardless, the stoppage of production and sales is pretty astonishing.
Now there are additional reports of brake issues in the Prius, the company’s PR gem. Even Apple founder Steve Wozniak claims that his Prius has some sort of software fault which he can replicate under certain conditions.
What makes this all interesting, is the way the US Government has jumped in. First our Transportation Secretary said Toyota customers should cease driving their cars and take them to dealerships immediately (never mind that Toyota has not even shipped the replacement parts yet, or finished training mechanics to complete the repairs). He later said this was a “misstatement.”
The US Government today announced a formal investigation into the issue of Prius brakes.
To me, these are the stickiest wickets. I yield to no-one in my disdain for Toyota (as a Detroiter and also Formula 1 fan), but the US Government has put itself in the awkward position of owning the competition. I think this will be even thornier when Ford needs to renegotiate labor deals with the union that owns the competition.
Also – an ex-Toyota lawyer has some surprising things to say about the company.
This is really a PR fiasco. If what the lawyer says is true, it will only get worse. Obfuscation doesn’t not make a crisis go away.
Brownout
Jan 13th
So the future is here, and it is the electric plug-in car. A zero emissions wonder, which will get you from point A to B, within a reasonable distance, and will get you home on a re-charge. Sounds perfect – for some people.
But we’ve often wondered a few things. Are you going to be able to plug it in at work? How green is electric power anyways? According to a website that promotes clean-coal, Michigan’s energy sources break down like this:
Coal: 59.4%
Petroleum: 0.6%
Natural gas: 11%
Nuclear: 26.4%
Hydroelectric: 1.1%
Other renewables: 2%
So is this really a mostly coal-powered car? Obviously these cars are not “zero emissions,” they just transfer the emissions and energy waste elsewhere. But I would be interested to see any calculations comparing emissions per mile for similar weight vehicles powered by a modern internal combustion engine and powered by the mix above. If a mostly coal fired energy source is dirtier, than this seems like a lot of hassle for little result.
One nice thing you hear about electric cars is that they are cheap to charge at night, during off-peak hours. but we’ve wondered what happens if the electric car revolution comes and everyone is plugging in their Buick Spark Avenues at night for a recharge? How long until off-peak becomes peak? We’ve been told the cars trickle charge at night and don’t draw much power, but here comes DTE with a wrinkled brow:
Preparing America’s neighborhoods to handle the additional power load that electric vehicles are expected to require is among the challenges facing the utility and automotive industries as plug-in electric vehicles are introduced, DTE Energy Chairman Tony Early said today.
Almost every major automaker plans to introduce an electric car over the next three years even though many questions about the technology remain.
Early said nation’s power plants and major power lines are capable of providing adequate electricity to meet the additional demand that plug-in electric vehicles for the foreseeable future. But in many cases, the power lines in neighborhoods will need to be upgraded.
With most plug-in electric vehicles expected to cost $40,000 or more, “We can pretty much guess what neighborhoods are going to buy these vehicles. It’s going to be upper end neighborhoods,” Early said during a panel discussion on electric vehicles in Detroit hosted by Inforum.
That means that the owners of plug-in electric vehicles will live in concentrated areas.
And so the local infrastructure will really be a challenge,” Early said. “You will see breakers trip and you will see transformers burn out.”
We’re not anti-electric car, but we worry when the government seems to be pegging GM’s future to building one, and GM pours money into what may be a niche vehicle.
Spinout.
Jan 13th
Uh-oh -
Michigan’s once fast-growing wind energy industry has begun to lose speed, despite state leaders offering millions of dollars in tax credits to spur growth in this renewable energy sector.
…
The slowdown comes as Michigan economic development officials remain committed to growing this fledgling industry and are banking on it to help counter auto industry job losses.
We’ve long felt the idea of “green collar” jobs replacing Michigan’s lost auto jobs is a cruel pipe-dream.