Why Close A Factory When It Could Be Used to Produce the Plug-In Truck of The Future?
An Electrifying Thought For Ford’s St. Paul Plant
In these pages two years ago I urged the Ford Motor Co. to make its St. Paul Ranger plant the centerpiece for a bold new transportation initiative — a battery-powered vehicle, charged from a household socket, with a backup biofueled engine. Ford’s October 2005 announcement that multibillion dollars losses would require “significant” plant closings, potentially including St. Paul’s plant, sparked the proposal.
At the time Ford was uninterested, and worse. When the Legislature took up a bill to create a task force to examine the potential for making a plug-in at the St. Paul plant, Ford dispatched an official to lobby against the bill. She was the only one opposed. Both chambers passed the bill unanimously.
In 2005, Ford turned its back on electric-powered vehicles after manufacturing and leasing 1,500 all-electric Rangers to comply with California’s electric-vehicle mandate. The mandate was lifted in 2003, and Ford, along with General Motors, began gathering up and crushing their vehicles. Two leaseholders waged a yearlong campaign to be allowed to buy their Rangers. In January 2005, after a sit-in was conducted at a Ford dealership, the company agreed.
In crash tests, the electric Ranger was superior to the gas-engine Ranger. One of the protesters, David Bernikoff-Raboy, a rancher in Mariposa County, Calif., told a local newspaper, “These are great vehicles. Ford is missing a huge marketing opportunity with these vehicles.”
In April 2006, Ford decided to close the St. Paul Ranger plant by mid-2008.
That was then, this is now. To paraphrase a famous Minnesotan, the times they are a-changing.
Ford is under new management. Bill Ford is out. Alan Mulally, former head of Boeing, is in.
Ford just announced it would continue to operate the Ranger plant through 2009. Dramatically lower labor costs, a result of halving the workforce at the plant and hiring temporary workers at lower wages, coupled with increased sales due to the higher Canadian dollar, has resulted in profits as high as several thousand dollars per vehicle.
Ford has changed its stance toward electric-powered vehicles. In July, along with the utility Southern California Edison, it announced a collaboration to examine the future of plug-in hybrid vehicles. “By combining strengths, ours in hybrid technology, theirs in energy management, we can consider transportation as part of the broader energy system and work to unleash the potential of plug-in technology for consumers,” Mulally said.
GM has announced a major effort to get its new plug-in vehicle, the Volt, on the road in 2010-2012. Several dozen plug-in Priuses are on the roads in Japan, a remarkable turnaround for Toyota, a company that for years used as its tag line in Prius ads: “You never have to plug it in.” The company is also developing flexible-fuel technology that could use E85 ethanol for the back-up engine.
These changes can, and should, lead Ford, the UAW and Minnesota to revisit a plan to make the St. Paul plant the basis for a new, green transportation initiative. An electricity-biofueled vehicle makes very good sense. Traveling on electricity costs about a penny a mile, compared with more than 13 cents on gas. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that if every light-duty car and truck in America used plug-in hybrid technology, 75 percent could be plugged in and fueled at night by the electricity grid without the need to construct a single new power plant. Since we use very little oil to generate electricity, electric miles are essentially oil-free miles. If the backup engine were fueled by ethanol or biodiesel, the vehicle could reduce overall petroleum consumption by more than 90 percent.
Minnesota is blessed with plentiful wind resources in virtually all parts of the state. The Achilles’ heel of wind energy, as well as direct sunlight, is its intermittence. Electric vehicles can overcome this shortcoming. Their large electric-storage capacity can be charged anytime renewable electricity is available. When needed, the batteries can be tapped to provide power to the house, business, farm or regional grid.
The Ranger may be a suitable candidate for such a vehicle. It costs little. It already boasts the best fuel economy in its vehicle class. Converting it to a plug-in would increase that efficiency three- to five-fold. The Ranger weighs only a little more than the Prius and about the same as the Ford Escape, making it a good candidate for battery power. It has room for a significant battery pack.
That Ford can make a profit now with relatively low production runs of the Ranger may also be helpful in introducing a new type of vehicle. In October, Rangers put up about the same sales numbers (4,800) that GM hopes to achieve in the first year after it introduces the Volt.
The St. Paul plant also boasts a large new training facility, which could become the site for a collaboration between Ford and companies such as 3M and Johnson Controls that could give Minnesota a leg up on becoming not only an assembler of but a supplier of parts to these new vehicles.
To mix my metaphors: The table is set. Will Ford step up to the plate?
David Morris is vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, based in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.
© 2007 The Star Tribune
one question mr. morris….
i live in an apartment, where do i plug in?!?!?!
one of the best kept secrets of this time is the extent to which plug-in hybrids can supply a solution to our alternative energy needs. i wish c-span would replay that presentation a woman made regarding plug-ins. (if i could remember her name or title, i would say them.)
“i live in an apartment, where do i plug in?!?!?!”
Very good question. Electric vehicles even with just lead-acid battery technology, could be eminently practical, BUT only if there is a public charging infrastructure - coin operated charging stations or the like in parking lots, Parking garages, and along the curb.
I own a battery electric motor scooter and I must occasionally have to “sneak” electricity from outdoor electric outlets I find around town. Yes, it is “stealing”. But a charge is only 10 to 20 cents worth of electricity - so the bill payer is unwittingly spending a dime for the environment. You know, like Robin Hood - or is he considered a bad guy now.
The paragraph below, from the story above, is discouraging.
The fact that Ford wouldn’t retrofit the plant for the ‘new technology’ is one consideration but saving on labor costs through using temporary workers is a disturbing trend that I am dismayed that the UAW would go along with.
Just think, if Ford managment had the foresight to develop the new truck the new workers would not have had to be of the ‘temp category’ at half the Union rate………paying half the taxes, purchasing half of the local economies product etcetera……yes, the race to the bottom is alive and well…..
“”"”"”Ford just announced it would continue to operate the Ranger plant through 2009. Dramatically lower labor costs, a result of halving the workforce at the plant and hiring temporary workers at lower wages, coupled with increased sales due to the higher Canadian dollar, has resulted in profits as high as several thousand dollars per vehicle.”"”"”"”"”
It’s too bad that the vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is talking about what giant corporations should do when local self-reliance, in most people’s minds, means replacing giant corporations with small local enterprises, cottage industries and craftsman guilds.
Let’s not forget the myriad problems with giant corporations: They override/manipulate the public will and public interests to perpetuate themselves, oppressing and enslaving the people in the process.
It was the giant corporations that suppressed rail transport for over 80 years in the US and STILL is. Rail has the potential of four times the efficiency of private transport. The high speed rail in France/Japan are ten times more efficient than jet aircraft at the same speed, twenty times more efficient than the better mileage cars on the road today and forty times more efficient than the typical SUV.
And here we have in these institutes, in the mainstream media and even in Common Dreams, people still kneeling at the altar of the giant corporation. Giant corporation are totalitarian. Small businesses are democratic. Let’s learn our lessons. As individuals we may shift our exchange/association away from the power centers and toward our local communities.
i live in an apartment, where do i plug in?
The State of California, when they were trying electric cars, required a few plug-in parking spaces in every downtown. That’s one answer.
I’ve heard that for a pretty peppy car, the cost was equivalent to 80 cents per gallon. Wind power should keep that cost constant. More important, you didn’t have to drive to the gas station. California drivers who were free of the gas station hated to go back there when their electric cars were forcibly taken away.
In this case, with a pickup truck you would hate to pay an employee to go to the gas station. Gasoline is a nuisance task that costs the boss 20-30 minutes at $12 an hour plus overhead.
JBS. Buy a house, hear it’s a buyers market.
I used to plug in my vehicles block heater when I lived in an apartment, I bought a high dollar extension cord.
One night someone stole it.
When the GM EV1 was on the road in San Jose, California, some local stores had charging stations that you could run a credit card through and charge while you were in the store. I see no reason why these could not be installed in apartment parking areas.
In almost every discussion about the alleged virtues of plug-in electric vehicles, there’s something missing: a conscious admission that the world’s automobiles, regardless of energy source, are inherently one of the most destructive technologies that humans have ever unleashed upon the planet.
A quick thought experiment: if you could wave a magic wand and turn every car on the planet into a plug-in, how much better off would be planet be? Yes, there would be enormous gains in terms of atmospheric pollution and global warming.
But there would be no change in auto-based land-use practices that are destroying prime agricultural land that we need to feed ourselves, and that are playing a major role in the destruction of habitats, accelerating the rate of species extinctions.
So take the hoopla about plug-ins with a grain of salt, as something that we should do, but with the understanding that we are just buying time, without touching the more deeply destructive nature of all automobile-based societies.
Richard Bell
Post Carbon Institute
http://www.postcarbon.org
Reaper @ 3:36 pm
“This is an irresponsible article. David Morris should provide more engineering specifics. .”
Check out the DVD “Who Killed the Electric Car”, Reaper, and try not to make your ignorance so public.
Electric cars are the best choice for the future in terms of emmisions and global warming. If you don’t have transportation and trade, you revert to the middle ages and all that that entails. Nothing pretty. You can not build an EV with cottage industry, as far as I know…. you need to have copper rubber and aluminium and all of the rest of it. It is not the type of thing that you can cook up in your backyard, if you get my drift.
Why close a factory? you ask….
to ship the jobs to China where labor is cheaper.
Richard Bell; what would you propose people do for transportation, go back to riding horseback? I would hope that in the very near future, they will make all vehicles electric. They should have, and could have years ago, but I think that the oil companies put a damper on that. They had started making cars that got 40 miles per gallon in the late ’80’s. I owned 2 Geo Metro’s in the ’90’s, and just bought another (old one) last month, as I have to drive 78 miles round trip to work and back every day. The Geo Metro (3 cylinder) was a great little car, and then all of a sudden they quit making them and went on to making big gas guzzling SUV’s, Hummers, and Cadillac trucks, like gasoline was cheaper than water and always would be. And, who the heck is gonna use a Cadillac truck to haul hey or manure? Now, all of a sudden, we are once again “running out of oil” and George Bush even had nerve enough to get on National TV and called us “addicted to oil”. Duh, I wonder now why is THAT? “Addicted to oil and stupid as hell” is what he should have said, and for the first time ever he would have been telling the truth. They need to keep putting up those wind turbines all over the United States, and start using electricity as our main source of energy. I live in North Dakota, and they are just starting to put them up out here, and should have been doing that about 10 years ago. We might not have much of anything else out here, but we sure got alot of wind, and nobody can ever say we are in danger of running out. And, we the people, better start demanding that the automobile manufacturers start building energy efficient vehicles and stop taking pay-offs from big oil. Because that’s what it’s all about, now, isn’t it?
For several hundred dollars, a person can buy a portable generator to charge their vehicle using a few gallons of gasoline… That way you can carry an outlet every where you go.
“Richard Bell; what would you propose people do for transportation, go back to riding horseback?”
Anyone who can only imagine cars the means of moving people around is terribly lacking in imagination. And, the idea of eliminating cars as a reversion to the “middle ages” is just nonsense. Do some traveling. Get out of suburbia and go to places like Amsterdam or Venice.
Somehow, cities thrived - to a greater degree than today before the automobile - and no, few people owned horses. But cities were designed so one could walk or take an electric trolley everywhere they needed to go locally, and electric interurban trolleys or trains provided intercity transportation.
What do you think is driving the high real estate prices and gentrification of so many city neighborhoods but their the attractiveness of car-free daily living? Where I lived and hopefully will move back to in Pittsburgh, most people could live without a car just fine - the 4 or 5 times you need one you can rent one. It was positively liberating.
Yes, there would still be ambulances. And cars will still be used in rural areas. But once people could the quality of life in a quiet, clean, safe, car-free city, most wont want to live anywhere else.
http://www.carfree.com/
PJD; let’s get real, cars aren’t going away, and they don’t have to. City life is fine. I lived in a big city all my life until 7 yrs ago when I moved out here. Now I am living in the country and enjoying it, but I do have to travel to get to work and back. And, at least I am driving the most gas efficient vehicle I can find, even if it is old. And I don’t mind that, either. If they would make some brand new Geo Metros that are as good as the old ones, I would love it. The car industry has the technology to do so much better. They just need the right incentives, and to get out from under the oil companies that are paying them NOT to build efficient vehicles. They could even build SUV’s that could be powered with electricity or that could get a lot better gas mileage. People have to get together and start putting pressure on them to do this.
By the way, when I did live in the city, I still had to drive alot. There were just a whole lot of things I really had to have a car for. I still couldn’t have lived without one.
So, now I live in the country, where I do have a horse, by the way, which is something I couldn’t have in the city. And that’s one of the many reasons I moved out here.
Electric does NOT equal non-polluting!
As long as COAL is our major source of electric generation, we are FOOLISH to continue down that path.
Coal is the dominant source of pollution right now! Fix that first!
Who will pay the cost of the infrastructure required for wide-spread use of EVs? The EV drivers themselves? That would make too much sense, and the cost should be passed to the TAXPAYERS because everyone should pay for their sins. If we’re going to mandate that every apartment and public parking space has $500 worth of cabling, transformers, meters & plugs, then we’d better decide on who’s going to PAY for it, right?
So, the plan is to shift from a hundred million gas cars to a hundred million electric cars who’s electricity will come predominantly from coal-fired plants spewing radioactive dust and particulates through the atmosphere ~ and feel good about it because it’s “green”?
Are you nuts?
Mr. Morris, fellow human beings, what would Jesus drive?
“Flintstone fuel” is cresting over the roller coaster and is going extinct even as it’s steady burning chars the lives of multitudes. Biofuels are already taking food from the mouths of the hungry to feed the industrial/techno lifestyle. Up to 400ft tall wind turbines are often highly irritating to nearby neighbors and local wildlife due to repetitive noises, sunlight/strobe effects, and view-shed degradation. Not to mention bird fatalities.
The litany of human related environmental chaos and destruction will continue as long as we the peeps insist on reproducing and consuming beyond that which is sustainable. Humans will quite likely face extinction like millions of species who have gone before and live now only in the fossil records. Each of us is “the decider” at the center of our fractal universe. The atmosphere, our gaseous ocean of life-giving breath, is only 1/500th the molecular volume of the world’s oceans. (See “The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change.” by Tim Flannery: Lecture on www.democracynow.org, Friday, Nov. 23) Humans on our little blue ball are accelerating the SUV’s, and making illegal wars over oil. What if the war industry resources shifted from killing toward creating effective solar-electric infrastructure?
In the meantime, I can choose to follow my highest aware guidance. I’ll take healthy doses of simplification and participate in the “Beloved Community” (MLK Jr.), doing my best to choose interconnected love over isolating fear at every opportunity. I am learning to cooperate in the growing, preserving, and sharing of organically grown natural foods. I am excited about using local currency (www.riverhours.org) and barter as much as possible. What would Jesus drive? How about public transportation that meets the needs of people with grace and ease? Perhaps we could consider reducing or stopping unnecessary consumption, turn off the TV, take a walk with a friend and imagine the possibilities!
I own a Ford Ranger, Its a fantastic truck!
Why is Ford doing this? It’s simple, Ford is a corporation!
They have one and only one function, Profit, survive, and gain power. PERIOD! Ford, makes its money building internal combustion vehicles, Until it gets some directors, with their heads into solar powered and level 3 hybred vehicles, it will be in the consumption of Oil, no matter what the resulting damages to our world. The corporation does not care if the world survives, it thinks only about profit, and its own survival.
Since Reagan moved to give the Corporations God Like Powers, in this country, our constitutional Rights, have greatly diminished. It’s time to change that. If we don’t, we will be stuck in feeding off the fossilized remains of plants and creatures, until we take the human race to its own extinction. Without the complete use and implementation of Solar, Wind, and Other Earth Friendly power sources, Our planets, time as a host for The Human Race,is getting shorter.
We can start by impeaching all those who break the laws, and make the existing laws, apply to all equally, after all that is what Democracy is. Its not the perverted web of deceit, that’s being spun out of the politicians who are desperately clinging to power. The one thing these evil Rats seem to have forgotten, is. When you tell the truth, it never changes, you don’t have to worry about remembering what you said, because the facts, don’t change. When you like and hide the facts, It’s impossible to keep the stories straight. If you lie, and hide the truth, sooner or later, your lies will be discovered, and you will be forced to face them. This is why Congress must move to open impeachment hearings immediately. Nothing less will do, if we value our diminishing freedoms, at all. Any politician who stands in the way of disclosing the truth, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
“Ford just announced it would continue to operate the Ranger plant through 2009. Dramatically lower labor costs, a result of halving the workforce at the plant and hiring temporary workers at lower wages, coupled with increased sales due to the higher Canadian dollar, has resulted in profits as high as several thousand dollars per vehicle.”
Translation; why create wage slaves abroad if we can do it right here at home.
The fact is however that they will close the plant and move it to China because it will be cheaper yet (read that as increasing profits and enhancing shareholder value) by moving to a country where they can pay 30cents an hour in wages with no OSHA, EPA, Workmans comp etc. (read that as reading the evidence of of all the lead contaminated, poisoned products coming from there).
Lobo Gris
“i live in an apartment, where do i plug in?!?!?!”
How about a passing bus or SUV?
petsr4ever07,
Well, hopefully the price of gasoline will soon rise high enough to reflect it’s full environmental externalities as well as it’s non-renewability.
When it does you and many others will make the rational economic decision to move the the city, use cars less, and demand good public transportaton. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
But yes, if one must use a car, it should be as small and fuel-economical as possible - like in Europe where plenty of small cars are avaialble that have better fuel economy than a Prius at much lower cost. In fact such cars should be mandated by way of tough fuel economy laws.
BTW, I am looking for an old GEO Metro with manual trans to do an electric conversion.
pdf,
Because, of their much-greater energy-efficiency, an electric vehicle charged with the current US electric mix (about 50% coal) emits only about half the carbon of an equivalent IC engine powered vehicle. I verified this with actual electricity consumption measurements with my electric motor scooters. More details here:
http://visforvoltage.org/forum/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/1509
But additionally, electricity can be produced by a number of non-carbon emitting methods - and hopefully increasingly will be, while burning gasoline is burning gasoline.
As far as the practicality of EV’s - I find that, with a modicum of trip planning, the current 25 mile range of my scooters is adequate for 90% of all fair-weather local commuting and errand-getting that me or my wife do. I hope that I will soon be able to retrofit one of the scooters with better batteries that will increase range to 60 miles and fit all local transportaton needs. The Toyota RAV4 EV and the GM EV-1 got about 120 miles on a charge. If you need to drive more than that on a daily basis, I seriously suggest you think hard about your relationship with our dear Earth find a more compact, sustainable community and livlihood. In the better communities, you will hardly need a car at all.
But I think it is important to keep in mind that the current gross over-reliance on the automobile in the US did not arise “naturally”, or as part of some kind of “march of progress”.
It arose because of very deliberate, mutually beneficial, collusion between:
Big Detroit - providing the hardware,
Big Oil - providing the fuel; and
Big Real Estate - providing the mind-bogglingly inefficent sprawl that deliberately eliminated any other practical way of getting around except the car.
I encourage everyone to fnd a copy of the documentary “The End of Suburbia” http://www.endofsuburbia.com/
The object should be to MINIMIZE the number of personal automobiles on the road. The personal vehicles that are operating should be all electric.
I have not OWNED a car for over 10 years. My old car broke down and could not afford repairs or buy another. I lived and worked in an area that had PUBLIC TRANSPORATION BUSES so I could simply commmute daily on the bus. This has saved me THOUSANDS of dollars over the years, money needed for other vital expenses.
On weekends, when I wanted to go on a trip, I simply rented a brand new car with insurance for a few days.
Major grocery chains now provide on-line grocery shopping with delivery at most $10.00. Time and money saved is well worth it. All the discsounts are allowed as well.
So take a cab occasionally… hundreds of dollars a month are saved by getting rid of the automobile. It’s like a raise in pay!
To really eliminate car useage public transportation should be FREE to passengers and subsidized by the oil companies and gas taxes to continually put pressure to phase out personal transportation.
without even arguing the point that a personal vehicle based transportation system is very wasteful and wrongheaded (public transportation systems and redeisgned towns and cities would be a better long term solution) why don’t the auto workers (probably throught their unions) take over silent factories and produce the vehicles themselves. worked in argentina and other south american nations. we are so wedded to the capitalist religion and its first commandement of private property that we cannot conceive of worker owned and operated institutions. that’s socialisnm and against nature and the god of money. we are indeed in love with and comfortabble in our chains. such absence of courage and foresight in a nation this rich and powerful is truly astounding.
Jerry,
Agreed, my brither has been living car free for almost 10 years (formerly in Pittsburgh, now in Toronto) and makes all the same arguments. Me, I held onto my old toypta pickup truck largely for just sporting purposes - it was needed to carry our hang gliders to the flying sites. Otherwise, walking and the bus worked fine.
The problem is with so many people living in sprawling suburbia, they have trouble imagining any other way of non-car dependent living exists.
PFD made some good points concerning the efficiency of an electric vs. internal combustion motor.
I would like to add a few of my own.
With electric vehicles, it is possible to recover enery with regenerative braking. Basically, your motor becomes a generator when you apply the brakes, and re-charges your battery. I’ll gloss over the technical issues that make this difficult, but it is possible, and the potential for savings on a vehicle such as a city bus would be signifigant.
Secondly, the efficiency of a large-scale generating stations is going to be much higher than a small internal combustion engine. So, even if you are generating your electricity with dirty old coal, you will pollute less per mega-watt of useable energy.
Finally, I want to discuss off-peak power. There are many generating stations out there that are very expensive to shut down completely. A nuclear power plant is a prime example, but even the big fossil-burners can be like this. This means that during off-peak hours - when the demand for electricity drops - many generating stations continue to operate even though there isn’t enough demand for the power they produce. Charging batteries during off-peak hours makes a lot of sense.
Now, that said, I’d love to see more car-free cities, improved public transportation, a resurgence of rail travel, and all that good stuff, but since joe six-pack loves his car, EVs are a good first step to meeting half way.
OK, if large electricity generating stations are more efficient than the small internal combustion engines, how much more efficient are they? 10% more efficient? 100% more efficient?
I admit I’m not well informed on this subject, but I’m suspicious when I hear coal and nuclear being touted as the solution to petroleum.
Then there’s the issue of the batteries. How much energy is required to mine and refine the raw materials, and then manufacture, transport and ultimately dispose of the batteries? Are these significant environmental costs that are being glossed over?
It would be nice if government would simply raise CAFE standards. I owned a 1972 vehicle that got 19 mpg, and a smaller 1990 vehicle that got 28 mpg. Vehicle mileage has changed little in the past 35 years. We could all be driving 50 mpg vehicles today. Why isn’t this proposed as a solution?
I’m also troubled that the author seems to suggest that Ford’s laying off workers and replacing them with temporary workers at cut-rate wages is a good thing. Maybe he’d like slave labor even better.
OK, if large electricity generating stations are more efficient than the small internal combustion engines, how much more efficient are they? 10% more efficient? 100% more efficient?
An IC engine in a car, in city traffic, is about 10% efficient - it sits for long periods idling at 0% efficiency. An electric motor is 90-95% efficient. Lead-acid batteries and chrging with switchmode power supplies - at least 80% efficient. A large steam power plant 30-35% efficient.
Lead acid batteries are nearly all recycled - both the plates and plastic cases. There is a very mature recycling infrastructure in place for them.
Nice, informative posts PJD. I had been wondering about the efficiency comparisons. It certainly SEEMED like my electric lawn motor ran much more efficiently than a gas mower, especially in terms of starting and stopping.
Hate to break the news to you but when ford came out with the escape hybrid a couple of years ago, toyota
sued for patent infringment. It seems that ford’s hybrid was remarkedly similar to toyota’s. To resolve the suit, ford pays toyota $1000 for every
“hybrid” escape that they sell. when billy said they were going to produce 250,000 escape hybrids, he didnt know that he was going to have to pay toyota
2.5 BILLION dollars to do so. Ford has no interest in building ranger hybrids because they lose $1000 to toyota on top of what they lose in merely producing them to begin with.