The Prius Juggernaut

Final update:

The Toyota Prius stuck pedal is a hoax - its official now with multiple news sites reporting it:

• Jalopnik
• CBS
• Forum posts
• Forbes
• Fox

...and many more.

Interestingly enough Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple has also owned up to his freaky stunt, saying that he too had been hoaxing, after being reported as having said his Prius had a stuck-accelerator.

Seems that TV reporters were all too keen to hear any story about Toyotas back then, and if you wanted to get on TV that was how to do it.

Further udpate:

This excellent video from edmunds.com - a US car review website - has a great demonstration of the all-weather car mat problem, and a very sane discussion of unintended acceleration.

If you really are interested in stopping so-called unintended acceleration then following the advice given in this video to put your car in neutral is the way to go.

For those that remain convinced that electronic gremlins in the fly-by-wire systems on cars is the cause, and that we should all go back to mechanical throttles because they were oh-so reliable I still await any evidence of this. The fact is that electronic throttles which cut out the engine when the brake is fully depressed, as the Prius does, are much safer than any mechanical linkage.

Update: a recent report of a collision with a wall after 56 year-old driver in New York state experiencing "unintended acceleration" in her Prius has been determined by the NHTSA to be a case of driver error. The NHTSA said

Information retrieved from the vehicle's onboard computer systems indicated there was no application of the brakes and the throttle was fully open.

What irritates me no end is that the original "breaking news" reports were stated in a way that conflated drive-by-wire with unintended acceleration. Now that the NHTSA have ruled it was driver error - the owner simply panicked and jumped on the wrong pedal - do you think there will be a breaking news retraction?

Meanwhile Prius has been rated the "Most Dependable Car" in a recent survey. But such stories don't compare for headline grabbing shock-horror value stories about out of control drive-by-wire that technophobes lap up with glee, even when they're proven to be completely bogus.

I'm on my third Prius. When an electric car becomes available here in Australia I'll buy that, but until then Prius is the lowest emissions option, with far better carbon footprint than any car in its class.

It's spacious - easily carrying 4-5 adults and baggage, has plenty of power, and an excellent standard of finish, and accessories.

When I got my first one - they were rare as hens teeth. I even joined a Prius car club. Seeing one on the road was cause for excitement. People at work marvelled at the LCD display, and the electronics under the hood.

Then over to the USA and my second Prius - they were a lot more popular there, especially so in California.

The image left is of that Prius, an 07 iTech with all the bells and whistles, sitting rather cheekily in the car park of the Tesla HQ in Silicon Valley.

Now in 2010 Prius is everywhere, even in backwater Brisbane, Australia. In my small work car park alone, there are 3-4; Prius taxis queue up behind each other in city cab ranks; and Prius drivers sail past each other on the roads without the slightest frisson of excitement or recognition.

It seems there is no stopping the juggernaut of Toyota's marvel car, as they struggle to keep up with demand, and win award after award with it.

Of course now that Prius is popular, that means a lot more people are driving them.

And guess what - that means idiots are also driving them.

Was just checking the news websites via Google news, and a number of mostly conservative news sites, like Fox news, are reporting a piece about the Police in San Diego helping a Prius driver with a stuck accelerator slow his vehicle. The piece was originated by the San Diego Tribune and syndicated by AP.

The article also comments that a Police officer was killed recently in a Toyota stuck accelerator incident, and that Toyota are involved in a recall at present.

These sorts of reports are often phrased in a way that to the casual reader sounds like all Toyota vehicles are death traps waiting to close around their next victim. The front page of the Economist has carried a recent story about Toyota slips up. Certainly seems like the world has got it in for Toyota.

Anyway - that "sudden acceleration".

Some additional facts are that the Police officer in that case was off duty, driving with his family; and the vehicle was a Toyota Lexus 4WD. The car also contained the driver's brother-in-law who phoned 911 during the incident.

The vehicle was a loaner car, while the driver's regular vehicle was being repaired. The fact that the vehicle was a loaner makes it more likely that the driver was unfamiliar with the engine on/off switch. There is no evidence that he attempted to put the car in neutral.

There was a recall last year for floor mats entrapping the accelerator pedal in some Toyotas - as far as I can tell this is what is being blamed for this 4 person fatal crash, in the preliminary reports.

The recall also involved packaging changes to instruct drivers in the proper installation of the all-weather floor mats which could slide forward if not fitted properly.

There is a Toyota current recall, but its only for some newer models, and relates to the braking of the car at very low speeds. Nothing to do with the accelerator.

There has to date been no investigation outcomes supporting any problems with the electronic throttle on Toyota vehicles as far as I know. However much of the hype out there is drumming up the notion that electronic throttles are to blame, and Prius electronics in general are faulty.

However Toyota have to manage possibilities, and also try to avoid problems that could make it easier for drivers to make errors. It has to manage perceptions, and if people experience things that they don't expect, and which could cause them to panic.

This is one of the reasons why our USA Prius had the EV switch removed - it was yet another thing that might "freak out" US drivers.

So.

I have been interested to discover what is behind all this publicity of stuck accelerator and failing brakes.

Any Police officer will tell you they are always suspicious of any reports made by drivers of vehicles, especially drivers who have been involved in collisions, or high-speed incidents. There can be some quite amazing behaviour and reports from drivers when they are on the face of it at fault in an collision; or when they suddenly notice that there is a "speed trap" and that they might have been detected by it.

I'm not saying at all that there are no valid reports - I'm just saying that reported incidents need to be carefully corroborated, using an evidence based approach.

In particular when serious incidents have occurred the cars are very very meticulously examined for mechanical and electronic/electrical faults by Police and Transport Authorities to determine if anything about the vehicle contributed to the collision. Where there is any corroboration at all from those examinations, or from examination of the scene and other eye-witnesses, then these reports need to be taken very seriously indeed.

A couple of other salient facts - there are a large number of lawsuits open at present for "Sudden Acceleration" - sites like http://suddenacceleration.com/ offer to find you good lawyers for your Sudden Acceleration Syndrome claim. This "Sudden Acceleration" syndrome has been around for 20 years now, and has become a nice little earner for lawyers.

If enough hype can be gathered about a particular vehicle, then there's plenty of instant whiplash victims donning their foam collars and ringing the local ambulance chasers to join the class action. For some this is better than working for a living apparently.

This wikipedia article is very interesting, and has a great history of the "sudden acceleration phenomena".

Basically after years of pursuing the Audi 5000 there was never any evidence for the claims of unintended acceleration - the class action lawsuit that was launched by several people reporting "Sudden Acceleration" was eventually lost after an expert who they called was involved with rigging an Audi to exhibit the fault for a television program.

The reports have been determined to be due to driver error such as hitting the accelerator pedal believing it to be the brake, or the pedal becoming stuck against some loose object in the footwell.

Note that in the case of the Audi there were recalls - to fit an accelerator pedal that was further away from the brake pedal. Its common apparently for sports cars to have the two close together for high-performance driving, but here the car was dumbed down for the american driver.

This article has a skeptical view of the Prius stuck accelerator reports.

My own view is that the vast number of these complaints are actually caused by cruise control. The reports in these incidents involve cruise control.

In this account:

I felt the vehicle [2008 Lexus ES 350] increasing in speed to about 90 mph, without depressing the accelerator. I had been on cruise control at about 73 mph... [A] passenger screamed at me to slow down. I was unable to do so, even after stepping forcefully on the brakes.

If the vehicle has been on a steady decline or level surface and encounters an incline, neighbouring vehicles not using cruise control will tend to slow down. However in a vehicle with the cruise control on, it will increase engine revs and in automatic cars drop to a lower gear.

A sudden call for extra power by the cruise control in this situation causes the motor to rev up quite dramatically. This should all be expected because you have asked the vehicle to maintain a high steady speed, and now on the incline much more power is required to acheive that. At the same time other vehicles in neighbouring lanes appear much slower by comparison.

If a driver has been at the wheel for a long time, in a steady stream of traffic, using cruise control, their alertness and attention to the road may wander. This is especially so if there are other distractions in the car. Suddenly the engine revs up, other vehicles out the window are going relatively slower - and a 10 km difference in speed versus the traffic will look like you are roaring along.

Now the driver who has had their feet away from the controls suddenly panics and tries to slow the vehicle - in this case it can be easy to misapply the controls, jamming the foot onto the accelerator, or getting both the brake and the accelerator.

I suspect a large number more of these reports are due to obstructions in the footwell of the car - like the improperly fitted floor mats in the Toyota cars. The remainder I would put down to driver error - fatigue, distraction and all the rest.

They go and jam their foot on the wrong pedal.

Whether its the cruise control thing, or footwell obstructions, putting the car in neutral and applying the brake always works.

There are I would say hundreds, thousands of drivers out there who have experienced problems from cruise control or footwell obstruction - they've put the vehicle in neutral and applied the brakes and all has been OK. However the ones who fail to control the vehicle - are they going to ever say there was something that they could have done? Nope, the damages - especially the more severe they are - are the fault of the vehicle manufacturer, the evil corporation.

The trouble with the litigious society is that it results in dumbing down of everything and poorer results for the rest of us that are able to drive and generally behave responsibly.

My view is that it is extremely unlikely that there are any valid actual incidents of something going wrong with the electronic throttle on any vehicles. You should start worrying about precautions for electronic throttles about the same time as you do for meteors falling on your head. The chance that that is true is far outweighed by the safety advantages of the electronic throttle, which for example automatically cuts out acceleration when you apply the brake (as mentioned in the allaboutprius article).

Here's yet another story about a woman who reported her Lexus going out of control. Her complaints were rejected by Toyota and also by the NHTSA - now here she is in a congressional hearing saying that the NHTSA aren't doing their job properly. The comments make for interesting reading.

I'm sure she experienced something horrible and frightening. However we need to get over the fact that not everything has to be someone else's fault.

Some more developments on the case of the "runaway Prius":

Turns out that

• Toyota are stating that what he reports - that brakes were applied but the car kept accelerating - is not possible, and this was confirmed by tests both by Toyota and the NHTSA, while an observer from the congressional hearing was in attendance
• The CHP - both the officer following the vehicle and the 911 operator - told him to put it in neutral over the course of the 27 minutes incident - he did not
• Sikes, the driver of the Prius in the reported "sudden acceleration" case is a bankrupt, has a large debt, and has retained a lawyer

Commentators on blogs are comparing the thing to the "Balloon Boy" incident - where the news gets hold of something happening in "real time", but it turns out to be all faked.

Here is a guy who finds his car accelerating out of control, so he calls 911?? You're driving an out of control vehicle so you get on the phone?

But you don't try to put the vehicle in neutral, or press the engine off switch? You don't even have to move your hand from the wheel to put the car in neutral on the Prius - the stalk is right there on the dash.

I'm afraid my bullsh*t detector just tripped up into the red zone....

Gloves come off as Copenhagen nears

Computer files were delivered to a climate change sceptic, BBC weather personality Paul Hudson. These files - it was claimed - are evidence of malfeasance by scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

For example in one of the files the writer, allegedly a CRU scientist, talks about using a "trick" and also refers to "hiding" some values.

The story first unfolded on Hudson's blog where he says he can confirm that some of the files are actual East Anglia CRU emails, because he was involved in those email conversations.

Although he received the files on the 12th of October, suddenly with Copenhagen around the corner the apocryphal files have been beaten up in the last 48 hours, into a smoking gun, 11th hour expose by this tawdry conspiracy anorak Hudson and a handful of other journalists who ought to have known better.

Hudsons involvement and the provenance of these files reeks. Any ethical journalist would not have touched the affair with a barge pole.

Note that these are not paper documents, they're electronic files. Already if one follows the link from Hudson's blog to the small sample of the alleged emails it can be seen that the emails have been altered by replacing the authors email addresses with xxxxxxx.

Clearly any of the text of the alleged emails could easily have been altered in subtle ways to make the contents appear suspect. Certainly East Anglia University has not verified that the alleged emails are true and correct, and without alteration.

What makes this appalling lack of journalistic rigour by those promoting this beat-up even worse is that there is no global warming conspiracy in these emails, even if they were true.

As the RealClimate web forum puts it:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, ... no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.

These files are not even close to any smoking gun, and just amount to the same back-and-forth that you'd find in the email servers of any professional organisation.

As RealClimate points out - a trick does not mean something underhand. If you're a professional in any sphere, a handy technique that quickly gets the job done but produces valid and ethically sound results can be called a "trick" - a valuable nugget of experience.

Everyone from surgeons to auto-electricians have handy tricks they use to get their job done, without any implication of malfeasance.

Certainly cherry-picking the computer files for phrases that could imply anything is meaningless without reading all the files in context.

I write software for a living and there are often vigorous disagreements both within our company and between members of the software engineering community and our own engineers about the quality of code, the viability of our approaches and a range of other topics. But none of this detracts from the fact that we produce the deliverables, and the results are well engineered and professionally sound.

Just the IPCC report - the work of several hundred scientists from all over the world - is sound and so and the science behind it and other peer reviewed studies which reach the same conclusions.

A few dozen emails out of months and months of correspondence of one research center and all they could come up with is a "trick" being used?

Don't worry - there will be more dirty tricks from the right wing media and their mud slinging brigade in the lead up to Copenhagen.

A slow grass roots movement

Its starting to feel like the battles have all been won.

We have a President of the USA who is listening to scientists and informed advisors, and who as a result is leading the way to a greener future - and a major plank of Obama's platform is electric vehicles.

Here in Australia the politico's aren't arguing about whether to have a green policy, its just which one, and who is greener than who.

In 2010, a whole slew of car manufacturers will be delivering new zero emission electric vehicle models - and the factories and supply chains for these are rumbling along as I write this.

What I think is most exciting is that all of this is mirrored by a beginning groundswell of us ordinary humans, eagerly waiting to get our hands on these cleaner more hi-tech electric cars.

But one very important thing should not be lost sight of with this change: it will be a slow-burning revolution. There'll be no overnight toppling of the old regime of internally-combusting dinosaur-burning auto's.

As we've already seen with the Prius, the rate of supply of batteries and other components has meant that the demand for the high-miler has typically outstripped supply.

When EV's come on the market, even if prices are initially inflated, there will be far fewer units available than eager drivers waiting to buy one. The auto-makers are busy testing the waters with every market research tool they have, but still caution and costs of tooling factories will mean that production capacity will be initially low, and waiting lists for the new cars will be long.

And yet, its funny - when I talk to ordinary folks around about EV's there is occasionally a very defensive reaction.

Its almost as though the arrival of electric vehicles is expected to be like going to digital television: an overnight government mandated changeover where new-fangled equipment will be forced on sometimes unwilling citizens along with assurances that its all for the best.

Well, it is all for the best.

But there is no overnight thing, and there's no mandate either.

For those that love their gas-guzzler, I'd love to say please consider driving something greener - but the reality is, that big old bus is not going to be supplanted by an EV because the green and bleeding-edge technology loving crowd will be grabbing all the EV's that come down the line.

A couple of weekends ago I was at the foundation meeting of the Brisbane branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.

And it was a fascinating group.

One third roughly were the green-tech crowd I mentioned - in fact there was quite the contingent of software engineers (like me), along with a few other types of engineers. Another third were solid green and star-gazing types, familiar with promoting the low carbon agenda.

All of us in those two-thirds (barring a few with electric cycles and so on) were in the "wannabe" category when it came to electric vehicles. For us in this sector of the electric green-swell the belief is that it's all a brand new wave.

Then there were the other third: electric vehicle grey-beards and sages of back-yard engineering who have been designing, building and driving around in their own electric vehicles for decades. This inventive entrepreneurial vanguard have been waiting so long for this revolution you could forgive them for being a bit tetchy.

Outside the meeting was parked a Honda City converted to electric over 14 years ago.

Since arriving back in Australia from Silicon Valley in December last year this was the first electric vehicle I had seen.

In less than 2 weeks I'll be flying down to Canberra for the AEVA's National Electric Vehicle festival - the first of its kind.

There I'll be seeing dozens of electric vehicles. From the ultra-fast, ultra-desirable Tesla, to the home-grown sports cars of Australia's EV innovators and hardware hackers.

From these firsts, we're going to see a slow dawning of a new age of zero emissions vehicles.

The electric vehicle revolution is slowly happening. I'm hoping its not too tardy to turn around rising levels of pollution, and the economic damage of oil.

How long then before gas-guzzlers are the same kind of curiosity that electric cars are today?

I'm picking it will take a decade for it to be an overnight success.

Idiocracy

I wonder what the Americans think of Senator Fielding.

I hope they don't think we're all like him: "Yuk, yuk - y'know, humans ain't the cause of Global Warming. Its the sun."

Trying to explain the fact that we cannot keep crapping all over the planet we live on is getting chillingly like something out of a bad horror movie.

Its like Secretary for the Interior Not Sure, played here by Luke Wilson, in Mike Judge's Idiocracy, who tried to explain that "Brawn-Do" soft drink was not suitable for watering plants.

In Judge's spoof movie vision of the idiotic future, the global corporations have irrigation systems pumping their soda pop resulting in an increased stock price, even though all crops have failed. And Secretary Not Sure has the balls to stand up and say "I think plants need water."

"What? You mean we have ta use water, like out of the toilet?"

Wilson's character tries hard to explain that you need to use water for watering, not soft drink.

In the end he resorts to saying that the plants talk to him and they say they want water.

So what are the smart guys saying right now?

What does the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say?

• "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal."
• "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

Hundreds of scientists from over 100 different countries, working for 5 years to produce a single compelling report. These are the guys our governments asked to work this out and produce an answer.

Yuh, see - the problem is scientists say words like "likely".

I won't repeat what the yokels in Idiocracy have to say for this kind of scientific talk, but its not complimentary. Scientists deal in theories, hypotheses, and the scientific method - which allows for experiments to offer supporting evidence for those hypotheses.

But that doesn't sound like the kind of clear cut answer that Senator Fielding is looking for.

Lets look at the similarities between the climate change skeptics that Senator Fielding has been hob-nobbing with, and the tobacco lobby.

We now understand that cigarettes cause fatal diseases.

You know those kind of diseases? They're the ones that kill you.

Lung, throat and other cancers; cardiovascular and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, early aging and the list goes on.

Remember back last decade or so when the large tobacco companies were paying "researchers" and "think tanks"? These are the guys who amazingly enough came out with statements about smoking not being definitely linked to cancers, and filter cigarettes being milder.

Well, not so amazing really, when you realize that the "think tanks" were having their rent paid for them by the cigarette companies.

Big Tobacco sunk millions into fighting the public health initiatives that were being pushed through by doctors and government health agencies, to make the public aware of the dangers of these fatal products. There was even a movie about all this starring Russel Crowe - so it must be true.

Well, do you know what happened to those "think tanks" and "researchers" geared up to sew uncertainty and doubt about public health warnings against the dangerous products and activities of their corporate masters?

Guess what - they're still here, and still in business!

The Heartland Institute during the 90's received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Phillip Morris, a large tobacco company, to support its "think tank" activities drumming up "research" to counteract reports of the dangers of smoking. That's just the amounts that were documented in public records.

These days most of its funding comes from energy companies like ExxonMobil.

And guess what - its luxury gabfests for climate change skeptics including fully paid up conference stays at the Marriot Hotel in New York for politicians are more of the same tricks from their standard playbook.

And "conferences" like the one in Washington that Senator Fielding went to are just another weapon in their arsenal of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt or FUD.

"The dangers of acting too soon...". "There is disagreement on the evidence...". "We're just not sure...". Not Sure?

But wait!

Even if the provenance of these "scientific" opinions has a cloud over it, isn't it important to look at all the opinions and evidence before the Australian Government makes up its mind on climate change policy?

Ought'nt they look at both sides?

No, no and no.

No, Senator Fielding, no they should not.

Solar flares are a red herring, and there are bound to be more fishy science to come from our friends at the think tanks.

We ought not stop and listen to the dross that you have recycled from the corporate flunkies of Exxon and other global polluters.

Not because opinions aren't important but because we have to listen to the scientists who were known to have been paid to assemble the authoritative report, the IPCC scientists who have nothing to gain, the hundreds of scientists from all over the world, who are desperately trying to save the world from the pollution being generated by the giant corporations paying to cover it up.

For just. One more. Quarterly. Profit. Report.

And another quarter.

And another after that.

The ExxonMobils are saying "We just have to run this FUD for one more year. And we rake in billions. Buy more 'scientists' - hold more 'think tanks' - just hold them off for another year!".

Each year, for billions in government incentives and subsidies, billions of dollars in profit.

Trillions of dollars worth of damage to the environment.

Oh, and just one thing - a question: do you know what the "environment" is? Here's a clue: we only have one of them. We live in it, and breathe its air. Our kids grow up in it, and play in it.

Its our world.

And "sustainability" - do you know what that is?

If you start telling your boss your Grandma died, whenever you want to get a day off work, is that sustainable?

Not sustainable means: You cannot keep doing this. Period.

That's what sustainable means, and that's what environment means.

You cannot keep spewing garbage and pollution into our air, and our water and expect to keep living here like we do.

There's been a century and change, of governments listening far too eagerly to anything these guys have to say.

We've heard all about how all that pollution pouring out of tailpipes everywhere, and those burning tire dumps, and Exxon Valdez oil slicks are not really harming the environment.

Its now really time to listen to the other side.

Step aside Senator Fielding.

Let's listen to the smart guys now.

Who Killed the Electric Tram

Yesterday I finished reading Edwin Black's book "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil, and Derailed the Alternatives".

The material in Black's book ought to be a part of the history curriculum of every high-school student in the West, since as we know, those who cannot learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

And this is stuff everyone should know.

Doomed is the right word.

Everyone should know how GM was convicted in 1949, along with its co-conspirators Firestone Tire & Rubber, Standard Oil, Pacific City Lines, and National City Lines of a conspiracy to monopolize the transit business for their own oil, tires and buses.

GM was the leader of the conspiracy, setting up the companies National City Lines & Pacific City Lines as a front through which to funnel their acquisitions of electrified transit systems.

The words conspiracy and monopoly have legal meanings here.  While they are emotive for us as members of the public, and have meanings that conjure all sorts of images, remember that these corporations were convicted on charges framed in these very terms.

If you want lurid, you only have to look on in the book to the involvement of gangster Kid Cann, and BM Larrick, of National City Lines in the destruction of the streetcars in Minneapolis and St Paul, where these men and their cronies resorted to shunting cars onto sidings and torching them to speed up the "conversion" process: 

Then that last trolley that had brought so many people so many places for so many years was gleefull ignited by Osanna himself.  The prone, burning streetcar, embodying the long crusade against electric traction, quickly exploded into sky-reaching flames.  Dressed in spats, Ossanna smiled for the cameras as the immolation rose behind him.

In my review of the book I mention that Black's main achievement here is a throroughly researched journalistic survey of a century of corporate malfeasance and dirty dealings around energy and transit.

The take away lesson which we must not forget is that corporations cannot be trusted to do the right thing by the people.

This might seem obvious to many.  But the outgoing President of the USA and many others still in power believe in the free market, and entrepreneurial spirit as the only way forward.

Emissions trading schemes, tax incentives, research grants and a plethora of government handouts have supported this idea that private enterprise will do the right thing given the chance.  See my previous article on the failure of such schemes as a complete solution for this reason.

Reading this book will demonstrate why we are doomed if we believe this, that is if we fail to learn from the lessons of the last century.

A good product will fail in the face of a bad product peddled by monopolists, price-fixers, and corporate raiders.  The idea that a good product at a fair price will win out is flawed when the playing field is not just out of level but precipitously pitched in favour of ratbag corporations, and the categorically ruthless money men that run them.

Clean and sustainable solutions will be forgone for dirty, short term solutions where the true costs are not paid by the profiteers.  As Black points out this has happened over and over again in history.  And it is happening now, even as people die in Katrina style climactic events.

Where I part ways with Black is over his proponency of hydrogen as a solution.  Hydrogen is an interesting research area, however it has never been used as a large scale motive force in transit.

Electricity has.

Electric motors and batteries have been quietly in service in cars, trucks, buses and rail systems throughout the last century.  Black describes in the chapter "Derailed" how the innovative Olympian train hauled over the scenic Milwaukee Road using regenerative braking to economize on electric power.  It did this in the era of World War One.  If it hadn't been for the efforts of various corporate crooks electric transit would have been far more prevalent today.

Whatever your view of electric cars, they are here now, on the road, working as a real solution today.  From the exotic Tesla, through the workaday Th!nk these modern electric marvels are not on a drawing board somewhere, they are proven working vehicles.

Where as for hydrogen:
A 2008 report from the National Research Council estimated it would take $200 million from government and industry over the next 15 years to commercialize hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to the point they could be competitive with gas vehicles.

(Reported by reuters)

The problems of practical transport using hydrogen are well known - see this article in Popular Mechanics for an even handed analysis.

Hydrogen has its hands as dirty as oil, since it is traditionally made from natural gas, a fossil fuel.  Companies mentioned by Black in his chapter on hydrogen, such as Linde, and Air Liquide are now leading members of the National Hydrogen Association, along with guess who: General Motors and Shell.

Hydrogen futurists such as Dr Alan Lloyd were pivotal in killing off the California zero emissions mandate.  The ZEV laws brought in by the California Air Resources Board to fight chronic smog had led to a huge flurry of electric vehicle activity in California.  In the period where Lloyd was the Chairman of the California Air Resources Board and Secretary of the California EPA the electric vehicle innovation and recharge point infrastructure rollout was crushed literally, and replaced with a highly touted hydrogen program.

Lloyd was also Chairman of the California Fuel Cell partnership.  He vehemently denied that this was a conflict of interest.

Of course proponents of hydrogen with vested interests ranging from pet research to major investment, are ready with all sorts of arguments against the view that electric is superior to hydrogen for transport.  Even if they're not all Lloyds with a cash register tune playing in their ears, their views are based on theory.

Electric cars are - I say it again - here now.  Working, on our streets.

But today (the 12th of May 2009) newspapers are reporting the Obama administration's slashing of funding for hydrogen initiatives in favour of battery research and other initiatives.

We know that Obama has had a concerted campaign to throw out from Washington the vested interests, the lobbyists and the revolving door politico-corporate types.  In their place he has filled his administration with scientists and innovators.

The result: electric cars the reality is chosen over a solution that is still on a drawing board 10 years away.