The American Spectator

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p> GUZZLERS br> Re: Eric Peters's Hummer's Done : /p>

At last. I'm not one of those folks who thinks that even the Prius uses too much energy, but the Hummer has always been an insult to the intelligence of anyone who thinks rationally about transportation. In its first iteration the Hummer was a vanity car and buying one for most people made as much sense as owning a Lamborghini and driving it 5 miles back and forth to work. (Remember too that the Hummer derived a great deal of its initial cache from its connection with then not-so-green Arnold Schwarzenegger.)The H2 and H3 (especially the latter) are just re-clad GM SUVs anyway. Their ilk only makes sense to people who can take advantage of overly complicated tax regulations that render these urban Ubermobiles "farm vehicles" because they weigh so damned much. (By design, they just tip the scales enough to qualify for the category.)

p>Good riddance. We'll hardly miss ya. br> -- James E. Swinnen /p>

It is a pretty important thing to note, and not something that is trumpeted much in the anti-corporate mass media, but Toyota has positioned itself quite nicely in a very different and much more important matter. It has produced a practical hydrogen fuel cell that works in freezing temperatures and has a range of 830km/500 miles. The general ignorance of the announcement is amazing, given the reality that it will revolutionize automobile transportation.

Of course who will benefit the most? Why Toyota, maybe Honda, perhaps Ford/Mazda. Because these manufacturers produced a gasoline-electric hybrid (fundamentally a weird idea that has a small gasoline engine driving a big electric motor hooked to a bank of batteries, driving a second big electric motor.) Except that if you remove the engine/generator from the equation, you suddenly have a functioning electric car drive train.

On June 6th - June 9th, Toyota announced that the gasoline engine is dead (they didn't say it, but I am). It is just a matter of infrastructure and time. Of course Toyota will have a wide range of functioning models that have merely had the old gas/electric plant replaced with a nice clean, refillable, hydrogen fuel cell.

When GM goes, I won't shed too much of a tear. Especially when, in less than 20 years, I can sit in my "smart mobile" that will quietly drive me to where I want to go, without me having to do so much as read the sports page, or watch a movie.

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