E-Travel Dreams And The NYTimes’ Politically Correct Transportation

Is the New York Times finally reconsidering its role as publisher of “a juicy collection of great narratives” and instead focusing on fact-based journalism?

Last month brought an encouraging sign that the Times is willing to cover climate as a news story rather than an opportunity to express fervent belief.

Unfortunately, it seems that faith-based coverage is a tough habit to break. [emphasis, links added]

As for last month’s dose of reality-based reportage, this column noted the gutsy dispatch from Times correspondent David Gelles about his long, sad journey with an electric vehicle.

Mr. Gelles reported that “the nation’s E.V. infrastructure is not ready for prime time. I recently found this out the hard way.”

Given that politicians and the press have spent decades subsidizing and promoting such vehicles, there’s never a bad time to question whether inefficient transportation is the answer to society’s challenges.

Consumers certainly remain very skeptical. The Journal’s Sean McLain reports:

As sales growth has slowed for battery-powered models, automakers and dealers are slashing prices and piling on discounts to clear out unsold inventory…

Dealers say part of the problem is that a wealthier group of early EV adopters have already purchased a vehicle. Now, the industry is confronting a more reticent group of consumers, who are already being squeezed by high interest rates and rising costs.

“I think there was a miscalculation about demand and how much EVs would be coveted,” said Joseph Yoon, an Edmunds analyst.

There just aren’t that many people with both the means and the motive to spend thousands of dollars on a progressive virtue signal.

Even for those so inclined, one also has to consider the fossil fuels burned in the mining, manufacturing, and electricity generation required to enable the transmission of such a signal.

This would be a great moment for the Times to follow up last month’s look at the limits of e-travel with a realistic exploration of the staggering costs of trying to wring petroleum out of the economy.

Instead, the Times is flogging another e-dream of politically correct transportation that may be even less realistic. A recent Times headline announces:

Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Start to Take to the Skies

How a small plane’s 16-day trip from Vermont to Florida might foreshadow a new era of battery-powered air travel long considered implausible.

Of course, there are very good reasons why such an era has long been considered implausible, and they have a lot to do with the weight of batteries and the power needed to propel an aircraft.

Assuming such a plane could carry enough people and things to be useful, there is also the time needed to recharge.

This seems to have something to do with the duration of the recent journey, which amused a number of Times readers, one of whom compared it to the amount of time required to cross the Atlantic by ship two centuries ago.

Another Times reader commented that he had once taken a road trip from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale and managed to complete the trip in 16 hours.

But let’s keep an open mind about the possibilities here. Niraj Chokshi reports for the Times:

The trip offered a vision of what aviation could look like years from now — one in which the skies are filled with aircraft that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming up the Earth.

Again, to understand the overall impact on emissions one would first need to know how the plane’s components were mined and manufactured and how the electricity to charge the batteries was generated.

To be fair there is nothing wrong with private investors taking a flyer on such technologies and the story mentions a number of companies active in this space.

But if the government is favoring such technologies, consumers and taxpayers have a right to ask tough questions. The Times report notes:

The U.S. government has mobilized behind the industry, too. The F.A.A. aims to support operations of aircraft that use new means of propulsion at scale in one or more places by 2028. And the Air Force is awarding contracts and testing vehicles…

Is this the most efficient use of our defense dollars, given a violent world and a federal budget that is wildly out of balance? As the Times notes:

The cost of producing such aircraft will also be high to start, limiting their use to the well-heeled and to critical services like medical evacuations, experts said.

By all means, wealthy hobbyists should be free to purchase such toys. But one can’t help but note the similarities to the EV dream here on the ground.

Just as with electric cars, there is a long history of people believing in the concept. In 2016 Ean Higgins wrote in The Australian:

Electric-powered aircraft have been around for some time. In 1973, electric flight pioneer Fred Militky retrofitted a motor glider with an electric engine, and it flew for 14 minutes…

Dreams of e-flight began long ago. Here in the U.S., the Library of Congress notes the adventures of the Tissandier brothers in France:

Gaston Tissandier flew over enemy lines during the Siege of Paris in 1870, and Albert made drawings of several balloons that were used to carry passengers and supplies over enemy lines.

While Gaston tested the limits of balloon ascension, Albert made drawings of natural phenomena in the upper atmosphere. As a team, the brothers developed a design for an electric powered airship in 1885.

Those were heady days for blimp technologists. And the dream did not die with the Tissandiers, who made important breakthroughs.

In 2012 in the Times of London, Charles Bremner and Mike Hodgkinson noted:

A century ago, on July 7, 1912, the great Nikola Tesla — godfather of the alternating current — offered hints of his concept for an electric flying machine that would “resemble a gas stove and weigh as much. … and could, if necessary, enter and depart through a window”. Since then, such bold plans have mostly remained fantasies, and progress in electric flight has been disappointingly slow…

That’s for sure.

Top Image via Beta

h/t Steve B.

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