Suppression of Risk? The Chevy Volt, Battery Fires, and the NTSHA

Fires can also start from faulty electric car charging units, as this one in a home in NC.

Hi folks -- below is from Autoweek on recent developments. The Federal Government is doing all it can to save America and at the same time ensure the viability of the Volt. The question is not whether the electric car will become the future mode of personal transporation, but when? Cleaner air -- and most importnatly less dependeance on foreign oil and the Middle East is the payback. The electric car has the potential to become the leading edge of a technological revolution in America. But do we have the collective will to realize the consequences of this transition?

Following on from the announcement that GM is looking at redesigning the Chevrolet Volt’s lithium-ion battery system in the wake of several highly publicized fires resulting from test crashes, comes further news that both the automaker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration delayed disclosure of their original findings by months.
Apparently, way back in June, General Motors heard about a Volt fire that happened three weeks after said vehicle was crash tested, yet it wasn’t until November that the company, or NHTSA disclosed there was a potential problem, urging both dealers and customers to drain the battery pack immediately following an accident.
As a result the public relations nightmare surrounding Chevy’s halo vehicle appears to be deepening, though a good deal of the blame in this case also rests with NHTSA.
Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”
GM designed a complex cooling system for the Volt’s lithium ion battery pack to help regulate its temperature (lithium-ion units are known for overheating), yet until July it hadn’t finalized a standard proceedure to power down the battery system, the Volt had already been on sale in the US for six months at that juncture.
The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, which crash tested a Volt back in February reported no incidents of fire as resulting from the accident, yet when a second crash test was performed in August, General Motors sent a technician to power down the battery.
An interesting point on the subject been raised by Clarence Ditlow, executive director for the Center of Auto Safety in Washington D.C. He said that he is “surprised that NHTSA didn’t drain the battery after crash testing as it is standard procedure to empty the fuel tank on conventional gasoline powered vehicles.” He also says that the NHTSA incident underlines the need for “greater transparency when conducting crash tests,” as well as setting proper industry standards when it comes to new technologies.
A spokesman for GM said the company felt it didn’t need to initially disclose the issue because the original fire was an isolated occurrence and happened some time after the vehicle was crashed. “It’s kind of odd in many respects,” said Rob Peterson. “The question became: What was making this happen and what do we have to do?”
Nonetheless in wake of the findings; GM is now working with both NHTSA and the Society of Automotive Engineers to develop standards for all electric vehicles when it comes to crash testing. It’s also continuing with its program of providing concerned Volt owners with free loaner vehicles; so far 33 of roughly 5,000 customers have signed up.
[Source: Automotive News]

Stealing a Porsche 356 and far more -- Richard Gere and "Breathless," 1983

The girl is far more important than the machine in the 1983 remake of Jean-Luc Goddard's nouvelle vague classic A bout de Soufflé, Breathless. [1] The film starred a young Richard Gere as drifter Jesse Lujack, who after a brief Las Vegas fling, becomes obsessed with a UCLA exchange student from France by the name of Monica, played by Valerie Kaprisky. The film begins with Jesse, a high-energy punk "who rolls the dice too much," uses a screwdriver and two blades to steal a Porsche 356A coupe in front of a Las Vegas casino. He comes alive while driving and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis ("You Leave Me Breathless"), but his trip to LA is interrupted by a police stop and rather unintentional murder. On the run and obsessed with taking Monica with him to Mexico, Lujack steals a succession of vehicles while eluding police, including a pink MGB, a 1957 Thunderbird, a Ghetto Buick , an old truck, and finally a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

In every case as Jesse gets behind the wheel he gains in energy as he drives, as mobility brings with it self-realization. But as a frustrated male who models his psyche after the comic book character the Silver Surfer, Jesse reflects a shallowness, having no long term future and projecting a tragic end. Yet, at times imagining he himself as the Silver Surfer, once an ordinary man from a distant plant. Forced to serve Galactus, a planet-eating God, the comic book hero preserves his world and the woman he loves from destruction. Afterward, endowed with powers of infinite movement by Galactus, he searched the galaxy for planets to feed his master, until his encounter with Earth forced him to betray Galactus and thereby redeem himself. But in the end the Silver Surfer, and indeed Jesse, is left trapped on the planet he saved. Forced with the decision to surrender or pick up a gun and die at the hands of police, he chooses the latter, perhaps realizing that Monica and Mexico are forever out of reach.
[1] Breathless, 1983, Dir. James McBride.

Clint' Eastwood's Gran Torino: its' meaning within the context of auto theft and identity

In the closing scenes of Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Grand Torino” the stories of one man’s personal redemption and another’s dream of achieving independent manhood come together in two life defining moments: one of self-sacrifice, and the other, a symbolic act of auto mobility. Confronting a gang that had terrorized his newly adopted family of immigrant Hmong neighbors, the cantankerous Polish-American autoworker and Korean war vet, Wait, goads the thugs into murdering him before witnesses, and thereby saves the community. By his death, Wait spares the life and innocence of Thao, the neighbor boy intent on exacting revenge for the rape of his sister by the gang. For Wait, the thought of the good he is doing may ease the haunting memory of his killing of an enemy prisoner in Korea. Thao is his last chance at redemption. Thao, whom Wait had guided in the previous months into self-respecting appreciation of hard work, independence of mind, and success with the ladies, is last seen driving Waits’ beloved Grand Torino toward what must be presumed to be a future life of dignified manhood. This story of tragic nobility takes place in the “motor city”—Detroit, Michigan. And the story all began with an attempted theft by Thao of Waits’ Grand Torino.
In today’s real world auto-theft is generally about money. However, the visual representation of auto-theft in film has more to do with what the car, the act of driving, and the act of stealing symbolize. In the early twentieth century the automobile and the act of driving became associated with many of the traditional qualities of American identity. The roots of that connection stretch back to the role that movement played in the continent's settlement. Indeed, the unrestrained capacity to move became equated early in the American cultural imagination with personal reinvention and self-determination. Over time, mobility became connected to a host of liberal-republican ideological expectations: egalitarianism, self-sufficiency, independence, and personal as well as social progress. Because these qualities were largely denied to any other than white males, the American vision of the mobile liberal individual was both raced and gendered. Consequently, the lack of mobility marked the African-American slaves and the women’s as unfit for individual liberty. Yet in the 20th century, the automobile would change all of that. In short, the capacity of movement was equated to sovereign selfhood.
By the early twentieth century, however, the realization of autonomous manhood was limited by a growing personal dependence on industrial production, corporate institutions, and mass consumption. Yet, it was precisely at this moment that the automobile replaced walking, the horse, railroad, and bicycle as the primary mode of personal transportation. As Cotten Seiler observed The Republic of Drivers, the mass produced automobile arrived “as a meliorative response to the crisis of legitimacy in turn of the century capitalism brought about by the Taylorist transformation of production.”[1]
Of course the “Model T Revolution” began a transformative process that unfolded with ever increasing social and psychological consequences as the 20th century progressed. In particular, in the years after World War II, automobility radically reshapedAmerican geography and society. And it was a primary engine of change in the world in which Wait lived. Here it played an equally expanding role in construction and maintenance of autonomous manhood and its association with labor and economic independence. This transition was subliminally captured in Waits’ fetishistic worship of a blue Ford Torino during his years working at the auto plant. Working with machines and to a degree like a machine, and as a small cog at the Ford Motor Company, the car became for Wait a substitute for his liberty. Indeed, the car was a representation of Waits’ manly independence. Driving, like the motif of movement more widely in American cultural history, served as an arch signifier of the autonomous self-determining subject—coded male—at the heart of American individualism. With this in mind then, auto-theft frequently can be read as the usurpation, disruption, and recovery of that lost ideal of masculine selfhood.
[1] Cotten Seiler, Republic of Drivers: A Cultural History of Automobility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 41.

Top Car and Truck Sales, November 2011: GM on top in U.S. Market, Ford Second

1. Ford F-Series -- 47,740
2. Chevrolet Silverado -- 34,251
3. Toyota Camry -- 23,440
4. Ford Escape -- 21,823
5. Nissa Altima -- 20, 613
6. Ford Fusion -- 19,912
7. Dodge Ram -- 19,739
8. Honda Civic -- 17,133
9. Honda CR-V -- 16,426
10. Toyota Corolla/Matrix -- 16,115
11. Hyundai Sonata -- 15,668
12. Toyota Prius -- 15,208
13. Chevrolet Equinox -- 14,936
14. Jeep Grand Cherokee -- 13, 545
15. Chevrolet Cruze -- 13,238


Automaker Results, November 2011

1. General Motors -- 180, 402
2. Ford -- 166,441
3. Toyota -- 137,960
4. Chrysler -- 107,172
5. Nissan -- 85,182
6. Honda -- 83,925
7. Hyundai -- 49,610
8. Volkswagen -- 38,283
9. KIA -- 37,007
10. Mercedes -- 28,257

Film Review -- "Young and Wild," 1958

It began with a car theft -- a 1957 Ford to be specific. it ended with vehicular homicide, as an old woman was run down by that 1957 Ford, driven by an unrepentant thug and aided by two greaser accomplices. In between the bullies push off the road a clean cut young man and his pretty date in a 1957 Ford convertible. And it trying to cover up their crime, the trio lie, intimidate, and threaten not only the young couple but parents as well. But in the end the heroine of the story, Valerie Whitman (Carolyn Kearney) decides to make a stand and that ultimately leads to the arrest of the three law -breakers.

What to do about teenage punk hoodlums? We can't just execute them. Rick Braden (Scott Marlowe), "Allie" Allison (Weston Gavin), and "Beejay" Phillips (Tom Gilson) go on the tragic joyride, beat up boyfriend Jerry Coltrin (Robert Arthur), assault pretty Valerie, before having to flee when a by-passing vehicle comes upon the scene. Despite their formidable looks they seem to be impotent with girls their age.

Yet it is Det. Sgt. Fred Janusz (Gene Evans) who patiently works the case, deals with reverses, and ultimately puts the three delinquents behind bars. The three should have been drafted and sent to Korea. Good triumphs over evil, but we should never forget that there are plenty of young troublemakers out in the world, ready to make our lives hell if we let them!

Will Smartphones End the American Love Affair with the Automobile?

The iPhone 5 -- its design as alluring as a new Corvette?

American youth on the whole are simply not as enthralled with the automobile as kids from previous generations. That doesn't mean that there are not young people who love automobiles, new, used, and classic. But the numbers are not large, and that should worry the auto hobby in general, including those collectors with cars that some day will have to be sold.

But then there is the iPhone, seemingly more important than a drivers' license to more than a few teenagers. Why smartphones? Yesterday my son-in-law lost his, as he placed it on the top of a car that I drove off in to get motor oil at Pep-Boys! He just simply called to report it lost and claim insurance for the loss. Today a new phone will be in the mail to him.

Somehow, for these new generation of kids smartphones -- and other mobile devices -- convey status. Like my chronograph watch. The iPhone offers freedom and social reach, but does it really do that like a car? Can you really get away from your parents by using a smartphone? Can you foster a meaningful relationship by communicating electronically the way you can talk to someone in the front seat of a car or during a road trip?

One survey suggests that 46 percent of young people 18 to 24 prefer access to the internet rather than access to their own car. In 1978, 50% of 16 year olds obtained their first drivers' license; in 2008, only 30% did the same.

What this means is that cars increasingly need to come with innovative electrical gadgets, or with communicaton technologies built in. Whoever comes up with a killer app adaptable to the car will further a revolution that goes well beyond hybrid or electric propulsion.

When Life Ends Far Too Soon -- Recent Accidents in the Dayton, Ohio Area

Plenty can be said about young people whose lives end too soon because of an auto accident. A few weeks ago, two Chinese students died on a weekend evening in the suburbs -- they were 18 and 19 years old. According to one source, the car they were traveling in down Mad River Road was going at least 70 in a 40 zone. The older student had just purchased an Eclipse, and then had it hopped up at a speed shop. Near the corner of Jenny Lane and Mad River the car hit a tree, and burned. The bodies of the students so severely that there can be no determination if alcohol was involved in the crash.

Last weekend a drunk driver from Florida was traveling at speeds of around 100 mph and T-boned a car at the intersection of Wilmington and Wayne (See photos above) in the City of Dayton. Two kids in the car that was hit died -- a boy 18 and a girl 20. As you might expect, the drunk driver survived. That intersection had just been improved, and one wonders if making the road better contributed in a very tangential way to this accident.

In a nutshell, and from the very beginning, the car brings with it risks that we usually fail to account for in our everyday lives. After all, we think it will never happen to us. How frail life really is!