However, thanks to a well-financed national TV campaign, professional complainer Arianna Huffington has boldly stolen the name, "The Detroit Project," for her personal campaign against sport utility vehicles. The campaign is offensive and the name stealing is egregious, but these are not Fib Finder issues. Alas, Arianna has propped up her campaign on the kind of bogus science that often characterizes the work of the fanatical environmental terrorist.
First, let's stop defaming the real Detroit Project and call Arianna's work "The California Project."The CP wades through all the usual political hysteria--industry is evil, politicians are greedy, SUV buyers are waging a war of terror on America, etc., etc., etc. before finally getting to the meat of Arianna's argument. As soon as we replace all the SUVs with hybrid cars, the world will be a beautiful place. (This may be a slight simplification of her position.)
Hybrid cars contain both gasoline and electric power plants. The gasoline engine handles all the hard work such as accelerating from a stop. The electric motor takes over for cruising. The gas engine recharges the battery. Owners proudly point to the miserly 50 miles/gallon of gasoline that hybrids sip. They don't say that the main reason for the high mileage is the cars are built to be worn rather than driven. Their small size makes them inherently and substantially less safe than larger vehicles. There is no fundamental reason a hybrid SUV cannot be built.
And now a quick word from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data are still being compiled, but the best guess is that in 2000 AD about 300,000 kids in this country had unsafe levels of lead in their blood. That number is down from 14,900,000 kids with high lead levels in 1976 AD. This spectacular 50-fold reduction in lead poisoning is due almost entirely to the removal of tetraethyl lead from gasoline. (1)
And that's the part of the story the California Project has not bothered to address. The electric portion of a hybrid car will employ the classic lead/acid battery. A century-long research effort has failed to produce a viable replacement. Battery fans wax enthusiastic about nickel-metal-hydride, or lithium ion, or chlorine (Don't tell Greenpeace.) batteries, but none of them is ready for commercialization. Right here in Detroit two high-tech, state-of-the-art battery research companies have worked diligently for over a quarter century. They have many exciting things on the drawing boards. They have nothing ready to sell.
Lead/acid batteries bring lead pollution. A recent study has projected that electric vehicles could be responsible for up to 60 times more lead pollution than was caused by cars burning leaded fuel. (2) A typical lead-fueled car emitted 22 milligrams of lead for each kilometer driven. For electric vehicles, there will be as much as 1,340 milligrams of lead per kilometer released during battery manufacture. (3)
A hybrid will not have as large a battery as a full electric car. But it will have a lot more battery than the little 6-cell 12-volt one you see under your hood. A modern gasoline car emits extremely low lead levels. Perhaps we can guess a value of less than 0.5 milligrams per kilometer based on the 50-fold reduction in lead levels in kids. If the hybrid has only a quarter as much battery as a full electric car, we should expect it to emit 750 times more lead pollution than the dreaded SUV.
Arianna is advocating the deliberate lead poisoning of 225,000,000 kids. (We don't have that many, of course. Maybe that's why it's ok.) Her plan sounds like a terrorist attack on the future of America. Ask her about it.