World Press Release: “A Revolutionary New Technology”
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press:
As you know, it’s been over a hundred years since the Tesla-Daimler Corporation invented the battery-powered electric vehicle (BPEV) in 1902. Since then, enormous progress has been made. For the first half-century, the cost of manufacturing and maintaining electric automobiles was so expensive that, even with the trillions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, only the affluent could afford one. (When, by 1950, as yet only one percent of the population was wealthy enough to purchase a BPEV, the phrase “the one-percent” came into general usage as a term of class disparagement.) Gradually, as has often been the case with new technologies, the price of electric vehicles has declined, so that today, in 2017, fully one in two families proudly boasts a BPEV in their driveways. And no one can deny the benefits that this marvelous invention has conferred upon society over the years.
Yet, in spite of its original promise, electricity has proven an unreliable resource. As the cost of BPEV’s has declined, the cost of generating the electricity that charges their batteries and powers their engines has skyrocketed. (I needn’t remind you of what the decades of subsidies and recent massive bail-out of the world’s solar and wind industry have done to the price of electricity.) Moreover, even as government electricity-efficiency mandates have induced manufacturers to produce cars that achieve higher and higher miles per kilowatt (mpk), this has led, by the law of unintended consequences, to more miles traveled.
The world’s dependence upon electricity has now brought us to the breaking-point. The EPA (Enterprise Prevention Agency) currently predicts that the world’s supply of this non-renewable resource will be exhausted within the next few decades. Meanwhile, as the prophet ALGORE has warned in An Incomplete Truth, unless we end our unhealthy dependency upon electricity, the greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere as a by-product of its generation will usher in a global climate catastrophe.
But all of this now promises to be a distant memory. Today, we at National Internal Combustion Engines (call us NICE, for short) proudly announce to the world that the first liquid fuel vehicle (LFV) has just rolled of our assembly-lines right here in beautiful suburban Detroit. This is not the time to get bogged down in arcane technical details, but just imagine that instead of using fossil fuels to generate electricity that must be stored in batteries and then delivered to car motors, the same fossil fuels can now drive them directly! With the LVF, expensive batteries (and unaffordable cars) will shortly become a thing of the past. Imagine a world when practically everyone (not just the one-percent) will be able to own his own automobile. Now imagine a world that has finally moved closer to what we in the global community all strive for, equality and social justice!
Here’s how the LFV works. When your car approaches the end of its range–you might not believe it, but our new LFV’s will travel upwards of 500 miles without re-charging (say goodbye to range anxiety!)–, you look for a charging station as usual. Only we call them “gas stations”. And instead of retiring to the station’s lounge and waiting the several hours it takes to replenish the battery, you proceed directly to a “pump”. The pump dispenses liquid fuel (we call it “gasoline”) into a reservoir (we call it a “tank”) built right into your car. The whole “fill-up” (what we used to call a “charge”) takes a matter of minutes.
Think of the time you’ll save! Think of the increase in human productivity as a result of the time you’ll save! Think of the rock-bottom purchase price! Think of the freedom!