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GM, Ford knew about climate change 50 years ago

183 points by evo_9 6y ago

dylan604 6y ago
I've never understood Big Auto's reluctance on EV tech. If they had spent as much effort that could have been spent on getting cars with equivalent miles per charge as miles per tank, people would buy them. What makes Big Auto so dependent on Big Oil?
- cowmix 6y ago
  Huge risks with little short term gain. Being first, from their POV, has no reward in this short-term world we live in. They have to change almost every part of their business, it is just easier to ignore or work against progress. I worked 15 years ago, they hope the same strategy will work today.
- fenwick67 6y ago
  They have lots of experience making ICE vehicles. Making an EV takes a different set of engineers and different assembly line practices and different suppliers and and and..
- neon_electro 6y ago
  Part of it is that Big Auto does not include Big Auto Dealership, and Big Auto Dealership needs service revenue to continue being as profitable as it has been. Electric vehicles are projected to have far fewer costs per mile from service compared to ICE vehicles.[0][1] I really like only having to worry about tires and windshield wipers (and other shared mechanical equipment at the appropriate mileage). 0. https://insideevs.com/news/340365/electric-car-servicing-cost-are-lower-heres-how-much/ https://insideevs.com/news/340365/electric-car-servicing-cos... 1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/does-lower-total-cost-of-ownership-boost-electric-car-sales/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/does-lower-total-cost-o...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Oil has historically been inexpensive and abundant and mainstream environmental concerns are relatively nascent. Further, no one knew how viable battery tech would become, and a big driver of this viability has been the booming consumer electronics market which is itself a relatively recent development. Basically the auto industry didn't have your benefit of hindsight.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Electric vehicle manufacturing is almost a different business model from ICE vehicle manufacturers. If you look at the history of car manufacturing, you'll see that the early ones would just deliver a chassis (usually with an engine and transmission). Even the body was 'aftermarket'! Electric vehicles have no engine, and the entire drive-train is simpler, so it's now easier and more important to be vertically integrated (like Tesla).
- fsloth 6y ago
  Big oil is valuable only if someone burns it. Automobiles were the perfect consumer for the stuff. I presume there are connections from the oil companies to the car manufacturers.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >I've never understood Big Auto's reluctance on EV tech. Clearly there is a reason. Even today, it's obviously true that EVs have major limitations. Limitations that were more pronounced before modern-day electronics and battery technology. I'm not sure if you could release a competitive EV in the 80s (for example).
  - BigBubbleButt 6y ago
    That's certainly part of it. But I think it's also the same reason Kodak invented the digital camera and then ignored it. It was more profitable to keep doing what they were doing, and they were so invested in it. The automobile industry has invested hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars into R&D for the internal combustion engine.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      No doubt that is true as well. The fact that Tesla dragged the entire industry towards EVs means that there was inertia. But I'm skeptical that Tesla could have competed in the 80s, 90s or even early 2000s. Late 2000s and early 2010s was when all kinds of technologies from all over the place, made EVs much more competitive against ICEs.
      - jandrese 6y ago
        To be short, it was the batteries. They were just too damn big, heavy, and expensive per amp hour for anything more than a commuter car. Tesla struggled with batteries early on and ended up building their own factory in the end. That said, there were definitely people excited about electric commuter cars and the big automakers were disdainful of them. GM's famous EV1 that they refused to sell (only lease) because they wanted the power to destroy them the instant the government got off their back about electric cars. There was a missed market opportunity for a startup that did electric commuter cars in the 90s and 2000s. Maybe not a huge userbase, but very loyal. Of course a small company would face the same dealership franchise headwinds that Tesla had to fight and might not succeed, especially in a world with relatively little Internet connectivity and less comfort with shopping and buying online.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  Not sure what you're saying. GM was early (earliest really) to the EV game, and has good EV tech. Excellent, even, it's just... GM cars are fairly underwhelming in other ways. Still, the Volt is the best car I've ever owned. They just don't ship them in volume because it's not yet profitable to do so. Whatever they produce of the Bolt, they sell. They just don't produce that many. Still, not as bad as some other companies, like Toyota, etc. that have only produced EVs where required by compliance. Unlike Tesla, they don't have investors willing to take risky bets. They have to turn a profit and pay dividends. They're a massive multinational corporation that ships many multiples of the volume that Tesla ships. When batteries get cheap enough and the supply of them reliable enough, they will be entirely able to supply any demand that is out there.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    "Sales of the 2011 Volt began in the United States in mid-December 2010" "Volt production ended in February 2019" Doesn't look like Chevy actually makes the Volt anymore. Also, my point was that had they invested as much in EV as they did ICE doesn't logic suggest we would have had practical EV much earlier than 2011? Take this in the light of the actual article of this post saying that GM knew ICE automobiles were major cause in climate changing conditions.
    - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
      It's irrelevant that the Volt (a range extended car with both ICE and EV power sources) isn't made anymore, they only produce pure EV nows in the form of the Bolt and some newer cars coming soon. And the GM EV1 was really the first modern electric car, produced in 1996. They killed it, and it wasn't great (NiCad batteries, weird design, etc.) but it predates anybody else's serious efforts, apart from some stuff in the 70s oil crisis that was built around lead acid batteries. But basically GM started producing EVs as soon as lithium ion battery manufacturing chains made it possible. Thank Bob Lutz. But I never said GM wasn't .. basically evil :-) Of course they're riding/pushing the ICE & petroleum wave, and pushing hard on it, that's what makes them money. Because for the last 100 years that's all that was practical, and it's what made them as a company. Boxes that burn dinosaur juice to move. But there was no battery tech until LiOn that could make EV feasible as any kind of alternative. However GM's evil is subsidiary to the petroleum company's evil. Whatever bad GM has done, oil companies have done x 100.
- vkou 6y ago
  > What makes Big Auto so dependent on Big Oil? The fact that 99% of Americans live within spitting distance of a gas pump that will fully charge an ICE car in under 3 minutes. I would love to ditch my family's ICE car for an equivalent EV, but because we live in an apartment, and because my wife (who drives) does not work for a fabulously wealthy tech company that has employee garage chargers [1], we have nowhere to charge it. As chargers are slowly getting better, and slowly proliferating into garages and parking spaces, and dedicated EV charging stations, this equation changes. But this sort of thing takes decades of effort, and trillions of dollars of capital investment. The same way that it's been the year of Linux on the desktop [2] (for the past 20 years), every year has been the year of the EV. It's going to happen someday [3], but it's not going to happen quickly. [1] When I did drive to my workplace at a fabulously wealthy tech company, it had twelve charging stations in a five-hundred vehicle parking lot. You look at that, and then tell me if EVs are ready for prime-time. [2] Ironically, we've long hit, and passed the point where we hit the year of Linux in the car. [3] Unless climate change (likely) or nuclear war (less likely) wrecks our civilization first.
- xyst 6y ago
  Simply, it's easier (and much more cost efficient) to buy scientists and lobbyists than to re-work their entire line of vehicles.
- lumberjack 6y ago
  The supply chain that caters specifically to ICEs is huge and all of that will have to go when electric motors replace ICEs. The same goes for all the technology, tooling and expertise that goes into creating today's ICEs. Imagine how many people are experts at just one tiny part of ICE technology. They might have 20 to 30 years experience all of which will be worthless after a transition to EVs.
- mfer 6y ago
  I grew up just minutes from GM proving grounds. A couple decades ago I was present when someone asked an executive why they don’t sell many EVs. His response was a lack of demand. At the time there really wasn’t much demand. EVs are still not a slam dunk. Battery recycling is an issue. I’ve talked with people who handle car fleets and there are still other issues for them. I look forward to these things being solved. I wish the innovation had started earlier so we’d be further along.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Also, I'll never understand their hydrogen stunt. They were to threatened by EVs that they had to spend lots of money creating some nonviable prototypes so they took people's attention away from the iable tech. All that instead of just investing on EVs themselves.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  I think in the last two years the auto industry has come around to the idea. Electrification solves five problems for them. Solves mileage regulations. Solves pollution regulations. Solves global warming issues. Simplified vehicle design since electric drive trains are simpler and more flexible than internal combustion ones. Finally because they are more reliable also solves warranty issues. At this point what's not to like.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    If they get an administration that is very amenable if not hell bent on lowering those restrictions, will they feel the same way? Or continue as business as usual damn them effects?
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Which administration? It's a global industry. California cares a lot about air pollution. Has to because otherwise the Los Angeles basin becomes uninhabitable. Most European and many other countries care about mileage[1] and enforce it via stiff fuel taxes. Lot of developing countries have very bad problems with smog. Most would leaders with the exception of the particularly stupid sort you find in the US are getting spooked about global warming. Probably auto exec's themselves are getting spooked. [1] Really they care about their trade balance.
- Someone 6y ago
  Thirty, or, probably, even twenty years ago, nobody could build a electric car that could compete with ICE engines. So, why waste money making them if, instead, you can make money selling ICE cars? That could have changed if society had (through regulations, subsidies or taxes) changed the rules, but it didn’t until fairly recently. Even today, I haven’t seen numbers (but I haven’t looked hard, either) of _any_ manufacturer that shows they make a profit making and selling electric cars. Tesla’s profits, for example, as far as I know, always were smaller than the money they get from selling regulatory credits (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-environmental-credits-help-drive-to-profitability.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-environmental...). That’s society finally saying ICE cars must go out. Government mills mill slowly, but I think many people underestimate how much they can accomplish in the long run.
macspoofing 6y ago
Why are people looking for conspiracies where there are clearly none? Climate science is incredibly complicated and it took a long time to get the evidence to a level where we can actually consider making drastic economic changes to fight it - what did the author expect GM and Ford of 50 years ago (and climate science of 50 years ago) to do?
- jhloa2 6y ago
  Seems reasonable to expect them to not actively lobby against environmental regulations.
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent for a profit motive causing them to work against the interests of the general population. See also: Streetcars[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      >It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent So what? You don't get to assume something because something completely unrelated happened.
    - jmcqk6 6y ago
      >It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent for a profit motive causing them to work against the interests of the general population So that makes it okay? Perhaps the thing that needs to change is our expectations of corporations.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >Seems reasonable to expect them to not actively lobby against environmental regulations. Why is it reasonable to not lobby against environmental regulations? What if the environmental regulations are unreasonable? For example, 'The Green New Deal' is 90% batshit crazy.
JPKab 6y ago
Scientists working for them did. Imagine how many layers of middle management exist between any scientist and someone capable of making a decision at a large corporation now. Then imaging what it would have been like in 1960's, where communication was primarily face to face, and with executives, through secretaries.... Chances are, no executive capable of making a single decision about shifting away from fossil fuels or aiming towards fuel efficiency ever heard this. An army of middle managers would have funneled it elsewhere as soon as they realized it wasn't going to create profit, and was inactionable with technology of the time.
- BigBubbleButt 6y ago
  I'm not sure I buy the premise of your argument that middle managers are to blame for everything wrong at corporations (at least that's how I'm interpreting it). And I definitely don't buy that no executive ever heard this.
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  Seems like cafeteria have always been a place devoid of reporting hierarchies, where real communication gets done.
epistasis 6y ago
Of course. The only reason to doubt climate change is if you've been a victim of the concerted misinformation campaign. The campaign that was launched by the same spin doctors that launched tobacco companies' disinformation campaigns. They were very clear on how they did this, and it's been amply documented in the media, just not super well known still, somehow. They tied climate change denial to a political identity, because politics is how we turn off the rational part of our brain and activate the tribal defense mechanisms. Get your tribe to attack media vehemently anytime climate change is in the media. It makes news editors very nervous about covering the topic, because of the extremely virulent attacks. Even to this day, the media avoids bringing up climate change on relevant topics because they are scared of political blowback. This is the sort of "political correctness" that ends up harming society greatly.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  I think this lack of awareness or straight up apathy is just another example of the dearth of "attention energy" available to the average person today. When there's so much vying for peoples' attention on a daily basis, stimulating a concerted response (e.g. political will) is much more difficult. I'm not sure how we solve this at this point, because I don't see it naturally getting better.
- danhak 6y ago
  Media is complicit in this, not the victim. By presenting "both sides" equally in many contexts, they give the false impression that the case of the denialists is equally strong. Just because there are two sides does not mean there are two equally valid sides. And presenting them as such is a form of bias. Quite a pernicious one. This is common practice in all sorts of stories. Journalists are trained to solicit / include some counterpoint or naysaying voice, no matter the topic. Even if the story is otherwise uncontroversial.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >By presenting "both sides" equally in many contexts This was the mantra of the new atheist/skeptic movement of the early 2010s - that it wasn't worth to present the other side because the other side is just wrong. Given how this mantra is applied today where 'the other side' should not be heard from or platformed or is just plain evil, I'd rather hear both sides, even if that means I get to hear about creationism or climate change denial. I don't want the media or tech companies to be the arbiter on what is and isn't reasonable to discuss. Having Jack Dorsey or some intern at some fact check org decide for me what is and isn't reasonable is much worse than merely hearing from a creationist why creationism should be taught in science class.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
Oil companies also knew about it by the 70's. There was then a huge business-run propoganda campaign which has succeeded on convincing many people that climate change is not real.
tpmx 6y ago
It was taught in schools at least 35 years ago. Edit: 30-35 years ago.
- justinlink 6y ago
  I remember from that time in school more about global cooling especially aerosols and a lot of concerns about over-population. Of course smog was a concern too, but the science has definitely evolved since we were in school.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    I remember it being referred to as the greenhouse effect in school books. (Maybe late 80s rather than mid 80s. Sweden.)
tasty_freeze 6y ago
I'll bring it up because the article doesn't, but Exxon was active in climate research in the 70s and 80s, but when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it, Exxon did a 180 and then stoked up the the doubt PR machine. https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.html https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Tens of thousands of scientist spend decades doing the hard work of collecting data, building models, testing hypotheses and on the other side some politician or talking head with a reach of millions says: "Fake news. Scientists say that because they are getting paid to toe the party line.", often paired with "It would cause immeasurable wealth to change things and destroy the economy" without doing one damn thing to quantify or prove their claims. And yet these thought leaders are treated with respect by the press. If a climate researcher is willing to sell their soul and lie about climate research for a $50K/year job, just imagine how much lying corporations are willing to do for tens of billions of dollars a year.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  > when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it I find it very hard to believe this was ever the case.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before this issue was politicized, and when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically.
    - AndrewBissell 6y ago
      With rare exceptions the things both political parties have been willing to work together on have been implementations of various forms of corporatist and imperialist policies. Fracking was cemented into place, and popular resistance to the DAPL was crushed, under an administration which was supposed to have all the right positions on the question of climate change. There was not some halcyon age in the 60s/70s/80s when the Republicans and the Democrats were ready to work together to dismantle the fossil fuel industry until it was all undone by a PR campaign.
cryptos 6y ago
Bad enough, but b look at the cars threy sell today!
callesgg 6y ago
Even if the knew what where the executives supposed to do. They have been hired to make money not to save the world. Do your job and do it well. Otherwise you get fired.
yters 6y ago
Where researchers only finding warming results back then? or also cooling results? how would they know which were most reliable?
- jandrese 6y ago
  Back then it was called global warming. The fundamental force being CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas. This was well understood. In school in the early 90s it was pretty common to see greenhouse gas demonstrations at science fairs. The question wasn't if it was warming/cooling, but simply how much impact humans were having on the atmosphere. There's a whole lot of atmosphere and humans are very small so it wasn't as clear how big of an impact we were having. Even for people who knew the math there was uncertainty in the inputs. Oil companies were best prepared to know how much CO2 were were releasing because they knew exactly how many barrels a day they were extracting from the ground. Everybody else has to go on public figures that may or may not be accurate.
  - yters 6y ago
    I remember growing up adults just mentioned global cooling. No mention of global warming. Which gives me the impression cooling seemed the bigger concern back then. If so, that would explain this reaction by companies that either didn't think it the most likely scenario, or maybe thought it could be beneficial to fight the cooling effect.
    - p_l 6y ago
      Absent human influence, Earth would be entering a cooler period now, yes. But that has nothing on corporate decisions, which were driven more by "environmental concerns impact our profits" rather than anything else.
legitster 6y ago
When reading about Alan Mulally's career at Ford, I found it interesting that he and several other auto executives lobbied for carbon taxes. Especially compared to CAFE standards, which made them create unnecessary and undesirable car models simply for accounting purposes. Obviously it was never going to happen at the time. The car industry was incredibly unpopular, and would never have been able to get congress to push such an unpopular tax for their benefit.
LatteLazy 6y ago
So did we. James Hansen testified to Congress and the IPCC was setup back in 1988. Everyone has ignored these warnings. Now they want to point fingers to assuage their own guilt. Get real.
- mythrwy 6y ago
  Yes and I was around back back then and extremely concerned. 32 years later I'm not.
watertom 6y ago
Most of the funding for the thought leaders in climate science today were funded by these same corporations. I have a relative that was doing climate research in the 70's and 80's. He was considered a radical, and ended up leaving the field because his funded dried up, he eventually went into teaching. He'll tell you that the current models are all B.S., that's it's much worse than we've been led to believe.
chrisbrandow 6y ago
Wait till I tell you about Arrhenius, one of the founders of modern chemistry in the late 19th century…
- boxed 6y ago
  I came here to write this. For others: Svante published a paper on the effects of CO2. In 1896. Let that year sink in.
jamez1 6y ago
And funnily enough, 50 years ago the only feasible solution to move off fossil fuels was nuclear. Which was then campaigned against by the green lobby, not the fossil fuel lobby. The irony is that the only reason we haven't de-carbonized is because the same people who are yelling about climate change decided to stop it.
thln666 6y ago
I mean, GM was producing the first "modern" EV 24 years ago (1996) - and are one of the biggest traditional auto manufacturers with both a history of producing EVs/hybrids as well as a plan to introduce a large number of EVs across their brands. It's definitely not as fast as we'd all like, but I think the indication that they know ICE is limited lifespan (for a lot of reasons) is definitely built into GM's history and future. It's no Tesla as far as EV volume, capability, and product line - but they're definitely working on it (like the slow multi-million-vehicle-production-per-year company they are). I think it's hard to argue that GM has known about this and ignored the problem, though. Anyway, disclaimer: I work for Cruise and so I'm clearly a shill for GM, so you can just ignore a lot of what I say because I'm 100% biased.
easytiger 6y ago
The Vikings knew about climate change. Icebergs they used to navigate went AWOL causing much confusion
fanatic2pope 6y ago
... and everyone else (who were paying attention) too. The majority of scientists researching climate change were warning about global warming (not cooling) in the 70's. https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in...
archeantus 6y ago
Assume we move over to electric vehicles (like Tesla) as the default mode of transportation at some point in the future, will that solve this problem? In other words, is our ability to generate electricity for all the electric vehicles more efficient and better for the earth than how we currently power them with gasoline?
- Miraste 6y ago
  It won’t solve the problem without more change in power generation, but it will help. Even coal power plants are more efficient than small internal combustion engines. Gas power plants are vastly more efficient (double or more) and of course wind/solar/hydro/nuclear do not have carbon emissions.
zalkota 6y ago
If i can’t believe the media on politics, can you please explain to me why i should believe them on climate?
8bitsrule 6y ago
I'd rather reserve my anger, not for what corporations did 50 years ago, but for the very little that's being done at present. We can tear down the statues later.

183 points by evo_9 6y ago

I've never understood Big Auto's reluctance on EV tech. If they had spent as much effort that could have been spent on getting cars with equivalent miles per charge as miles per tank, people would buy them. What makes Big Auto so dependent on Big Oil?

cowmix 6y ago
Huge risks with little short term gain. Being first, from their POV, has no reward in this short-term world we live in. They have to change almost every part of their business, it is just easier to ignore or work against progress. I worked 15 years ago, they hope the same strategy will work today.
fenwick67 6y ago
They have lots of experience making ICE vehicles. Making an EV takes a different set of engineers and different assembly line practices and different suppliers and and and..
neon_electro 6y ago
Part of it is that Big Auto does not include Big Auto Dealership, and Big Auto Dealership needs service revenue to continue being as profitable as it has been. Electric vehicles are projected to have far fewer costs per mile from service compared to ICE vehicles.[0][1] I really like only having to worry about tires and windshield wipers (and other shared mechanical equipment at the appropriate mileage). 0. https://insideevs.com/news/340365/electric-car-servicing-cost-are-lower-heres-how-much/ https://insideevs.com/news/340365/electric-car-servicing-cos... 1. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/does-lower-total-cost-of-ownership-boost-electric-car-sales/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/12/does-lower-total-cost-o...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway894345 6y ago
Oil has historically been inexpensive and abundant and mainstream environmental concerns are relatively nascent. Further, no one knew how viable battery tech would become, and a big driver of this viability has been the booming consumer electronics market which is itself a relatively recent development. Basically the auto industry didn't have your benefit of hindsight.
- nickff 6y ago
  Electric vehicle manufacturing is almost a different business model from ICE vehicle manufacturers. If you look at the history of car manufacturing, you'll see that the early ones would just deliver a chassis (usually with an engine and transmission). Even the body was 'aftermarket'! Electric vehicles have no engine, and the entire drive-train is simpler, so it's now easier and more important to be vertically integrated (like Tesla).
fsloth 6y ago
Big oil is valuable only if someone burns it. Automobiles were the perfect consumer for the stuff. I presume there are connections from the oil companies to the car manufacturers.
macspoofing 6y ago
>I've never understood Big Auto's reluctance on EV tech. Clearly there is a reason. Even today, it's obviously true that EVs have major limitations. Limitations that were more pronounced before modern-day electronics and battery technology. I'm not sure if you could release a competitive EV in the 80s (for example).
- BigBubbleButt 6y ago
  That's certainly part of it. But I think it's also the same reason Kodak invented the digital camera and then ignored it. It was more profitable to keep doing what they were doing, and they were so invested in it. The automobile industry has invested hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars into R&D for the internal combustion engine.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    No doubt that is true as well. The fact that Tesla dragged the entire industry towards EVs means that there was inertia. But I'm skeptical that Tesla could have competed in the 80s, 90s or even early 2000s. Late 2000s and early 2010s was when all kinds of technologies from all over the place, made EVs much more competitive against ICEs.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      To be short, it was the batteries. They were just too damn big, heavy, and expensive per amp hour for anything more than a commuter car. Tesla struggled with batteries early on and ended up building their own factory in the end. That said, there were definitely people excited about electric commuter cars and the big automakers were disdainful of them. GM's famous EV1 that they refused to sell (only lease) because they wanted the power to destroy them the instant the government got off their back about electric cars. There was a missed market opportunity for a startup that did electric commuter cars in the 90s and 2000s. Maybe not a huge userbase, but very loyal. Of course a small company would face the same dealership franchise headwinds that Tesla had to fight and might not succeed, especially in a world with relatively little Internet connectivity and less comfort with shopping and buying online.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Not sure what you're saying. GM was early (earliest really) to the EV game, and has good EV tech. Excellent, even, it's just... GM cars are fairly underwhelming in other ways. Still, the Volt is the best car I've ever owned. They just don't ship them in volume because it's not yet profitable to do so. Whatever they produce of the Bolt, they sell. They just don't produce that many. Still, not as bad as some other companies, like Toyota, etc. that have only produced EVs where required by compliance. Unlike Tesla, they don't have investors willing to take risky bets. They have to turn a profit and pay dividends. They're a massive multinational corporation that ships many multiples of the volume that Tesla ships. When batteries get cheap enough and the supply of them reliable enough, they will be entirely able to supply any demand that is out there.
- dylan604 6y ago
  "Sales of the 2011 Volt began in the United States in mid-December 2010" "Volt production ended in February 2019" Doesn't look like Chevy actually makes the Volt anymore. Also, my point was that had they invested as much in EV as they did ICE doesn't logic suggest we would have had practical EV much earlier than 2011? Take this in the light of the actual article of this post saying that GM knew ICE automobiles were major cause in climate changing conditions.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    It's irrelevant that the Volt (a range extended car with both ICE and EV power sources) isn't made anymore, they only produce pure EV nows in the form of the Bolt and some newer cars coming soon. And the GM EV1 was really the first modern electric car, produced in 1996. They killed it, and it wasn't great (NiCad batteries, weird design, etc.) but it predates anybody else's serious efforts, apart from some stuff in the 70s oil crisis that was built around lead acid batteries. But basically GM started producing EVs as soon as lithium ion battery manufacturing chains made it possible. Thank Bob Lutz. But I never said GM wasn't .. basically evil :-) Of course they're riding/pushing the ICE & petroleum wave, and pushing hard on it, that's what makes them money. Because for the last 100 years that's all that was practical, and it's what made them as a company. Boxes that burn dinosaur juice to move. But there was no battery tech until LiOn that could make EV feasible as any kind of alternative. However GM's evil is subsidiary to the petroleum company's evil. Whatever bad GM has done, oil companies have done x 100.
vkou 6y ago
> What makes Big Auto so dependent on Big Oil? The fact that 99% of Americans live within spitting distance of a gas pump that will fully charge an ICE car in under 3 minutes. I would love to ditch my family's ICE car for an equivalent EV, but because we live in an apartment, and because my wife (who drives) does not work for a fabulously wealthy tech company that has employee garage chargers [1], we have nowhere to charge it. As chargers are slowly getting better, and slowly proliferating into garages and parking spaces, and dedicated EV charging stations, this equation changes. But this sort of thing takes decades of effort, and trillions of dollars of capital investment. The same way that it's been the year of Linux on the desktop [2] (for the past 20 years), every year has been the year of the EV. It's going to happen someday [3], but it's not going to happen quickly. [1] When I did drive to my workplace at a fabulously wealthy tech company, it had twelve charging stations in a five-hundred vehicle parking lot. You look at that, and then tell me if EVs are ready for prime-time. [2] Ironically, we've long hit, and passed the point where we hit the year of Linux in the car. [3] Unless climate change (likely) or nuclear war (less likely) wrecks our civilization first.
xyst 6y ago
Simply, it's easier (and much more cost efficient) to buy scientists and lobbyists than to re-work their entire line of vehicles.
lumberjack 6y ago
The supply chain that caters specifically to ICEs is huge and all of that will have to go when electric motors replace ICEs. The same goes for all the technology, tooling and expertise that goes into creating today's ICEs. Imagine how many people are experts at just one tiny part of ICE technology. They might have 20 to 30 years experience all of which will be worthless after a transition to EVs.
mfer 6y ago
I grew up just minutes from GM proving grounds. A couple decades ago I was present when someone asked an executive why they don’t sell many EVs. His response was a lack of demand. At the time there really wasn’t much demand. EVs are still not a slam dunk. Battery recycling is an issue. I’ve talked with people who handle car fleets and there are still other issues for them. I look forward to these things being solved. I wish the innovation had started earlier so we’d be further along.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Also, I'll never understand their hydrogen stunt. They were to threatened by EVs that they had to spend lots of money creating some nonviable prototypes so they took people's attention away from the iable tech. All that instead of just investing on EVs themselves.
Gibbon1 6y ago
I think in the last two years the auto industry has come around to the idea. Electrification solves five problems for them. Solves mileage regulations. Solves pollution regulations. Solves global warming issues. Simplified vehicle design since electric drive trains are simpler and more flexible than internal combustion ones. Finally because they are more reliable also solves warranty issues. At this point what's not to like.
- dylan604 6y ago
  If they get an administration that is very amenable if not hell bent on lowering those restrictions, will they feel the same way? Or continue as business as usual damn them effects?
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Which administration? It's a global industry. California cares a lot about air pollution. Has to because otherwise the Los Angeles basin becomes uninhabitable. Most European and many other countries care about mileage[1] and enforce it via stiff fuel taxes. Lot of developing countries have very bad problems with smog. Most would leaders with the exception of the particularly stupid sort you find in the US are getting spooked about global warming. Probably auto exec's themselves are getting spooked. [1] Really they care about their trade balance.
Someone 6y ago
Thirty, or, probably, even twenty years ago, nobody could build a electric car that could compete with ICE engines. So, why waste money making them if, instead, you can make money selling ICE cars? That could have changed if society had (through regulations, subsidies or taxes) changed the rules, but it didn’t until fairly recently. Even today, I haven’t seen numbers (but I haven’t looked hard, either) of _any_ manufacturer that shows they make a profit making and selling electric cars. Tesla’s profits, for example, as far as I know, always were smaller than the money they get from selling regulatory credits (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-environmental-credits-help-drive-to-profitability.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-environmental...). That’s society finally saying ICE cars must go out. Government mills mill slowly, but I think many people underestimate how much they can accomplish in the long run.

macspoofing 6y ago

Why are people looking for conspiracies where there are clearly none? Climate science is incredibly complicated and it took a long time to get the evidence to a level where we can actually consider making drastic economic changes to fight it - what did the author expect GM and Ford of 50 years ago (and climate science of 50 years ago) to do?

jhloa2 6y ago
Seems reasonable to expect them to not actively lobby against environmental regulations.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent for a profit motive causing them to work against the interests of the general population. See also: Streetcars[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent So what? You don't get to assume something because something completely unrelated happened.
  - jmcqk6 6y ago
    >It's not like there's a lack of historical precedent for a profit motive causing them to work against the interests of the general population So that makes it okay? Perhaps the thing that needs to change is our expectations of corporations.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >Seems reasonable to expect them to not actively lobby against environmental regulations. Why is it reasonable to not lobby against environmental regulations? What if the environmental regulations are unreasonable? For example, 'The Green New Deal' is 90% batshit crazy.

JPKab 6y ago

Scientists working for them did. Imagine how many layers of middle management exist between any scientist and someone capable of making a decision at a large corporation now. Then imaging what it would have been like in 1960's, where communication was primarily face to face, and with executives, through secretaries.... Chances are, no executive capable of making a single decision about shifting away from fossil fuels or aiming towards fuel efficiency ever heard this. An army of middle managers would have funneled it elsewhere as soon as they realized it wasn't going to create profit, and was inactionable with technology of the time.

BigBubbleButt 6y ago
I'm not sure I buy the premise of your argument that middle managers are to blame for everything wrong at corporations (at least that's how I'm interpreting it). And I definitely don't buy that no executive ever heard this.
jjtheblunt 6y ago
Seems like cafeteria have always been a place devoid of reporting hierarchies, where real communication gets done.

epistasis 6y ago

Of course. The only reason to doubt climate change is if you've been a victim of the concerted misinformation campaign. The campaign that was launched by the same spin doctors that launched tobacco companies' disinformation campaigns. They were very clear on how they did this, and it's been amply documented in the media, just not super well known still, somehow. They tied climate change denial to a political identity, because politics is how we turn off the rational part of our brain and activate the tribal defense mechanisms. Get your tribe to attack media vehemently anytime climate change is in the media. It makes news editors very nervous about covering the topic, because of the extremely virulent attacks. Even to this day, the media avoids bringing up climate change on relevant topics because they are scared of political blowback. This is the sort of "political correctness" that ends up harming society greatly.

RankingMember 6y ago
I think this lack of awareness or straight up apathy is just another example of the dearth of "attention energy" available to the average person today. When there's so much vying for peoples' attention on a daily basis, stimulating a concerted response (e.g. political will) is much more difficult. I'm not sure how we solve this at this point, because I don't see it naturally getting better.
danhak 6y ago
Media is complicit in this, not the victim. By presenting "both sides" equally in many contexts, they give the false impression that the case of the denialists is equally strong. Just because there are two sides does not mean there are two equally valid sides. And presenting them as such is a form of bias. Quite a pernicious one. This is common practice in all sorts of stories. Journalists are trained to solicit / include some counterpoint or naysaying voice, no matter the topic. Even if the story is otherwise uncontroversial.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >By presenting "both sides" equally in many contexts This was the mantra of the new atheist/skeptic movement of the early 2010s - that it wasn't worth to present the other side because the other side is just wrong. Given how this mantra is applied today where 'the other side' should not be heard from or platformed or is just plain evil, I'd rather hear both sides, even if that means I get to hear about creationism or climate change denial. I don't want the media or tech companies to be the arbiter on what is and isn't reasonable to discuss. Having Jack Dorsey or some intern at some fact check org decide for me what is and isn't reasonable is much worse than merely hearing from a creationist why creationism should be taught in science class.

Synaesthesia 6y ago

Oil companies also knew about it by the 70's. There was then a huge business-run propoganda campaign which has succeeded on convincing many people that climate change is not real.

tpmx 6y ago

It was taught in schools at least 35 years ago. Edit: 30-35 years ago.

justinlink 6y ago
I remember from that time in school more about global cooling especially aerosols and a lot of concerns about over-population. Of course smog was a concern too, but the science has definitely evolved since we were in school.
- tpmx 6y ago
  I remember it being referred to as the greenhouse effect in school books. (Maybe late 80s rather than mid 80s. Sweden.)

tasty_freeze 6y ago

I'll bring it up because the article doesn't, but Exxon was active in climate research in the 70s and 80s, but when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it, Exxon did a 180 and then stoked up the the doubt PR machine. https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.html https://skepticalscience.com/1982-exxon-accurate-prediction.... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Tens of thousands of scientist spend decades doing the hard work of collecting data, building models, testing hypotheses and on the other side some politician or talking head with a reach of millions says: "Fake news. Scientists say that because they are getting paid to toe the party line.", often paired with "It would cause immeasurable wealth to change things and destroy the economy" without doing one damn thing to quantify or prove their claims. And yet these thought leaders are treated with respect by the press. If a climate researcher is willing to sell their soul and lie about climate research for a $50K/year job, just imagine how much lying corporations are willing to do for tens of billions of dollars a year.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> when it became clear that politicians around the world were going to do something about it I find it very hard to believe this was ever the case.
- jandrese 6y ago
  It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before this issue was politicized, and when political parties were capable of compromise and working with the other side. Our current political environment is an aberration historically.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    With rare exceptions the things both political parties have been willing to work together on have been implementations of various forms of corporatist and imperialist policies. Fracking was cemented into place, and popular resistance to the DAPL was crushed, under an administration which was supposed to have all the right positions on the question of climate change. There was not some halcyon age in the 60s/70s/80s when the Republicans and the Democrats were ready to work together to dismantle the fossil fuel industry until it was all undone by a PR campaign.

cryptos 6y ago

Bad enough, but b look at the cars threy sell today!

callesgg 6y ago

Even if the knew what where the executives supposed to do. They have been hired to make money not to save the world. Do your job and do it well. Otherwise you get fired.

yters 6y ago

Where researchers only finding warming results back then? or also cooling results? how would they know which were most reliable?

jandrese 6y ago
Back then it was called global warming. The fundamental force being CO2 acting as a greenhouse gas. This was well understood. In school in the early 90s it was pretty common to see greenhouse gas demonstrations at science fairs. The question wasn't if it was warming/cooling, but simply how much impact humans were having on the atmosphere. There's a whole lot of atmosphere and humans are very small so it wasn't as clear how big of an impact we were having. Even for people who knew the math there was uncertainty in the inputs. Oil companies were best prepared to know how much CO2 were were releasing because they knew exactly how many barrels a day they were extracting from the ground. Everybody else has to go on public figures that may or may not be accurate.
- yters 6y ago
  I remember growing up adults just mentioned global cooling. No mention of global warming. Which gives me the impression cooling seemed the bigger concern back then. If so, that would explain this reaction by companies that either didn't think it the most likely scenario, or maybe thought it could be beneficial to fight the cooling effect.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Absent human influence, Earth would be entering a cooler period now, yes. But that has nothing on corporate decisions, which were driven more by "environmental concerns impact our profits" rather than anything else.

legitster 6y ago

When reading about Alan Mulally's career at Ford, I found it interesting that he and several other auto executives lobbied for carbon taxes. Especially compared to CAFE standards, which made them create unnecessary and undesirable car models simply for accounting purposes. Obviously it was never going to happen at the time. The car industry was incredibly unpopular, and would never have been able to get congress to push such an unpopular tax for their benefit.

LatteLazy 6y ago

So did we. James Hansen testified to Congress and the IPCC was setup back in 1988. Everyone has ignored these warnings. Now they want to point fingers to assuage their own guilt. Get real.

mythrwy 6y ago
Yes and I was around back back then and extremely concerned. 32 years later I'm not.

watertom 6y ago

Most of the funding for the thought leaders in climate science today were funded by these same corporations. I have a relative that was doing climate research in the 70's and 80's. He was considered a radical, and ended up leaving the field because his funded dried up, he eventually went into teaching. He'll tell you that the current models are all B.S., that's it's much worse than we've been led to believe.

chrisbrandow 6y ago

Wait till I tell you about Arrhenius, one of the founders of modern chemistry in the late 19th century…

boxed 6y ago
I came here to write this. For others: Svante published a paper on the effects of CO2. In 1896. Let that year sink in.

jamez1 6y ago

And funnily enough, 50 years ago the only feasible solution to move off fossil fuels was nuclear. Which was then campaigned against by the green lobby, not the fossil fuel lobby. The irony is that the only reason we haven't de-carbonized is because the same people who are yelling about climate change decided to stop it.

thln666 6y ago

I mean, GM was producing the first "modern" EV 24 years ago (1996) - and are one of the biggest traditional auto manufacturers with both a history of producing EVs/hybrids as well as a plan to introduce a large number of EVs across their brands. It's definitely not as fast as we'd all like, but I think the indication that they know ICE is limited lifespan (for a lot of reasons) is definitely built into GM's history and future. It's no Tesla as far as EV volume, capability, and product line - but they're definitely working on it (like the slow multi-million-vehicle-production-per-year company they are). I think it's hard to argue that GM has known about this and ignored the problem, though. Anyway, disclaimer: I work for Cruise and so I'm clearly a shill for GM, so you can just ignore a lot of what I say because I'm 100% biased.

easytiger 6y ago

The Vikings knew about climate change. Icebergs they used to navigate went AWOL causing much confusion

fanatic2pope 6y ago

... and everyone else (who were paying attention) too. The majority of scientists researching climate change were warning about global warming (not cooling) in the 70's. https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-in...

archeantus 6y ago

Assume we move over to electric vehicles (like Tesla) as the default mode of transportation at some point in the future, will that solve this problem? In other words, is our ability to generate electricity for all the electric vehicles more efficient and better for the earth than how we currently power them with gasoline?

Miraste 6y ago
It won’t solve the problem without more change in power generation, but it will help. Even coal power plants are more efficient than small internal combustion engines. Gas power plants are vastly more efficient (double or more) and of course wind/solar/hydro/nuclear do not have carbon emissions.

zalkota 6y ago

If i can’t believe the media on politics, can you please explain to me why i should believe them on climate?

8bitsrule 6y ago

I'd rather reserve my anger, not for what corporations did 50 years ago, but for the very little that's being done at present. We can tear down the statues later.