5 ms·

I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. What on earth do the car companies have to get out of it? The big name in the 90s, Ballard

by soperj 12y ago

I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. What on earth do the car companies have to get out of it? The big name in the 90s, Ballard, had buy in from a couple of car companies and no oil companies.

hackuser 12y ago
> I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. I'd guess car manufacturers have two economic interests: 1) The less energy for automobiles costs, the more people will use them, and 2) the less economic harm there is from climate change, the more people will use cars. I could see #1 motivating auto manufacturers to support the oil industry, and #2 motivating them to support clean energy.
- IanCal 12y ago
  > #1 motivating auto manufacturers to support the oil industry Are the energy costs for electric cars higher than those for traditional cars? I thought they were significantly lower.
rational-future 12y ago
The conspiracy hypothesis is that the oil people have long ago acquired controlling interest in the auto corporations. Via foundations, funds, banks, etc.
rsync 12y ago
"I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil." I don't know if car manufacturers are in league with big oil per se, but I have heard it argued convincingly that the repair and maintenance costs that are implied by the IC engine and its infrastructure in the car are a huge source of revenue for the entire auto ecosystem, and they just cannot give that up.
frankosaurus 12y ago
Auto companies and oil do have some common enemies. For example, mass transit is a threat to both.
krschultz 12y ago
Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla. It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we see each other. I'm sure it's the reason I got a mechanical engineering degree. When I think back to those times, a bunch of fragments of memories pop up. The sound a racing motor makes the first time you fire it up. The smell of gasoline vs diesel vs oil vs brake fluid vs transmission fluid. The grease on your hands. Knowing all the components under the hood, how they go together. How to start a cold engine with a flakey carb. How to fix a flooded engine. There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. I can barely enjoy modern cars with their plastic engine fairings and electronic controls, much less an electric car with just batteries and motors. I love building robots, and I'm a professional programmer now, but electric cars just don't excite me from the perspective of working on them. (Driving a Tesla is a different story). Layer on top of that nostalgia, which I believe most of the people that work in the auto industry have, is the reality of 100+ years of IC engine expertise. If electric cars are the future, how much advantage does Ford have over a startup? Certainly some, but not nearly as much as they do in gasoline engines. Every bit of the drive train is completely different in an electric car. Not only are you throwing out the expertise in engines, but transmissions and differentials as well. I can imagine that makes their position less defendable.
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >I can imagine that makes their position less defendable. What you've written I agree with, but it's a long way off from the OP's conspiracy. Cars have been around a long time, so the affinity is natural result all that history. It will change. I'm also a "car guy". I recently entered into four-year lease on a new vehicle, and on the drive home I told my significant other it's probable that this will be the last ICE we ever buy (and perhaps the last car that we actually drive off the lot ourselves). It's funny to think about.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. Sure. And as a petrolhead, I will miss IC engines when they go. But it's a long leap from "implicit affection for IC engines" to "strategically presenting a build-to-fail engine technology to discredit alternative fuel".
taeric 12y ago
I would think it is more with leveraging existing infrastructure. It isn't so much that these companies are "in league" with big oil. More that a large portion of the infrastructure they have right now benefits from not needing to be retooled. Consider the costs that companies such as (solely as) Tesla are having to front to get a refueling infrastructure in place to make their cars considerable.
- greglindahl 12y ago
  Almost all Tesla car charging occurs in owners' garages, where Tesla doesn't have to front anything. Tesla's supercharger network is funded by a $2,000 addition to each luxury car that they sell. Both kinds of chargers use a lot of pre-existing electricity infrastructure.
  - taeric 12y ago
    Right... And they are trying to get things placed in locations such as shopping malls and eating locations so that for trips one could step inside while it charges. This is a large portion of why families can't really get one of these vehicles. If I can't take this thing on a family trip, there is no point in even trying to get one.
higherpurpose 12y ago
For one, because they see Tesla as "winning" this "paradigm shift in cars", which could be (will be, in my opinion) just as disruptive as Apple's touchscreen was to the former cellphone industry. In such a situation having the paradigm shift happen in the first place is bad news for you, especially if you're a leader of the old paradigm. Microsoft, RIM and Nokia were all laughing off the iPhone in the first few years, so people would stay away from them and keep buying their "old stuff". So yeah, I can very much see how companies like Toyota and whoever else is promoting the totally unworkable fuel cell car "revolution" would be in bed with the oil industry. They'd rather push for something that barely changes the status quo, but at the same time is seen as "revolutionary" in the media, than go into electric cars.
marcosdumay 12y ago
Not signing for a conspiracy. But the car companies actions look a lot like they believe that both: 1 - Nobody will buy alternative fueled cars 2 - They must appear to support ecologically friendly energy sources
api 12y ago
"I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil." Yeah, nobody would ever "conspire" when trillions upon trillions of dollars in economic activity, millions of entrenched (and often unionized) jobs, hundreds of billions of dollars of sunk cost in infrastructure, the economies of entire nations and regions of nations, and generations of established thinking are at stake. That never happens. The parent poster is just one of those conspiracy nuts. Sorry for the combative tone, but I'm a bit tired of seeing this kind of naivete. Of course people will conspire and engage in stalling and other underhanded political tactics to stop things that are a threat to huge industries and entrenched ways of doing things. They'll do that and more. They will lie, cheat, kill, undermine democracy and foster political corruption, start wars, you name it. A lawyer friend of mine explained it to me this way (we were discussing shady behavior in the startup world): "There are people who will beat you up or kill you for a smart phone or the contents of your wallet. What will people do for a million bucks?" I sort of got it. Answer is that people will do everything they'll do for your cell phone or wallet and then some, but they'll do it with far more sophistication and cunning. The higher the stakes the more cunning and otherwise sophisticated the crimes. BTW, the mention of unionized jobs above highlights that it's not just oil companies and car companies we're talking about here. We are also talking about a massive infrastructure for making, selling, and servicing oil-burner cars that employs minimally tens of millions of people in the US alone. All of that is threatened by simpler, more reliable, grid-connected battery EVs. EVs are downright apocalyptic for entire sectors of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will die, and millions will find their entire skill sets completely obsolete. It'd be like if suddenly there were computers faster and cheaper in every way than silicon-based ones but that are programmable through some utterly alien abstraction that has almost nothing in common with present-day programming languages. All your skills are now obsolete. Google is done. Microsoft is done. Etc...
- SilasX 12y ago
  IIUIC, the GP was objecting that car companies have conflicting interests with oil companies on this matter, not that such large conspiracies can't happen given the stakes. That is, car companies would love to be able to sell cars that don't need oil, and so would not (by themselves) hinder such technologies.
koffiezet 12y ago
The problem isn't necessarily that they are in the same league, for the same reasons. Oil companies don't like electric cars for obvious reasons. Car companies on the other hand have a different reasons: electric cars hardly require maintenance, and a large part of the money car companies make is by selling replacement parts. Car makers were perfectly happy with the current situation, and the new-one threatens part of their business model, and nobody likes to switch from a working proven business model to a new-one. However, the difference between car companies and the oil industry is that the latter cannot adapt to this new situation. Car makers could just postpone introducing pure electric cars, or introduce even more complex 'hybrid' solutions under the pretense of being environmentally-friendly, while selling even more replacement parts and maintenance - which in my opinion was always silly. They could hold the boat off as long as nobody else tried to make a real production-ready electric car. So it's no surprise that it was a new-comer to the market that made it first. Suddenly, a lot of car manufacturers jumped the electric train: Renault, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, ... You really think none of them thought of making an electric car before? GM did, just check out the "who killed the electric car" documentary. I don't believe for a second not every single car maker saw what was inevitably coming, but why kill the goose that lays golden eggs? It would be really hard to explain that to shareholders at a time when the industry is going through a very harsh period.

by soperj 12y ago

hackuser 12y ago

> I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil. I'd guess car manufacturers have two economic interests: 1) The less energy for automobiles costs, the more people will use them, and 2) the less economic harm there is from climate change, the more people will use cars. I could see #1 motivating auto manufacturers to support the oil industry, and #2 motivating them to support clean energy.

IanCal 12y ago
> #1 motivating auto manufacturers to support the oil industry Are the energy costs for electric cars higher than those for traditional cars? I thought they were significantly lower.

rational-future 12y ago

The conspiracy hypothesis is that the oil people have long ago acquired controlling interest in the auto corporations. Via foundations, funds, banks, etc.

rsync 12y ago

"I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil." I don't know if car manufacturers are in league with big oil per se, but I have heard it argued convincingly that the repair and maintenance costs that are implied by the IC engine and its infrastructure in the car are a huge source of revenue for the entire auto ecosystem, and they just cannot give that up.

frankosaurus 12y ago

Auto companies and oil do have some common enemies. For example, mass transit is a threat to both.

krschultz 12y ago

Don't picture a bunch of oil tycoons with monocles sitting in back rooms smoking cigars with Ford execs laughing about how they are going to crush Tesla. It's much more subtle than that. I grew up around cars. My dad races them as his hobby. We restored a few, and spent plenty of time wrenching on a car together. It was one of the highlights of my childhood. It's still one of the things we often talk about when we see each other. I'm sure it's the reason I got a mechanical engineering degree. When I think back to those times, a bunch of fragments of memories pop up. The sound a racing motor makes the first time you fire it up. The smell of gasoline vs diesel vs oil vs brake fluid vs transmission fluid. The grease on your hands. Knowing all the components under the hood, how they go together. How to start a cold engine with a flakey carb. How to fix a flooded engine. There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. I can barely enjoy modern cars with their plastic engine fairings and electronic controls, much less an electric car with just batteries and motors. I love building robots, and I'm a professional programmer now, but electric cars just don't excite me from the perspective of working on them. (Driving a Tesla is a different story). Layer on top of that nostalgia, which I believe most of the people that work in the auto industry have, is the reality of 100+ years of IC engine expertise. If electric cars are the future, how much advantage does Ford have over a startup? Certainly some, but not nearly as much as they do in gasoline engines. Every bit of the drive train is completely different in an electric car. Not only are you throwing out the expertise in engines, but transmissions and differentials as well. I can imagine that makes their position less defendable.

hnnewguy 12y ago
>I can imagine that makes their position less defendable. What you've written I agree with, but it's a long way off from the OP's conspiracy. Cars have been around a long time, so the affinity is natural result all that history. It will change. I'm also a "car guy". I recently entered into four-year lease on a new vehicle, and on the drive home I told my significant other it's probable that this will be the last ICE we ever buy (and perhaps the last car that we actually drive off the lot ourselves). It's funny to think about.
sliverstorm 12y ago
There is real nostalgia around cars, and that means gasoline/diesel engines. Sure. And as a petrolhead, I will miss IC engines when they go. But it's a long leap from "implicit affection for IC engines" to "strategically presenting a build-to-fail engine technology to discredit alternative fuel".

taeric 12y ago

I would think it is more with leveraging existing infrastructure. It isn't so much that these companies are "in league" with big oil. More that a large portion of the infrastructure they have right now benefits from not needing to be retooled. Consider the costs that companies such as (solely as) Tesla are having to front to get a refueling infrastructure in place to make their cars considerable.

greglindahl 12y ago
Almost all Tesla car charging occurs in owners' garages, where Tesla doesn't have to front anything. Tesla's supercharger network is funded by a $2,000 addition to each luxury car that they sell. Both kinds of chargers use a lot of pre-existing electricity infrastructure.
- taeric 12y ago
  Right... And they are trying to get things placed in locations such as shopping malls and eating locations so that for trips one could step inside while it charges. This is a large portion of why families can't really get one of these vehicles. If I can't take this thing on a family trip, there is no point in even trying to get one.

higherpurpose 12y ago

For one, because they see Tesla as "winning" this "paradigm shift in cars", which could be (will be, in my opinion) just as disruptive as Apple's touchscreen was to the former cellphone industry. In such a situation having the paradigm shift happen in the first place is bad news for you, especially if you're a leader of the old paradigm. Microsoft, RIM and Nokia were all laughing off the iPhone in the first few years, so people would stay away from them and keep buying their "old stuff". So yeah, I can very much see how companies like Toyota and whoever else is promoting the totally unworkable fuel cell car "revolution" would be in bed with the oil industry. They'd rather push for something that barely changes the status quo, but at the same time is seen as "revolutionary" in the media, than go into electric cars.

marcosdumay 12y ago

Not signing for a conspiracy. But the car companies actions look a lot like they believe that both: 1 - Nobody will buy alternative fueled cars 2 - They must appear to support ecologically friendly energy sources

api 12y ago

"I really don't understand the whole cars are in league with big oil." Yeah, nobody would ever "conspire" when trillions upon trillions of dollars in economic activity, millions of entrenched (and often unionized) jobs, hundreds of billions of dollars of sunk cost in infrastructure, the economies of entire nations and regions of nations, and generations of established thinking are at stake. That never happens. The parent poster is just one of those conspiracy nuts. Sorry for the combative tone, but I'm a bit tired of seeing this kind of naivete. Of course people will conspire and engage in stalling and other underhanded political tactics to stop things that are a threat to huge industries and entrenched ways of doing things. They'll do that and more. They will lie, cheat, kill, undermine democracy and foster political corruption, start wars, you name it. A lawyer friend of mine explained it to me this way (we were discussing shady behavior in the startup world): "There are people who will beat you up or kill you for a smart phone or the contents of your wallet. What will people do for a million bucks?" I sort of got it. Answer is that people will do everything they'll do for your cell phone or wallet and then some, but they'll do it with far more sophistication and cunning. The higher the stakes the more cunning and otherwise sophisticated the crimes. BTW, the mention of unionized jobs above highlights that it's not just oil companies and car companies we're talking about here. We are also talking about a massive infrastructure for making, selling, and servicing oil-burner cars that employs minimally tens of millions of people in the US alone. All of that is threatened by simpler, more reliable, grid-connected battery EVs. EVs are downright apocalyptic for entire sectors of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of businesses will die, and millions will find their entire skill sets completely obsolete. It'd be like if suddenly there were computers faster and cheaper in every way than silicon-based ones but that are programmable through some utterly alien abstraction that has almost nothing in common with present-day programming languages. All your skills are now obsolete. Google is done. Microsoft is done. Etc...

SilasX 12y ago
IIUIC, the GP was objecting that car companies have conflicting interests with oil companies on this matter, not that such large conspiracies can't happen given the stakes. That is, car companies would love to be able to sell cars that don't need oil, and so would not (by themselves) hinder such technologies.

koffiezet 12y ago

The problem isn't necessarily that they are in the same league, for the same reasons. Oil companies don't like electric cars for obvious reasons. Car companies on the other hand have a different reasons: electric cars hardly require maintenance, and a large part of the money car companies make is by selling replacement parts. Car makers were perfectly happy with the current situation, and the new-one threatens part of their business model, and nobody likes to switch from a working proven business model to a new-one. However, the difference between car companies and the oil industry is that the latter cannot adapt to this new situation. Car makers could just postpone introducing pure electric cars, or introduce even more complex 'hybrid' solutions under the pretense of being environmentally-friendly, while selling even more replacement parts and maintenance - which in my opinion was always silly. They could hold the boat off as long as nobody else tried to make a real production-ready electric car. So it's no surprise that it was a new-comer to the market that made it first. Suddenly, a lot of car manufacturers jumped the electric train: Renault, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, ... You really think none of them thought of making an electric car before? GM did, just check out the "who killed the electric car" documentary. I don't believe for a second not every single car maker saw what was inevitably coming, but why kill the goose that lays golden eggs? It would be really hard to explain that to shareholders at a time when the industry is going through a very harsh period.