McCain on Energy?

"McCain Touts Plans to Fuel U.S. Energy Needs

From the article:

"In Fresno, McCain said his plan is a new and innovative attempt to address the energy issues confronting Americans. "Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil," he said.

He called for "Clean Car Challenge" tax credits for low-emissions cars, including a $5,000 tax credit for zero-emission cars and lesser credits for other lower-emissions vehicles. He also proposed a $300 million prize for "the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids and electric cars."

Sweet! A Republican who thinks outside the oil drum!

The Tesla cars, which McCain praised as the model of energy efficiency, carry a price tag of nearly $100,000, but "in the 1980s, the cost of a cell phone was as
much as a thousand dollars," he said. "I see this as the future of automotive
technology in America ... it clearly has numerous environmental impacts with
regard to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

Oh crapness. Just when I was getting all excited about the possibility that the Republican candidate had ideas for positive environmental and economic change, McCain dashed my hopes by comparing apples to oranges. Well, my hopes might not be entirely dashed, but if he thinks the development of cell phone technology (and the rate at which it went from being astronomically expensive to very affordable for millions of Americans) is comparable to the rate of development of affordable cars that run on something besides oil, then how well-thought-out are his ideas about the environment?

Remembering something I'd heard on a History Channel program about personal computers, I threw together some search terms and found a Wikipedia article about Moore's Law. This law states that that the number of transistors that Science can cram onto an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 months without an increase in cost.

I'm not an engineer, still, I had the feeling that McCain's comparison was flawed. If that was the case, I thought, then how practical are his ideas for green technologies that average citizens might one day be able to afford? I Googled "Moore's Law"+automobiles and found an interesting essay on Moore's Law and Communications by Martin E. Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Apparantly, Moore's Law doesn't apply to automobiles, at least not according to Professor Hellman:

"To put Moore’s Law in perspective, imagine it applied to automobiles. The
typical car that costs approximately $20,000 today would have cost $200,000 five
years ago and been limited almost like corporate jets to high level management
and very wealthy individuals. Twenty years ago, cars would have cost $200
million and been as rare as rocket launches into outer space. Conversely,
looking just ten years into the future, cars would cost $200. Body shops and
auto repair facilities would go out of business, with great economic
dislocations, both positive and negative."

That makes sense. It also makes sense that a presidential candidate would go to California and preach a clean, green tomorrow while standing in front of a bunch of $100,000 sports cars, allaying any fears that these types of vehicles are impractical by mentioning that cell phones have gotten much less expensive in the past 20 years. Photo op!

By the way, my apologies for the crap formatting within most of the block quotes. No idea what went wrong there.