Environmental Talk

Conceptually possible for you to date her….

My favorite part of any car show, right after the models in skimpy outfits, is the section devoted to “concept cars.”

Concept cars are the “vision of the future” that automakers trot out to convince you how really forward-looking they are and to let you know how hip they are to current social trends.

Next year’s concept car probably will be a car that delivers universal health care.

The thing to remember about concept cars is they are meant to give you a glimpse at what’s possible but they will never, ever become a reality in your lifetime.

Concept cars are like Carmen Electra. In theory, you have the opportunity to sleep with her; the reality is you’ll be hitting on the chunky office temp with the butterfly tramp stamp at the Christmas party again this year.

It’s nice to dream about owning a Lamborghini that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and emits shares of Microsoft but chances are, when you check out your balance at the ATM, you’re going to be stuck with that seven-year-old Ford Focus that starts smoking every time you try to accelerate onto the highway.

Over at the TheNewsroom.com they ask you to imagine what it will be like to be able to charge your car like a cellphone.

Ummmm … no, thanks.

I don’t want my car to be anything like my cellphone. Especially not if it means my car is going to randomly lose power in different parts of the city or if it means I can get a free battery but only if I sign a contract to use the same recharging station for the next three generations of my family.

If it’s all the same to you, I’ll pass on having my car get smaller every year and packed with more and more features I don’t care about and will never use.

Did you know the new version of the Chevy Volt can do quadratic equations? Oooh, no, please tell me more about why the hell I’d ever want that.

I’d also like to skip the part where the over-exuberant salesman with too much hair gel grabs my arm in the mall and drags me over to the kiosk to get me to switch my electric car provider.

In the video, the spokesman for the battery company GM is using explains how the car would be powered by a rechargeable lithium ion battery “just like the one on your computer or cell phone.”

I don’t want to be too much of a kill-joy here, but that feature where the battery on my computer bursts into flames might be a little more of an irritant if I’m cruising down the highway and suddenly become a stunt driver in the remake of Backdraft.

And if I can get brain cancer from using my cellphone for less than an hour a day, what happens when make the 4-hour drive from New York to Baltimore in a giant rolling cell phone? Do I just melt into a gelatinous blob somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike?

I may be old-fashioned, but I just want my car to be a car.

I want to stop at the gas station before I go out on a date so I can pay over three bucks a gallon to pump my own gas and because nothing turns chicks on like the smell of 93 octane all over your hands.

I want to listen while a tattooed gear-head who dropped out of grade school tells me the compression ratio for the defibrillator on my carburetor isn’t lined up right and it’s worn down my medulla oblongata. And it’ll cost about $740 plus labor to fix it.

In one important way, though, the electric car will be just like my cellphone.

I won’t buy one until the Japanese version comes out.

The video is worth watching, if only to see the part where the CEO of General Motors explains the concept behind the car by saying, “Electronically driven cars are always electronically driven…”

global warming, climate change, concept cars, General Motors, Chevy Volt, spontaneous combustion, brain cancer, CEO-speak