The thing is, I love ALL cars. I see the goodness in every car, even malaise era Granadas, Lido K-Cars, and the like.

Oh, I see all of their shortcomings, but like a mother, I still see past them and love them all…

A Solar Grand Plan

Yes, it costs some money. Over 20 years, it would want about the military budget for a single year. Or about one and a half years’ worth of what we ship out to pay for imported oil.

—

There will probably be an alt-energy bubble but Wall Street overvaluing things is a cyclic bit of insanity that’s mostly a Wall Street problem.

Look at the dot-com bubble… ridiculous overvaluation of tech stocks and then a price crash. However, at the industry level, people kept spending money on dot-com projects (our spending increased steadily through that time). The amount of economic activity involved has kept on growing. Most of the businesses I deal with have a strong Web presence.

Alt energy will probably go the same way; there will be ridiculous pricing of some stocks but people will keep installing SPV, windmills, solar heating and the like. The pull from consumers is there.

Look at SPV; we actually export something like 2/3 of the SPV we make. There’s increased interest at the US consumer level and likely price drops ahead. More SPV will probably be wanted. The fundamentals won’t change because a few investors bought in at the wrong price.

Another benefit to an expanding alt energy sector is that lots of jobs will be created; both in manufacturing and in installation. And installation has the potential to be lots of good local jobs and many new small businesses. I expect the barriers to entry are fairly low (unlike, say, auto manufacturing, where even a joke vehicle, like the Tesla, will absorb tens, hundreds of millions in case from the unwary).

Then that’s probably because I grew up watching Transformers (Michael Bay’s making another 2 hour long GM ad? NOOOOO!!!!) and Japanese anime.

Anyhow, I have to agree 100% about going nuclear. I love the idea of electric vehicles, but if you’re getting your energy from a coal plant, what’s the point?

(tooting horn on)

Speaking of tendencies to modify Mercs, I’m pretty happy with the 6-speed conversion on my Foxbody Cougar.

(tooting horn off)