New horizons, but not for us

I really don't like to pick on domestic companies that stimulate the American economy, but lately none seem to come to mind. The only economy these companies care about is their own. Case in point, Ford Motors.

According to an article published by BusinessWeek last Friday and now gracing the the Yahoo! homepage, Ford Motors - responsible for some of the most reprehensible gas guzzlers on the market - have come up with a 65 MPG car. It's called the Fiesta ECOnetic and it runs on clean diesel. 65 MPG!

The drawback?

It won't be sold in America.

However, Ford is not entirely to blame. Yes, the engines for the ECOnetic are built in Great Britain under higher labor costs and and a pound that still trumps the dollar in global eonomic strength. Under such conditions, the ECOnetic would wind up costing a consumer almost $2,ooo more than Toyota Prius hybrid. Which is much hipper, just ask Ethan Hawke.

This is where the American Attitude comes in: Americans do not believe in such a thing as "clean diesel." Diesel is that smelly stuff that big trucks run on and makes bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic a hand of Texas Hold 'em with carbon monoxide poisoning, right?

Not anymore.

Researchers have developed a method of "combining clean diesel fuel, advanced engines and effective exhaust-control technology," according to the Diesel Technology Forum. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have been making clean diesel vehicles for years, according to the BusinessWeek article, but only 3% of U.S. cars run on it (65 MPG!).

This is where it becomes the Ouroborus swallowing its own tail. Because only 3% of drivers have vehicles that run on diesel, rare is the filling station that carries it (as far as I know there are two in Austin). If one cannot find the fuel, why would one purchase the vehicle that runs on it (65 MPG!)? And so no one bothers to create a demand for the fuel and the scarcity of it remains in place. Misperceived air pollution aside, people are not buying diesel vehicles because there is no place to get diesel and there is no place to get diesel because there are no vehicles that require it.

Perhaps an ad campaign that actually showed people that Ford cared would create a demand for the ECOnetic in the states (65 MPG!). Hell, it wouldn't hurt Volkswagen to promote the technology either. We as Americans are consumers and we prefer a plethora of choices (just look at the insane amount of fast food franchises that have essentially the same menus), and the more that are out there, the happier we seem to be.

Although when it comes to environment vs. fast food*, I'm afraid fast food gets the vast majority a vast majority of the time.

*And by fast food, I refer to anything convenient, easy and probably bad in the long run.