Ralph Nader took a shot at Elon Musk on Twitter the other day, falsely claiming that Musk started the Tesla car company with a U.S. government grant. Musk (who didn’t actually start the company) replied, saying Nader was lying and provided the history of his own personal financing of the automaker. A guy named David Zipper decided to be the 3rd man in on a fight, claiming that Nader had "done more than anyone to make cars safer in the 20th century, while the other [Musk] does more than anyone to make them more dangerous in the 21st.” Presumably the second part of that couplet refers to Musk championing the cause of autonomous vehicles.
To get this out of the way, since I’m an inveterate class clown and natural troublemaker, there’s something about the cut of Elon Musk’s puckish jib that makes me smile. Still, I don’t agree with him about a number of things, particularly the value of driverless cars, and I’m a bit skeptical about EVs in general. I don’t really care what’s under the hood of your car or truck and I can see some cases where electric cars make sense, but I don’t think the grid can handle the needs of transportation and there are serious questions about supplies of lithium, cobalt, and virgin copper, all of which will be needed to make millions of EVs.
You can’t, then, accuse me of being a Musk fanboy. David Zipper, on the other hand, while he obviously doesn’t like Musk, is indeed a fan of Mr. Nader.
Zipper is one of those curious creatures who has made his living off of “public/private partnerships”, i.e. dispensing favor and dollars to businesses willing to do the bidding of left-leaning politicians so they both can profit. He says he’s a “venture capitalist” but writes for leftist publications like The Atlantic, and Slate, so perhaps “crony capitalist” might be more accurate.
According to his LinkedIn profile, “David Zipper is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government, where he examines the interplay between urban policy and new mobility technologies. David's perspective on urban development is rooted in his experience working within city hall as well as being a venture capitalist, policy researcher, and startup advocate. He has consulted with numerous startups and public entities about the future of cities and mobility.”
Looking over his Twitter account, Zipper is a transit enthusiast who wants to get us out of our big pickups and SUVs and onto bicycles, e-bikes, electrically powered microcars, and perhaps a small electric pickup for those long journeys (ignoring real world reports of very poor range from the electrically powered Ford F-150 Lightning). He yearns for the day when teenagers (and adults) won’t get drivers licenses. Mr. Zipper wants people to use bicycles even in the winter, yet while I have been able to find articles by him encouraging the use of bicycles and e-bikes, I have been unable to find any indication that Mr. Zipper himself uses a bicycle or e-bike for transportation, in good weather, or in bad. I’ve asked him about it, we’ll see if he answers. I suspect, though, that he’ll say that it’s too unsafe for him to drive where he lives (D.C., natch) because of all the huge, planet raping SUVs on the road.
That bit about microcars seems to be at odds with Mr. Zipper’s enthusiasm for Ralph Nader’s crusade for automotive safety. When pressed on the safety of vehicles like those he favors, Zipper said that if all of todays cars and trucks were replaced by the vehicles pictured above, because of their reduced speed and weight, the harmful results of collisions would be reduced.
In other words, he wants us to give up our cars that can go 100 mph or more and travel 300 plus miles on a single tank of gasoline in favor of neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) that have a top speed of about 25 miles an hour, a speed that he apparently thinks is appropriate, and if we need to travel “long distances” we can get a small electric pickup like the Chinese-made Pickman. According to the Pickman’s website, those long distances will have to be less than 110 miles, because that’s the maximum range even with the optional lithium battery pack (which takes 4 to 5 hours to recharge from a standard AC outlet - with conventional lead acid batteries the range is just 50 miles). At a maximum speed of 25 mph, it would take you at least 20 hours to get from Detroit to Chicago (including recharging), a trip that I can do in my Honda Fit in about 4 hours (without even needing to stop for gas). A Model T would make for a faster trip than a Pickman. Heck, a hundred year old Detroit Electric had a better range (80 miles) than the standard Pickman, and could go almost as fast (20 mph). So much for progress.
In terms of practicality, I’ll use a real world example. On Thursday I had to drop off some packages at the main Detroit post office and had my 5 year old grandson with me. It’s about 16 miles from my home, so the 50 mile range on a even a lead-acid powered Pickman normally wouldn’t be a problem but it was chilly, about 36 degrees F outside, and and an EV’s range is reduced in cold weather. Also, it doesn’t look like 3 of those 4 those vehicles have heaters, and if the Pickman has a heater, that would decrease range as well.
As far as safety is concerned, even at 25 mph, collisions between his favored urban vehicles could be fatal. None of Zipper’s favored vehicles have crush zones or, apparently, any side impact protection. At least two of them don’t even have seat belts. my Honda Fit has six more airbags than all four of those vehicles combined, which have none.
I didn’t go to Swarthmore, Cambridge, and Harvard like Mr. Zipper. I’m eight credits short of a BA from Michigan. I have, however, worked for a Tier 1 automotive supplier for over 20 years and have written professionally about cars and the auto industry for the past 15 years, covering both current events and history. To anyone who knows anything about the history of automotive safety, Zipper’s doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Does Zipper know who Bela Barenyi was? It was Barenyi, while working for Mercedes-Benz, who invented and developed the safety cell; a reinforced area to protect passengers, and crush zones; front and rear ends designed to absorb energy in the event of a collision. That combination of safety cells and crush zones is the foundational technology of automotive safety.
Does Zipper know who Nils Bohlin was? He was the Volvo engineer who invented the three point safety harness that combines a seat belt with a shoulder harness. Volvo thought that invention was so valuable to the cause of automotive safety that it essentially gave away the patent, allowing any automaker to use them. By the way, unrelated to Bohlin, Ford Motor Company first offered seat belts as an option in 1956, but the “take rate” from consumers was so low that the option was discontinued.
Does Zipper know who William Carey was? Carey was the Eaton, Yale & Towne executive who championed the cause of airbags and lead the development of the first airbag systems to be offered on automobiles (Allen Breed developed the first practical inertial crash sensor). Carey had initially convinced the company in the mid 1960s to develop airbags as a safety system to protect children on school buses. He was budgeted $100,000 for the project, which was assigned to scientist Charles Simon. In time the team would grow to 100 people, funded with $35 million from Eaton and another $100 million from all three domestic and several overseas automakers.
Ralph Nader, on the other hand, wrote a book about the shortcomings of cars with swing-axle rear suspensions (something that was known since the 1930s), particularly the Chevrolet Corvair, and got spied on by General Motors. His successful lawsuit against the automaker gave him seed money he used to establish the non-profit advocacy organization that employed him and made him a Washington D.C. fixture.
While Nader’s book was a best seller and undoubtedly influenced the passage of the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, that law would have been useless without actual crash safety technology to implement. Any one of those men, Nils Bohlin, Bela Barenyi, or William Carey, did more to make cars safer than Ralph Nader ever did. In the history of actual automotive safety, Ralph Nader's a footnote… and David Zipper is an ignoramus.
UPDATE: I failed to note something that is either ironic or hypocritical. As mentioned, David Zipper is a “Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government".” David Zipper hates parking lots because they make much driving more practical. Transportation activists like getting rid of suburban parking lots and urban parking spaces. The Taubman Center is so named because Detroit area shopping mall developer, the late A. Alfred Taubman, gave Harvard $15 million back in 1988. Those shopping malls, with their huge surrounding parking lots are exactly the kind of thing that Zipper is activating against. I don’t know if Al Taubman, an incredibly philanthropic man, is spinning in his grave. I do know that David Zipper is a hypocrite for benefitting from shopping mall dollars. I’m sure that Zipper thinks he is somehow cleansing those dollars. As Aesop said, any excuse will serve a tyrant.
“David Zipper is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government..."
So he's part of the current crop of self-appointed experts who can't seem to get anything right. He probably thinks Paul Ehrlich is an oracle.
I read Nader's book in high school in the mid-'80s. Not a page-turner, for sure. I decided to read the book to form my own opinion of Nader despite the two, major influencers in my life who held unfavorable opinions of Nader. My mother had loved her '63 Corvair and routinely raved about it often. My father thought that Nader was a do-gooder with educational establishment creds and thus, couldn't (and shouldn't) be trusted. My father was right because by the '80s, Nader had shown his willingness to take on the automotive establishment repeatedly.
I have always wondered how the USA's automotive landscape would have changed if Nader had not published his book? Contrary to popular option, the Corvair was a "small" car that sold well. GM took some major risks by introducing it: rear engine, air-cooled, a flat-6 configuration, and substantially smaller and unique chassis than GM's other offerings. I always felt that Nader made Detroit even more gun-shy with their future offerings.
Zipper seems to be looking to follow Nader's path of anti-establishment do-goodery. It's fairly easy to lob fire bombs towards the establishment. Sharp criticism is easier to craft than the callouses of industry.
Musk, a decade ago, was far from the automotive establishment. Despite my concerns over the years, Musk has proven to be a doer. He has created a major automotive despite early risks and my concerns. He has, almost single-handedly, brought the EV into the mainstream. Musk has found incredible success from his hard work. He is now seen as the establishment by the likes of Zipper and Nader.
For me, I nearly always give a doer that benefit of the doubt. Zipper needs to prove himself...and he better be a more gifted wordsmith than Nader!