Customer Reviews

Taken for a Ride: Detroit's Big Three and the Politics of Air Pollution

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As the Editor-in-Chief of EVWorld.Com, I had the opportunity to do an audio interview with Jack Doyle last week (June 15, 2000). We will be webcasting that interview in three parts on the EVWorld.Com web site starting the week of June 24, 2000. In the interview, Jack shares his experiences in writing Taken For A Ride. Having read the book in preparation for the interview, I found it a devastating indictment of the US auto industry who used its political and financial muscle to stall auto emissions technology and regulations for decades.

Very thorough and indisputable account of the damage the auto industry has done to our health and environment by colluding and fighting environmental regulations through the years and withholding cleaner technology. Based on actual congressional records, trial transcripts, local government transcripts and other documentation. It describes how the companies lied, colluded and in some cases were found guilty, but yet have been able to continue to pollute. It doesn't read like a novel and can get wordy, but it is eye opening. This should be reading 101 for those congress people who are only listening to the car industries side of the story.

At the very end, the book also ponders the idea of litigation. Unlike tobacco, people don't have a choice in the air they breathe. I could see that some states might want to re-coup cost for asthma treatment and other illnesses created by the car industries smog.

As a couple side notes: I have personally seen the Chairman of the Air resources board for California with this book in hand. Right now the Car companies are continuing to fight Zev(Zero Emission Vehicle) mandates in several states. The shame is their arguments today read like chapters from this book in which the quotes are from the 1960's. Remember when they told us that putting in air bags would kill the car industry? That was 1982.

After a couple of months, I'm about 2/3 through with this book. I think a lot of amazon.com readers may find it a bit lengthy, so it occurred to me to go ahead and put forth some thoughts on it, of which I have a few. I run an alternative energy web page where I examine issues pertaining to Detroit's fight against progressive vehicles, and Doyle's book is definitely food-for-thought along those lines.

Thus far, Doyle does a thorough well-footnoted job (maybe mainstream serious academics will be able to treat the book seriously, as well as casual readers) of taking the reader through the history of the clean-air wars as they pertained to cars. In light of research such as Doyle's, it is becoming increasingly difficult for opponents of clean-air-laws to claim that this sort of environmentalism is merely a pretext by left-wing tree-hugging extremists to attack business and cost jobs. In reality, Detroit's multi-million-dollar resistance to even the most common-sense improvements in their own vehicles is very difficult and frustrating to read about. One of the things I get from this is that something in the system seems to be broken, over the last five decades. The Detroit Automakers cannot be trusted, it would seem, to make any kind of good-faith effort to concern themselves with the environmental impact of operating their products. They can be trusted, however, to spend dozens of millions, if not more, in fighting every attempt by all concerned governments, to get them to build vehicles with better mileage and cleaner operation

Fifty years or so since smog started becoming enough of a problem to occassion these battles between Detroit and Washington, we are still left with a very heated battle. These days, it is still Detroit vs. the state of California in a mano-a-mano over electric and hybrid vehicles. It is possible, one supposes, that a newly progressive Ford CEO (as discussed by Doyle) might be sincere in his attitude, but we are left a bit cynical. Doyle's extensive tale allows us to bring ourselves up-to-date and have a context for understanding the present-day wars. Instead of having a vague sense that Detroit deliberately destroyed various electric train businesses nationally in the 30s, we can read Doyle's explicit discussion of this, and we can have a more detailed vision of the depths to which Ford, GM, Chrysler and AMC sank in pitting themselves against every possible measure in the sixties and seventies as various federal and State officials realized that "something" had to be done, insofar as people in various cities were visibly physically suffering from smog.

I think Doyle brings home that something was wrong in the system, as revealed in the ongoing problems between Detroit and government parties in their attempts to find solutions to the environmental impact of the autos. On at least one occassion, it would have appeared that anti-trust measures were considered, but that idea was dropped.

This is good reading for those who are into trying to understand why on Earth Detroit can't be bothered to build Electric Vehicles and such. The answers are a little elusive, in my opinion, but Doyle's calm story is a good way to add to one's perspective.

If people ever wondered why so many people dont buy American anymore, let this book be a testament. Routinely the Big Three are dragged kicking and screaming into the most minute and painless regulations. The book can become somewhat pedantic, and sometimes the author jumps time periods suddently. But overall it stands as one of the most scathing indictments of some of the most consitently immoral institutions that routinely place profits above public health. Maybe if car companies took the more than one hundred million dollars a year on lobbyists that they spend into developing better engines we'd be better off. Moreover the book expertly shows how the corporate world and that of Washington are intertwined; sometimes butting heads and sometimes working alongside each other to kill progressive initiatives. The book can be so extremely detailed at points that it becomes painful, and the numerous abbreviations do not help. Luckily the author supplies a glossary and a timeline. OVerall, a worthy read for those who would like to see what "Americas" car companies have done and are up to today. (If you can call them that).

Every objection I can raise about this book is a problem with the subject, not the text. Doyle covers a long, repetitive and monotonously depressing subject accurately and in ample detail -- the fact that it's so hard to get through is mostly because the history it covers was just that way -- long, repetitive and depressing, as the American automakers sandbag every attempt to get them to clean up their product lines for fifty years.

Doyle writes clearly, and does ample research -- every tenuous claim is backed by multiple source citations, every statistic can be identified for its source. While the page count is very high, a significant chunk of the book is bibliographical material, supporting data, references, etc.

The only thing I wanted more of in the book was technical detail; Doyle only does minimal explanation of how and why the technologies discussed in the book work.

The book is not without bias -- nor does it claim to be; most of the praise quotations on the back are from environmental groups, for example. Doyle clearly believes the Big Three to be disingenous and obstructive, but he never degenerates into baser accusations of avarice or malice. He attempts to cover events inside the Big Three whenever they're relevant, which I especially appreciated.

Doyle has written a beautifully researched synopsis of the auto companies' resistance to clean air technologies. The book is well-written, comprehensive, and a real eye-opener.

L.A. began to experience smog in 1942; by 1950 a California Institute of Technology professor had laboratory results proving that autos and refineries were the main culprits. Bit oil's response was to hire Stanford Research Institute to research (dispute) his findings. As public opinion intensified, oil companies then tried to shift the blame to autos.

The auto industry then resisted, insisting on definitive proof. In 1957 when this was provided, they then insisted smog was a problem peculiar to the L.A. area. By 1963, even this was well refuted.

And on and on it goes - any improvement in smog, safety, or fuel economy was fiercely resisted on the basis of high costs - even though initial significant improvements cost as little as $10 (the PCV valve) or less (retarding the spark - known since the Model T). Meanwhile, Detroit was wasting untold billions through inefficient production practices, when compared with the Toyota Production System.

Bottom Line: I suspect the auto industry has contributed far more to America's fuelishness etc. than we'll ever know.