Elites

COP28 is ending this week in UAE with neither the vigorous bang of internal combustion forever nor the whimper of an agreement to later agree to paper over some really tricky disagreeements. Something else, maybe. It looks like there is an agreement to wind up fossil fuels in a “just, orderly, and equitable manner”.

Of course, some of the animals are more equal than others and the orderlies have no manners. This will just concentrate more in the pockets of the few Elites.

This is a problem because those original Type 14 Lotus Elites have no glovebox and there’s only so much you can stuff into the small map pockets in the door before they bulge, unwelcome, into the cramped cockpit. There really are only a pocketful of Elites left in the world, with just over a thousand of the Type 14 and a few thousand of the later models built in the period 1957-1982.

I would wager the number of Elites left in the world smaller than the 2640 billionaires that Forbes says stride among us in 2023. And why should they not stride? A thoroughly British grandfather of mine always told me that first-class walking was better than third-class motoring any day. Without enough Elites to go around, a ramble seems the better thing for it than a Rambler.

We’ll leave the billionaires to sort out their own affairs and turn back to the plight of the Elites. These were lightweight, modern, innovative cars with respectable fuel economy. The original ‘57 Elite returned around 30 miles per gallon and could park comfortably within the space of a new Ford Transit van. I mean the free space inside the van in a ‘Knight Rider’ kind of way. Surely an end to fossil fuels will mean an end also to fossils such as these? The Hummer EV battery pack weighs more than two and a half Elites, so electrification at that scale isn’t the answer.

Can you have a reasonable electric car the size of the Elite? The BMW i3 electric car was about a foot longer than the original Elite and shorter than the later series 2 Elite cars. Like the original Elite, it used a composite monocoque structure. Like the later cars, it seated 4 and had a cargo hatch in the rear. Alas, the i3 weighed about the same as the Hummer battery pack. Will technology break this cycle?

I don’t know. I’m writing this instead of reading “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd edition”, which promises 12 explosive (presumably internally combusted) new chapters. By the time our titular hit man finishes confessing in edition 8 or 9, the text may weigh as much as an original Elite. Maybe we can’t wind back the clock.

Fortunately, vehicle electrification in most of the world doesn’t mean i3s or Hummers. It means bicycles and tuk-tuks and the like. Cars may not scale down properly but bicycles can scale up to be our cars. They have done it before.

Today’s Subaru began with the postwar Fuji Rabbit motor scooter but the firm leapt directly to 3/4 scale replicas of larger Western cars. BMW’s postwar path was more gradual.

Italy’s Iso adapted their small motorcycle engine into a two-passenger bubble-shaped microcar called the Isetta in 1953. By 1955, this design was under license production by BMW. By ‘57, the bubble had been stretched to accommodate 4 passengers and became BMW’s first four-seater post-war economy car (that is, if I have correctly lifted these details from Wikipedia verbatim). By ‘59, the bubble had been successfully beaten into a modern car-shaped box, though still with a motorcycle engine in the back. This continued until around the dawn of Krautrock. Motorcycle to successful car in 6 years and then on the market for another 6. BMW sold almost 200 thousand of them at a time when its auto sales were around … 20o thousand. The car saved BMW. The i3 seems modestly more successful half a century later with 250 thousand sold over 8 years but this came at a time when BMW sold millions of cars.

Today’s Tern GSD electric cargo bike weighs around 75 pounds and carries a total payload of 365. I guess four of these could pick up post-COP defueled Elite and carry them around, sedan-chair style. Same as it ever was. With a few more revolutions of those cranks, the E-bikes may rise up and become the new Elites themselves. With the global temperature rise we’re in for, I hope the new Elites are air conditioned.

This post pairs well with “I’m So Green” / “Ege Bamyası“ / Can / 1972.