In the dank basement of McGill University's Macdonald Engineering Building, a century-old stone edifice erected when buggies ruled Montreal's then-muddy roads, Jeff Turner is designing a car befitting the 21st century.
As co-captain of McGill's Formula Hybrid Racing Team, the 24-year-old graduate student in mechanical engineering tweaks his computer models to determine how hot his electric car's lithium-ion battery can get - and, hence, how fast the vehicle can go - before bursting into flames.
The university is counting on Mr. Turner's car to lead McGill to its third consecutive victory in the annual Formula Hybrid International engineering competition among major U.S. and Canadian schools.
Mr. Turner, meanwhile, hopes that the experience eventually will help him land a job in the suddenly high-revving electric-car industry. "I'm interested in applying engineering to reduce the impact of people on the planet," he explains.
The 2009 edition of the hybrid contest will be held in early May, just a few days after Chrysler LLC - the sickest of the three big Detroit auto companies - is slated to find out whether it will live or die under a U.S. government plan announced this week. It's purely a coincidence, but one that underscores the extent to which the beleaguered North American auto makers are out of touch with Mr. Turner's generation, a cohort that is just entering its car-buying years.
From gas-powered subcompacts to fuel-efficient diesel engines to all-electric vehicles, the market for green cars is about to reach a tipping point. "If the car makers don't get it, they are not going to continue to exist," says Jay Friedland.
Mr. Friedland is the legislative director at Plug In America, an organization that advocates the shift to electrics.
Just how fast it happens, though, will depend on how governments on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border juggle a set of conflicting objectives.
On one hand, they are vowing to crack down on carbon-emitting activities such as driving gas guzzlers. They are promising to impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards on auto makers. They are pushing public transit like never before - witness Ontario's announcement this week of $9-billion (all figures in Canadian dollars except as noted) in new investments in light-rail projects in Toronto - and shaping consumer behaviour with incentives aimed at encouraging environmentally friendly choices.
To Mr. Turner's thinking, "what the government can do is increase the demand for these fuel-efficient vehicles we should be buying. If that involves a gas tax that is used to support further developments in technology, then that's an ideal scenario."
On the other hand, the same governments are propping up Chrysler and General Motors Corp. with billions of dollars in order to save jobs. Staving off the car companies' collapse revolves around getting consumers to buy more of the larger vehicles that dominate the companies' current offerings, emissions be damned.
In the throes of a deep recession, it's hard to fault governments for wanting to save jobs. And no one doubts what is at stake. In Canada alone, GM and Chrysler employ almost 25,000 people. Their collapse would strip bare the chassis of the entire Canadian automotive sector, which employs more than 150,000 and in its heyday generated an annual $80-billion.
On Monday, the U.S., Canadian and Ontario governments gave Chrysler - now on artificial respiration thanks to more than $5-billion in government loans - a month to complete a deal that would see Italian auto maker Fiat SpA invest in the company.
If it completes the deal, Chrysler would be eligible for billions more in government aid. If it doesn't, it could be headed for the junkyard.
General Motors may not be as close to the scrap heap as Chrysler. But it, too, is now living off the state's teat. Since December, it has been promised $16.5-billion from Washington and $3-billion from Ottawa and Queen's Park to keep it going until the end of May. By then, it must file a new "viability plan" with all three governments in order to tap as much as $20-billion more in public money. Either way, it might still face a stint in U.S. bankruptcy court.
Policy paradox
