CAN THIS TRANSMISSION REALLY DOUBLE YOUR CAR'S MILEAGE?

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

[And by the way, where does bankrupt New York City get the money to throw around on such a goose chase? This is beginning to sound like one set of government con men conning another set of government con men into greater and greater flights of fancy — all at tax payers' expense, of course — while the lone, levelheaded genius with the real answer that everyone wants is left to cool his heels on the sidelines. -MOTHER.]

ERDA spokesmen, on the other hand, say that they're not committed to one type of energy-efficient vehicle (their unproven flywheel-storage car) any more than another (Carman's proven Inertial Storage Transmission automobiles which are running right now). They even admit they initially mishandled the whole IST situation and say they'd love to test Vince's cars now. The only trouble is that they just can't get Vince to agree on an acceptable location for that demonstration (the now-wary Carman insists that the test be conducted in Portland).

So where does that leave all the rest of us?

Well, the automobile companies certainly aren't beating Vince's door down for rights to manufacture his fantastic fuel saver. Apparently they'd rather not be bothered with tooling up for Carman's transmission and redesigning their auto bodies around the new drive system because that'd cost a lot of money and depress their profits for a few years.

And you—all you good people who'd like to cut your use of petroleum in half for the sake of both the environment and your pocketbooks—well, unless you're enough of a mechanical wizard to figure out how to construct and control an IST system of your own ... it leaves you just waiting.

ERDA'S SIDE OF THE STORY

MOTHER staffer Travis Brock called ERDA and talked to a Mr. Jerry Black ... who told him that Vincent Carman first presented his new transmission concept to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that the EPA referred Vince to ERDA in July of 1975. At about the same time, however, Congress decided that the National Bureau of Standards should screen all energy-related inventions before ERDA became involved with them.

For that reason, Carman and his transmission were passed right on to the National Bureau of Standards. And the NBS, after looking the idea over, passed Vince back to ERDA with a report that said the IST would save half of all the oil we import from the Arabs if it was installed on all the vehicles used in our urban traffic.

ERDA's people then said that such a figure couldn't possibly be right and ran some calculations of their own ... calculations which showed the IST would save only 3% of U.S. imported oil. This report was passed around the agency's lower levels where it was considered the end of the whole affair by most of ERDA's personnel ... until one of the higher-echelon people in the agency stumbled onto the paper. "Hey, wait a minute," he said. "It doesn't matter if this thing saves 50% or 3% or only 1% of the oil we import. It's our responsibility to get this transmission tested and that's what we should do. "

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print