Putting lipstick on a pig

Though I was new to the country, I immediately latched on to following American politics for all the drama that it provided.  When the campaign for the 1992 elections got underway, I was a seasoned pro compared to most Americans.

One of my favorites during that campaign was not a candidate but one who was gifted with awesome rhetoric and the sarcastic lines that she delivered with a deadpan and a sharp twinkle in her eyes--Ann Richards.

Sharply critical of President Bush's (the father, not the son) decision to send US naval ships to protect oil  tankers in the Middle East, Richards said "you can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig."

While a few Americans may have been familiar with a version or two of that idiom, Richards saying that was the first time ever I had come across that expression and I loved it.  Of course, Richards saying that with her Texas twang and with an impeccable timing for the punch to land made it all the more exciting.

So, by the time Barack Obama used that expression of putting lipstick on a pig--it was during his first presidential campaign--I was familiar with it being a rhetorical ploy that never fails to excite the audience.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are nothing but vehicles with lipstick on the problems that vehicles are.

Four months ago, I blogged about the death of the small car market here in the US. The four-door hatchback, Honda Fit, that we rely on is no longer sold because Americans want bigger and bigger and bigger vehicles.  I wrote there that it is nothing but evidence of how the market system works.  The manufacturers are not to be blamed when American consumers are making it clear that they want bigger and even bigger!

This is why even in the EV market, the electric pickup truck was always talked about as the game changer for the EV industry.  Because, if those massive pickup trucks, and the SUVs that are nothing but "car-like" bodies on truck frames (talk about lipstick on a pig!) can become electric, then Americans will become gung-ho about EVs. 

But, what if the problem is not gasoline-powered vehicles vs. EVs, but the very fact that we have too many vehicles and that they are also huge?

This op-ed in MIT Technology Review reminds me about something that I had forgotten.  A year ago, President Biden went to Detroit to talk up the infrastructure spending that has been passed.

When Biden arrived at General Motors, he jumped behind the wheel not of a Bolt, the company’s electric subcompact car, but the new Hummer EV, a vehicle that’s the embodiment of everything wrong with the trajectory of vehicle design in the past couple of decades. After taking it for a spin, he declared, “That Hummer’s one hell of a vehicle.” Days later, GM announced that Biden’s publicity stunt had boosted reservations for the massive vehicles, so we’re likely to see more of them on the road.

A hummer that is powered by a battery pack is still a Hummer.  It is a bright red lipstick on a big fat pig!

The opinion essay continues:

EVs are often termed “zero-emission” vehicles because they produce no tailpipe emissions. But that doesn’t mean they are clean. Their large batteries require a lot of resource extraction from mines around the world, with significant environmental and human consequences that include poisoning water supplies, increasing rates of cancer and lung disease, and even making use of child labor. If we’re to embrace the transition being sold to us—one that relies heavily on electrifying personal vehicles—demand for key minerals will soar by 2040, according to the IEA, with an estimated 4,200% increase for lithium alone. The batteries in increasingly massive electric trucks and SUVs must be much larger than those needed to propel small cars or even e-bikes, which are not the focus of American policymakers or industry players. (They’d be far less profitable.)

The American fascination, fixation, on trucks and SUVs is why the Honda Fit is no longer sold here in the US.  A Honda Fit with a battery pack will not sell either, when consumers prefer a Honda Pilot with a battery pack instead.

The trend toward larger vehicles has had bad consequences for both road safety and the environment. Continuing  it through the transition to electric vehicles means that EVs will require bigger batteries, and thus more minerals will have to be mined to power them. But there are other options that can address some of those problems. 

As the shift to EVs accelerates and commodity prices increase, there’s good reason to promote smaller cars that cost less, require smaller batteries, are better suited for the trips most people take, and pose less of a threat to pedestrians.

To use the line that Dana Carvey often employed in his fantastic comedic impressions of President Bush, "not gonna do it."  Neither the industry nor the government (at any level) will work towards policies that promote small cars, public transit, denser cities, and a whole lot more that we need to do in order to address climate change.  Instead, we will spend a lot of money putting lipsticks on big fat pigs!

(I couldn't track down a short clip of Ann Richards delivering the lipstick line.  So, instead, I offer you the awesome one that made me absolutely thrilled with American politics when she addressed the Democratic convention in 1988)