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 Reverend Larry Rice welcomes women and children to a hot dinner Tuesday, May 19, 2009, at New Life Evangeslistic Center in Cape Girardeau. (Kit Doyle) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo] |
Familiar to many in Missouri, his personality is being introduced to Cape Girardeau. City leaders have aligned politicians, church leaders, community groups and veterans organizations in opposition to his plan to use the Broadway federal building to aid the homeless. Rice fights back by attacking the motives of those who oppose him, accusing them of blindness to job losses, evictions and foreclosures.
A longtime fixture on the Missouri social welfare scene, Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center has a statewide network that includes nine shelters, 19 broadcast stations and 11 "free stores."
Few who have worked with him over the years doubt he has a sincere concern for the poor and homeless. Many he has helped sing his praises. Ralph Case, former police chief of Times Beach, Mo., heaps praise on Rice as recalls the aid delivered during a 1982 flood. Case now runs the New Life free store and shelter in Van Buren, Mo.
Case is devoted to Rice and his mission. "He gets jumped on for doing what everybody should do," Case said. "You are supposed to help your brother."
 ABOVE: Larry and Deborah Rice eat dinner May 19 on the women and children's floor of the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis. [Click to enlarge] |
Bill Seidhoff, director of human services for St. Louis, said Rice has never participated in the city's Homeless Services Network. The network wants to limit the use of emergency shelters and favors moving people quickly into individual residences where clients receive intensive professional help to recover.
"He has just continued to resist any cooperative type ventures or coordinated approach in dealing with the homelessness problem," Seidhoff said. "That is a real limitation on our ability to address the homelessness problem here in the city of St. Louis."
That lack of cooperation has been noted in Cape Girardeau, where some homeless advocates say they were misrepresented or misquoted in Rice's application for the old federal building. Others are disappointed he didn't have more interaction with those in Cape Girardeau who are trying to meet the needs of the homeless. For instance, Thursday was the first time Rice had face-to-face interaction with the Cape Girardeau ministerial alliance.
Rice, these critics say, covets the publicity he finds in being controversial. "As far as my personal opinion is concerned, he is a megalomaniac," said Andy Martello, who lives a block from New Life's headquarters shelter at 1411 Locust St. in St. Louis. "Personally I think he is in it for himself to agitate and shake up the apple cart, if you will, because that is what he likes to do."
 Larry Rice waits for dinner Tuesday, May 19, 2009, at New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis. (Kit Doyle) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo] |
"It would impact the ability for us to feel comfortable and for investors and developers to feel comfortable with the area surrounding that," said Marla Mills, executive director of Old Town Cape.
Even if the worst fears about a homeless shelter on Broadway aren't realized, the mere presence of one will set back the DREAM plans, she said. "If we are all wrong and it would not have a negative image, it would take several years to know."
Rice's beginnings
Larry Rice says he felt his calling to aid the poor as a young Lutheran seminarian in the early 1970s. That theology didn't fit with his Gospel view. His search for a new way took him to an interdenominational school, then to the streets of St. Louis. With his wife, Penny, he began the work in a humble manner.
 RIGHT: Tom Branham edits video May 19 for Channel 24 KNLC at the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis. Branham, who came to the position through a job training course, has been with KNLC for 13 years. (KIT DOYLE ~ kdoyle@semissourian.com) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo] |
Penny Rice died in 2007. He remarried in February.
Rice opened his first shelter when he converted a YWCA in a deteriorating warehouse and office district. To the dismay of politicians, in the 1980s he took homeless people to camp on the lawn at city hall and to the steps of the Missouri State Capitol.
Rice still has a shelter in that converted YWCA, only now he is surrounded by buildings converted into luxury apartments. His building shows signs of heavy use. Men seeking emergency shelter sleep in a fourth-floor room crowded with steel bunk beds where the lights never go out because of security concerns.
Quarters there are better for women and children: bright colors, and sleeping areas with more comfortable beds.
Men in longer-term programs have small single or double rooms where they may keep personal belongings behind a door they can lock.
"I am very much aware, probably as much or more so than anyone, that what is involved is two things," Rice said. "You have to build credibility among the people who are homeless and you do that by being there with winter patrols. Be there with sandwiches when they are not ready to come into the shelter or blankets or anything else they need.
"And you always have programs available they can get into, like our 90-day and six-month program, our two-year program for the women, our veterans program for the men."
Looking long-term
His longer-term programs focus on two areas -- New Life's broadcast network of television and radio stations and a not-for-profit business called Missouri Renewable Energy. In each enterprise, Rice recruits the homeless, who volunteer to work for up to two years on the promise they will finish the training with a skill that can give them a job.
 Reverend Larry Rice, right, chats with Tom Branham, who came through Rice's career television training program at New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis. Branham has now been working with Channel 24 KNLC for 13 years. (Kit Doyle) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo] |
Working with a blender, Williams mixed oil, a lye solution and methanol. "There is a lot of opportunities out there for people skilled in this area. You can make you some money, so to speak."
Williams estimated that he makes 20 gallons of biodiesel weekly, fuel that is consumed in New Life vehicles. He does not receive a paycheck but has no complaints, he said.
Rice deflects criticism of his programs use of volunteer labor by calling it a fair trade -- he provides room, board and training in exchange for a long-term commitment from the homeless person. At broadcast stations, for example, "they are training with an engineer who goes out there, training and developing skills. It is a choice they have made. They don't have to do that, of course," Rice said.
Rice uses his television stations to seek donations, generate advertising revenue and raise his profile. He devotes air time to conditions in Missouri prisons. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1992 and governor in 2000.
 The Rev. Larry Rice is seen at the New Life Evangelistic Center in St. Louis, one of many operations he runs in Missouri. (Kit Doyle) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo] |
A $40 million value assigned to ministry assets in court papers filed by New Life attorneys in 2004 was based on the likely sale price of its broadcast stations, the financial statement said, and was probably excessive.
His ministry does not seek government grants.
When the Better Business Bureau evaluated Rice's operations in 2007, New Life did not meet nine of the 20 standards for accountability. Among other things, it lacked a budget, had board members who were also employees and did not evaluate its programs or Rice on a regular basis.
"After 37 years we don't have a budget because we don't know what needs we are going to encounter," Rice said. "We have a general budget, but we don't have one as precise and tight as they would like. As a living, viable functioning organization as opposed to a traditional, dry, dead one that you get pledges for, we have an organization that has operated by faith for many years."
Neighborhood effect
Larry Rice's good works aren't what create his most vehement opponents. And his business methods, which raise questions, also don't make him implacable enemies.
The people with the most intense dislike of New Life's operations are those who live, work or have interests nearby.
Andy Martello lives in a loft that costs $1,500 a month. From the rooftop patio area, complete with swimming pool, Martello can see the alley behind Rice's headquarters shelter. He recalls seeing people sleeping on mattresses under the fire escape, couples going into the portable toilets apparently for sexual encounters.
Martello records his experiences on a blog, martello.org. He posts pictures of the park where he cleaned up beer cans, liquor bottles and worse left by the homeless. During the day, when the shelter is not open, the homeless are nearby, some in the park. He and his neighbors have painted the benches, planted flowers and created a fenced dog run.
"I just want a nice, clean, safe neighborhood," Martello said as he led a walking tour. He shows visitors where the homeless sun themselves, use a nearby library bathroom to wash their socks and themselves and linger on hot days.
"If you had a neighbor with a broken window, wouldn't you ask him to fix it?" Martello said. "I can't imagine if you were living in a small town and your neighbors had the cops, fire trucks and ambulances there every single day that you wouldn't have an issue with that."
Roger Wood was sitting on a bench in Lucas Park the day Martello showed visitors around. He said he was on the streets for the first time since 1993. "I just had a bad situation this month," Wood said. "I got to learn how to survive out here again."
Wood obviously knows the system. He can stay with Rice for 14 days, then must not return for 30. At 58, he said it would be rough on the streets without New Life's ministry.
He claimed a disability, losing his job due to injury. He spends his days, he said, in the park. "What I really need is a bus pass to get around."
Wood doesn't blame anyone for his plight. "I'm grown. I got myself in this s---. I ain't gonna say I don't need help, but I got a lot of pride."
Over the past 15 months, big incidents at the shelter near Martello's apartment were a fatal stabbing and a savage beating of a woman who has worked for New Life for five years. Smaller incidents happen often, making it a top location for police calls in the city. Martello said he was mugged last week, punched twice.
The homeless that Rice attracts, Martello said, "flaunt society and live by their own rules. Fostering and enabling that kind of behavior is just socially unacceptable. You are always going to have that in a big city, but to enable it, to promote it and kind of glorify in it isn't conducive to a neighborhood. And that is what this is, a neighborhood."
The woman hospitalized after the beating said she's committed to Rice and his work. Virginia Shelly, 67, coordinator of the ladies and babies program at the shelter, said she takes guidance from chapter 58 of Isaiah, which tells the faithful to share their food with the hungry, provide shelter to wanderers and clothe the naked.
"I lived a luxurious life," Shelly said. "God asked me to live as they do."
Shelly, who has worked for Rice for five years, said she prays for her attacker. "I am sure she has had a lot of emotional trauma."
Level of services
In Springfield, Mo., Mary Byrne has five three-ring binders filled with material on Rice and New Life Evangelistic Center. Byrne is a member of the site council at Springfield Central High School. The school is adjacent to Rice's newest operation, a homeless outreach center in a former Social Security building given to Rice last year.
She, too, focuses on violence and potential for violence among the homeless Rice attracts. But she also opposes Rice because she feels his programs are designed to sustain the ministry. New Life has not gone through training with the state for certification as a religious-based counseling service, nor does it employ licensed social workers, Byrne has learned. The former homeless helping the current homeless can only provide so much in the way of effective help, she said.
"I understand Rev. Rice's argument that it is better to keep people off the street," she said of his long-term programs. "But the real question is, what is the quality of the services provided and what is the risk factor involved? The answer is that the services are not on par with organizations that provide professional services. Even if they are public services, they have to be qualified professionals."
The Social Security building is a horrible place to have regular visits from large numbers of homeless, Byrne said. The high school doors must remain unlocked due to fire codes. Springfield has also seen severe violent crime in a facility operated by New Life. The former manager of the free store that was being used as an unauthorized shelter was recently convicted of a brutal rape.
"That a man who was a man of the cloth, understanding the vulnerability of children and the high-risk nature of the population he is serving, would unduly put children at risk, I don't understand."
Poor vs. professional
Rice defends his programs as effective. He said the people serving the homeless, many formerly homeless themselves, are more dedicated than degreed professionals.
"It is the open and creative solution," Rice said. "Instead of seeing them as clients and having ourselves on a pedestal here, they become one. This thing really works. They have an empathy, a compassion, a caringness that you don't see in the 9-to-5 operator who is often in it only for the money."
But Rice's refusal to take part in homelessness strategy sessions is a troubling aspect of his ministry and one that should make Cape Girardeau take notice, Seidhoff said.
"Is he really providing those things that are going to remedy the homelessness problem or is it just perpetuating a certain lifestyle or a certain existence that is detrimental to individuals and the community?" Seidhoff said.
New methods and new programs make it easier to get off the streets, he said. Quick exits from emergency shelters, transitional housing with intense counseling, what is known as permanent supportive housing, is the city's plan, he said.
In fact, it is the size and effectiveness of those programs that Rice said led him to drop a bid for a federal building in St. Louis. And, Rice added, he wants to model his Cape Girardeau program on the effective St. Louis effort. He said he's willing to cooperate with other providers but won't compromise on the federal building.
It is his ace. As long as he provides services for 30 years, Uncle Sam won't let any local opposition drive him out, he said.
Rice briefly operated a shelter in Cape Girardeau in the early 1990s. He left, he said, because he felt driven away. The way he was treated then, Rice said, is the way the city treats homeless individuals now, drumming them out of town.
"You go in as a private agency and people don't want you there. Then there is a subconscious pressure to always try to drive you out of town and get you out of town," Rice said. "You have a federal building, they can't take it away from you by eminent domain. You are there under the auspices of the federal government."
In the 1980s, Rice could be seen in the corridors of the Missouri Capitol Building in ill-fitting suits that came from his donations. The vehicles he drove were tired station wagons, also donations.
Today his clothes are a little nicer and his car is a newer Volkswagen. His holdings are larger, and he has a firmer base than those years as he was building the ministry.
But Rice carries on. And he makes the homeless and the poor both his sword and shield.
"The war on poverty has become a war on the impoverished," he said.
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I'm not saying that a homeless shelter could or should be in the federal building or downtown area. Those opposing the idea completely --- what about Teen Challenge? Since their facility is "out of sight/out of mind" would they be so welcomed in our community to to raise and sell strawberries, sell firewood, and perform beautiful music IF they were housed in the federal building instead? I do wonder! After all, they are drug addicts and/or alcholholics...right? I'm sure the Teen Challenge program uses unconventional means to change the lives of these young men, but it works! The unconventional means being used is the same of Larry Rice --- hard work, and a lot of faith!
During the ice storm, I learned an awful lot about the red tape of going through the proper channels to take food to the hungry in the Bootheel. A nationally recognized charitable organization had such stringent guidelines and rules that they were actually blind to the needs of those people, because they were too busy following their strategic plan. Sometimes, you just have to do what needs to be done, especially when people are hungry and need a roof over their heads. It's not rocket science!
The BIG difference between Teen Challenge and New Life is that Teen Challenge works. Teen Challenge gives counseling to their people in order to help them over come their addictions....New Life just gives them a place to sleep- no counseling. Teen Challenge has a wonderful track record and works very well with other community organizations and churches...New Life does not and will not work with other churches- Rice only wants to glorify himself. I don't think the people of Cape Girardeau would not object to Teen Challenge using the building (not as a homeless shelter but for their ministry or offices). We do however object to Rice because his track record is BAD!
I am very proud of the reporting the SEMissourian has been doing regarding this issue. It is by far the best reporting I have ever seen ya'll do!
Mr. Rice,
Look at what you have done to Lucas Park. We need to clean up our public places as all citizens are entitled to feel perfectly safe in public. The presence of real homeless people is not currently prevalent in Cape Girardeau. Sure, you might see a hitchhiker hanging around I-55 on the west side of town, but that's about it.
Hiding places like a big railyards--some with lots of bridges, a bunch of vacated buildings, the site of a failed large housing project, and tunnels are nonexistent in Cape Girardeau. Cape Giradeau is small and a homeless shelter on Broadway will contaminate the area that is supposed to be becoming revitalized. Downtown Cape has some great potential that is slowly being realized and the front door of the old federal building is 1,000 feet from Main St. and a quarter-mile from the Broadway flood wall gate.
If you persist on pursuing this even further, do us all a favor and get together with Teen Challenge and Gary Brothers and build/acquire a homeless shelter in an out-of-the-way place. Of course, it would be preferable if you would just drop this subject and permanently leave Cape Girardeau.
I know that we need a sensible place to house people who are temporarily homeless, but the probability of attracting unwanted personalities and wanderers is just too great. Turning the old federal building in Cape Girardeau into a shelter is like building a shelter next door to Plaza Frontenac in Frontenac, Missouri. There are just places where you don't put homeless shelters and one does not belong in downtown Cape.
"There are just places where you don't put homeless shelters and one does not belong in downtown Cape."
We don't need or want one ANYWHERE in Cape. It could end up next too someone elses house! Would you want it next to you?
lol
A homeless shelter next door would be a wash in my South St. Louis neighborhood... people of certain races are stereotyped for a reason. The people who are committed to being homeless are mostly decent folk, but there's only one who can spoil the whole thing.
One of the most unfortunate things that I am employed to do is inform true homeless people that they are going to lose their home due to construction. Without a doubt, unwanted, unsightly, and preceptively unsafe crowds congregate around shelters--and that, im my mind, is the primary reason why the old federal building should become something far more upscale.
In terms of reality, I feel that a homeless shelter is inevitable somewhere around Cape sometime in the future. If Larry Rice continues to campaign down there, he'll eventually win. In the meantime, it would be feasible for the persistent people of the community to brainstorm alternate scenarios.
I'd campaign to renovate the old federal building into a proper museum. Locate Larry Rice somewhere out in the boonies.
Rev rice:
IF there is a homeless problem in Cape Girardeau, WE (CAPE GIRARDEAU) WILL TAKE CARE OF IT!!!!
God bless you for your hard work for homeless family's.We here in cape help our own through Angel ministeries,Salvation Army,and Just about all of our Chruches.
We are trying to fix up downtown not bring it down.We dont need more crime,more drugs,more gangs and thats what this will bring.Remember the railroad killer that was around this area in 1999? An Innocent person got killed because someone thought it was him at their door. What happens if some one gets killed again mistaken for a drugged out rail car jumper.Or a real rail car jumper hurts or rapes someone?
We don't need this,we don't need you,get out of our town and stay out.
The city of Cape Girardeau does not need a homeless shelter in a building the size of the old Federal building. That is absolutely absurd to even think that that large building could be turned into a homeless shelter!! There are plenty of resources in this city for the truly homeless. We cannot consider the people hanging out near the intersections along Interstate-55 homeless people. Most of those people choose that type of life and travel from city to city begging for money and in fact, the most of them have motel rooms already and beg for money in order to purchase alcohol. That is their way of life! The government does not need to hand over the keys to that large building to Rice or anyone else for free. I will assure you that if the folks who stay in the homeless shelters had to work in order to stay there, there would certainly be VACANCY signs flashing out front. Again, I am supportive of programs that help people who truly need the help short term, but everyone should be responsible and pay their own way and secure a job!
I have followed every arcticle written regarding Larry, the NLEC and the Homeless shelter being located in the Old Federal Building in downtown Cape. A decent, intelligent, fair and understanding human being would understand the right place to initiate this type of helpful entity. Obviously Mr Rice could care less if this is the right or wrong place.... Is it "FREE" is obviously the attractor factor for Larry, ( we have to loose the Rev it doesn't pertain to this type of individual.) His motives are clear and self serving..... Monentary gain for himself.... Period... It will be the end of Cape ( Downtown Cape) and ALL that we have hoped for Downtown Cape. Take the time before you respond to this and investigate his track record, read it, and you will know, This is a BAD BAD situation ,,,,
and one that absolutely has to be defeated...
Good for you, bigdogg!
I grew up in Cape and returned to the area about a year ago. My narrow minded perspective that i was raised with in this area changed when I lived in several different states and saw the rest of the world. Earlier this year I attempted to help a homeless person obtain housing. This person is disabled. We were informed by the housing authorities that "the list closed yesterday". They had no idea when this so-called list would, if ever, reopen. The woman in the office was rude and had a smirk on her face when I attempted to talk to her. This attitude is pervasive in this ultra ultra conservative area that seems to care little for the plight of the plight of the less fortunate.
Open your minds and hearts throughout the week, not just during your obligatory 2 hours on Sunday mornings.
Why don't you last two posters open your eyes? If it is the will of God it will happen. I firmly believe it is not in God's will for Rice to get that building. He is rude, stubborn, and a poor excuse for a preacher.
He's just a tv preacher who has found a loophole and continues to exploit it.
Re "Alternative Energy"-
"We" decidedly do not need some grand government- or corporate- collectivized initiative to harness solar, wind, and other "alternative" power sources in a manner that implicitly perpetuates a centralized / utilitized / commoditized economic model of energy supply! The object of the game here is not merely to keep everyone endlessly enthralled and addictively dependent on resources "channeled" to them for the "profit" of some corporate economic empire. What "we" really need is to revert back in a direction of much more diffuse, distributed opportunistic gathering (rather than industrially mass-"producing" and re-"marketing") the energy that rains down on us all the time for free!
That would mean, for example, actually promoting and supporting co-generation of electrical power by means of smaller solar/wind systems that would be affordable to large numbers of people --- for whom there would then be a reliable expectation of a reasonable return on capital invested to make genuinely constructive, real contributions to the economy. (Consider, for example, the German practice of regulating the power companies in such a manner as to assure that co-generated power will be fairly compensated, so that people can expect a predictable yield on investments made.) Much more generally, "we" really need to actually promote and encourage broad public technological understanding and initiative among "We the People" regarding many such things. But for all the blather about "alternative energy" that fills the airwaves, there is evidently precious little of any such thing as that actually happening!
General recognition of some very unpalatable technological / political realities is urgently needed --- most notably the fundamental fact that (as is well known, initially by Hubbert-inspired statistical analysis, now long refined and confirmed by explicit high-tech mapping), that "we" have by now exhausted about 70% of this nation's own original Providential endowment of raw OIL--- particularly the "easy" stuff! Most of what now still remains is found in low-capacity (a few barrels per day) "stripper" wells (compared to thousands-of-barrels-per-day flow rates for many wells elsewhere around the world), or underwater, or north of the Arctic Circle, or way deep. Such oil is expensive to extract. The largest remaining reserve in the "lower 48" is one up in the Dakotas thought to contain about 4 billion barrels --- which surely sounds big to most people. But the problems (and indeed the reasons why it has not already been tapped long ago!) are that (1) even if it were "produced", that is only about a half-year's supply at current usage rates, and (2) it lies four miles deep! It would not be possible to shave very much (if anything) off the pump price of a gallon of gas by resorting to "our own" expensive residual remaining resources per all the calls to "drill, baby, drill".
What people desperately need to do is to "tune in" to the technological alternatives!
I believe the most basic and widest-reaching area of such needed understanding is the whole nascent architectural-paradigm change that is now finally forthcoming (though only painfully slowly and grudgingly) in the automotive technology domain. This whole nation desperately needs to "wrap its head around" at least the rough outlines of that general initiative. And it very much needs to broadly understand that technological alternatives that could have enabled "us" (indeed, long ago now already!) to overcome "our" addictive dependency on other peoples' oil resources already are in fact well in hand --- and indeed could and should have been seriously pursued and implemented starting many years earlier!
They also need to face up to the deeply abhorrent reality that had the whole initiative been intelligently and prudently undertaken and implemented by "our" marvelous misguided (or maybe in many cases more like misbegotten!) mis"leadership" --- which is an indictment intended to extend to not just that of the "political" variety (of both "stripes"), but more broadly to that of "our" whole current economic dis"order"(!): e.g. many "captains" of industry, institutions, and "finance" --- a couple of whole entire very expensive wars, entailing the deaths of about a million or so Iraqis (not to mention those of quite a few thousand Americans as well) --- which are what have now actually sapped the economic strength of and caused the great financial damage to the membership of this society that we now witness daily --- could simply have been avoided! Moreover, the culprits in all of this have been not just "King" Georgie and his Crackpot Cabal of NeoConMen. Actually all that blood now stains all of "our" hands --- since "we" by and large have generally acquiesced in the whole obscenity. Ultimately, the indispensable prerequisite, and the responsibility, for a misguided / misbegotten mis"leadership" rests with its foolish followership!
The essence of the automotive architectural paradigm conversion now finally (barely) underway is this:
The "chimera" (i.e. a fusion of two distinct species) automotive architecture, exemplified by the Chevrolet Volt (which is really just a prototype), and expected to soon be extended to the Cadillac and Buick as well, combines the idea of electric power together with the internal-combustion engine running on gasoline (or whatever) in a way that totally "changes the game". In the Volt, and also in the European initiative (jovially dubbed the Ampere) along the same lines --- which, with GM in turmoil, is now running ahead in the "development Derby"(!) --- as well as other such initiatives undoubtedly underway in China, India, and Japan, a battery carries the car for some number of miles (40, in the case of the Volt). Thereafter, when that battery runs down the ICE kicks in (seamlessly). But that engine does not power the car in the conventional manner to which people have become inured over the course of the last century. For it does not couple power to the drive wheels directly through the medium of a mechanical transmission and drive train! Rather, it drives an electric generator, which then powers the same electric drive motors that had been supplied by the battery until it ran down.
Now the thing is, fully three-fourths of all personal automobile usage by people in this country "fits" within a 40-mile "power budget"! You plug the car into the wall overnight, and then go to work, the store, bank, post office, etc. in the morning and return home and plug it back in again --- the gasoline engine never runs! Ergo --- you flat-out eliminate fully three-fourths of all those bazillions of barrels of oil that are imported to be refined into gasoline to brainlessly burn as a mere fuel to power our personal automobiles. And for all those other commercial fleet heavy vehicles (trucks, etc.), we have extensive reserves of natural gas and/or methane (much of it left over as a byproduct of oil and coal production) to serve as a "bridge" fuel until hydrogen technology eventually takes over. And yes, you do indeed also eliminate an awful lot of economic and industrial structure, process, jobs, etc. that have grown up in connection with the current outmoded technology. But you replace what is eliminated by new alternatives! (Does no one recall the examples of the demise of the whaling and buggy whip industries?)
Removing even just a substantial fraction of the "bidding pressure" that drives/shores up the price of the world's steadily-declining supplies of oil would go a long way toward re-balancing "our" economy (and others) at much lower levels of the frantic pursuit of "wealth", meeting the real needs of real people at substantially lower cost. And that would also remove a corresponding fraction of the impetus to many people to very foolishly, expensively, and wastefully fight over the stuff!
Consider: at contemporary rates, about $0.89 worth of "grid" electricity "fills" the Volt's battery. And if the intermittent / variable power provided by "home" solar- and/or wind- power generation were harnessed (generally supplemented as needed by power drawn from the grid) that cost could drop all the way to zero! It would not be difficult to devise a charging system that would target for a full battery by a pre-designated time of day, drawing on "free" power as much as possible and falling back to the grid only to the extent (if any) necessary to meet the demand by the specified target time.(The battery simply does not "care" if it is charged intermittently or variably from solar- and/or wind- power sources, as long as it gets "filled up" on time! An "electric car" system could thus make good use of "free" power that is readily available but which is not steady enough for many other applications.) But even at full (contemporary) electric utility rates, eight such charges, costing $7.12, would provide about the same number of miles driven (320) as does a tank of gasoline burned in the "conventional" way that costs about four times as much --- and indeed vastly more, really, if an honest accounting were being done that would recognize and factor in all the ancillary (e.g. all those military!) costs of expropriating, extracting, transporting, distributing, and "marketing" the underlying oil --- and also the "security" costs of "defending" against "al-Qaeda" or other suicide bombers who are goaded by "our" imperialism to aspire to martyrdom!
For the record, by the way, the overall fuel efficiency of the Chevy Volt, as computed by the EPA, works out to be about 230(!) miles per gallon!!
Moreover, such vehicles can obviously ultimately be manufactured at substantially lower cost than can those long constructed according to the "conventional" architecture. The "ICE half" of the "chimera" can be built much more simply and inexpensively than power trains of the present design --- for one simply dispenses with the whole complex, expensive, troublesome transmission and drive train! Moreover, when it is running at all, the ICE operates at much more nearly constant speed (since all it does is to drive a generator --- it does not have to speed up and slow down all the time!). It is thus possible to optimize its performance over a much narrower operating-condition range --- which has major implications vis-a-vis efficiency, simplification, and cost reduction of engine monitoring and pollution control systems, and also the cooling system (if any is needed at all --- with much of any waste heat being spread out, disbursed off among the at-least-somewhat-physically-separated generator and the electric drive motors located off at the wheels, air-cooling of the engine itself may well in general be sufficient).
But all of this is now being misrepresented to basically technologically ignorant folks as "exotic, new" technology. (Note that I did not say stupid people; rather, I said ignorant. That differentiates intellectual deficiency from a lack of basic information and understanding, which can afflict even the very highly intelligent!) And the folks at GM now want to charge $40K for their prototype, "futuristic" system. But the actual reality of things is that it is genuinely simpler, and there is nothing really "new" about any of it!
In fact, the "electric car" has been around since the earliest days of the automobile. And for those who imagine that an electric car cannot get beyond 30 miles per hour or get out of the back yard --- well be advised! The speed record for electric-powered vehicles out at the Bonneville Salt Flats these days stands in excess of 400 miles an hour! And moreover, the drive motors in say (for example) a railroad locomotive are in fact electric motors. One can make them as fast and powerful as one might like!
Indeed, the whole "fallback half" of the "chimera" automotive architecture really is just the drive paradigm of the Diesel-electric locomotive --- and also that of large ships on the high seas! The concept was developed and implemented many years ago now already, for much heavier-duty platforms than that of the mere automobile! The biggest behemoths running around all over the face of the planet employ it, and have done so for a very long time. So there cannot now be --- and for a long time now already could not have been, any doubts about technological feasibility!
By the way, the reality of things comes about for a basic, easily-understandable reason. An ICE --- unlike (appropriately designed) electric motors --- simply cannot operate and deliver torque all the way down to zero RPM! You slow it down all the way to a stop and it dies! But any transportation-system vehicle has to be able to start and stop! In the lightweight platform of the mere automobile, that shortcoming of the ICE is overcome by means of a transmission (manual or automatic) --- which implies, when first starting up and at the lowest speeds, by means of some kind of friction-based clutch. But try that in a really heavy-duty system like a locomotive pulling 100 loaded freight cars, or a Princess cruise liner! For really heavy loads, the electric-drive paradigm, using magnetic force, had to be developed --- and indeed it was, many years ago now already! (And there simply is no transmission / clutch in a Diesel-electric locomotive!)
The only thing that is somewhat new in the electric / ICE automotive "Chimera" architecture is the battery technology. But that too is really not nearly so "exotic" as it is being made out to be! The Chevy (/Cadillac/Buick) Volt has been engineered to use "Lithium-ion" batteries --- which are actually a synthesized-hydrogen-fuel system disguised in the form of an electrical cell. "Metal-hydride" materials involve anhydride->hydride physical (i.e. not chemical --- and hence much "looser") binding of free hydrogen until/while it reacts chemically (reversibly) with another species to form a lower-energy-state compound --- with the electrons exchanged in the reaction pushing their way on around through an external circuit, delivering the energy differential liberated thereby as they go. (Note that the anhydride "sponge" binder matrix itself is not consumed!) Lithium, being significantly lighter than nickel, can bind more hydrogen and thus "pack" more energy per kilo of weight of the battery, so it is preferable. But regrettably, there simply is not enough lithium in the world to broadly employ it in mass fleets of automobiles! Ultimately, it will be necessary to fall back to the "number two choice", nickel --- which is much more plentiful and cheaper. (And I have also read somewhere that there has been some research devoted to developing some sort of ceramic anhydride, which could possibly lead to the creation of one or more other alternatives. Also, by the way, both lithium and nickel are also used in "direct-burn"-hydrogen fuel-containment safety systems --- having been first so employed by then-Daimler-Benz, working under German Government sponsorship (in the form of a one-year feasibility-demonstration contract) to run a fleet of buses in the city of Frankfort way back in 1979-80! But to this day most people over here do not seem to know anything about that whole subject --- and for the most part evidently really don't want to!)
Now over half the "producible" lithium in the world is to be found in a volcanic-caldera dry lakebed down in Bolivia. China has some, and there are just a couple of other known deposits of interest elsewhere. GM's infamous EV-1, its earlier "electric car" developed back in the early '90s, which was actually fabricated in pilot quantities and many of which were actually distributed on a "trial" basis and operated quite successfully, but were then later "mysteriously" recalled and obliterated (all but one irretrievably-disabled "museum copy" having been scandalously crushed --- all of which is documented in the recent movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" --- used nickel metal-hydride technology. And the Toyota Prius hybrid uses nickel-based technology. So probably the batteries that will eventually become widely available will have more like, say, a 30-mile intrinsic range rather than 40.
But there is another wrinkle yet to be layered into the picture --- regenerative braking! The idea here is to recapture a substantial fraction of the kinetic energy of the vehicle whenever it slows or stops, using that recovered energy to partially re-charge the batteries to assist in getting it back up to speed again on restarting --- in preference to brainlessly grinding brake pads against metal drums, wasting the car's energy of motion pushing against the earth and/or simply generating useless heat! In the world-renowned Toyota Prius that approach, layered onto a rather ordinary 22.5 miles-per-gallon-rated gasoline-powered ICE, succeeds in more than doubling the fuel efficiency to achieve (in my own personal experience --- I actually drove one for over a year) an overall effective mileage of 45-50 mpg. But there is nothing in the underlying concept that is in any way specific to the internal combustion engine! By the time regenerative braking has been married to any sort of "electric car", it should serve to about double the range of the battery! (Moreover, that technological extension will be easier to achieve in a fundamentally all-electric system than it is in "hybrid" architectures such as that of the Prius --- since the problem of having to continually synchronize two independent drive motors, one electric and one an ICE, is simply avoided.) That would suggest an effective charge-range, even using nickel hydride batteries, of perhaps 60 miles --- which sounds more like flatly eliminating perhaps about 80% or so of "our" addictive dependency on other peoples' oil in order to power our automobiles. And it all could and should have been done long ago now already!
So "We the People" should now not be beguiled by the gambit on which the folks at the "new" GM are evidently currently embarked, seeking to foist off on us all yet another addictive dependency on yet another scarce resource (that Lithium down in Bolivia!) by way of perpetuating their economic domination and the general culture of "corporatism"! It seems to me that a much less technologically ignorant general populace really should now be noisily demanding that the technological paradigm change that is already afoot should actually be carried all the way through to completion, directly and promptly --- to our benefit, and with the full understanding and informed popular consent of everybody!
Moreover, "we" as a nation really should get off our butts and embrace that "alternative" technology for ourselves, roll up our sleeves, crank up the now moribund Chrysler plant over here in Fenton, MO and lots of others elsewhere around this country, and get busy manufacturing such new-departure products to sell to each other and also to much of the rest of the world (before others do so unto us!).That is vastly preferable to foolishly trying to cling to older technology that is now outmoded to the point of being obsolete, or imagining that "we" can hold onto "our" place in the world by endlessly playing "financial engineering" games involving mere, incorporeal money, and/or by perpetually sending in troops at a huge cost in lives and the quality of life to others and inevitably also to many of "our"selves!
I sincerely wish the "Tea Party" crowd that seems to be so roundly dissatisfied with a great many things these days would actually "get it together" and develop a clear focus on what it is that is really so terribly wrong with this supposedly "superior" and "enlightened" society!
Frank Hummel Francis J. (Frank) Hummel
12/31/09