'Cool Cars' Guaranteed To Make You Hot Under The Collar

I admit it. I like electronic gizmos. When I’m not driving (and even sometimes when I am), my BlackBerry is never more than an index finger away. In the car, I can’t go a mile without scanning for an Old Gold hit that takes me back to the “Good Old Days” on my Sirius-XM satellite radio system. I use my GPS system a lot (though less often than my wife would like me to, but I’m a man and I hate to admit I don’t know where I’m going). I pay for all these gadgets, and woe be unto the person who tries to take them from me.

The California Air Resources Board (“CARB” to those folks who love acronyms) is considering regulations that would cause serious disruptions to electronic devices being transmitted from a vehicle, and for devices in the vehicle trying to receive electronic signals. The regulations that would do this are included in a program cleverly called “Cool Cars,” which would require all cars sold in the Golden State starting in 2012 to have their windows coated with a metal-oxide based glazing. It is this process that would wreck havoc with electronic devices in those vehicles.

All this is the result of California’s fixation with so-called “global warming” and the state’s obsession with attempting to reduce carbon emissions. Obviously, these folks at CARB haven’t seen the scientific evidence that carbon dioxide makes up at most 4% of the entire “greenhouse gas” layer in our atmosphere; and of that 4%, all of mankind’s activities (yes, including operating internal combustion engines) accounts for only about three or four percent. This means that mankind is guilty of producing only between .12 and .16 percent of greenhouse gasses. Not the dire emergency the greenies would have us believe it to be; but then again, why let scientific facts serve as a speed bump on the way to the complete Nanny State.

Thus, CARB bureaucrats have come up with a delightfully un-scientific plan based on the following linear argument. If vehicle glass windows are coated with an expensive, high-tech metal oxide glazing, this will significantly reduce the amount of solar heat that radiates into the vehicle. The interior of those vehicles will therefore be significantly cooler. This in turn will cause the vehicle occupants to use the vehicle’s air conditioner less. This in turn will reduce the fuel consumed by the vehicle; which will lower carbon emissions; which will lower greenhouse gasses. And the world will be saved! Hallelujah.

We’ve been down this road before; though apparently the CARB people haven’t.

During the 1970s gas crisis, we were told that by using the a/c in our cars less, our cars would consume less fuel and we would therefore have to buy less gas. This would render our nation less reliant on Middle East oil. We’ve all seen how well that worked.

Toyota, one of Japan’s largest car manufacturers, tried this glazing business back in the late 1980s and early 90s. It didn’t work, and they jettisoned the idea. Foreign vehicle manufacturers recently have urged CARB not to make the same costly mistake in 2010 that Toyota made a generation ago.

But worse than the nonsense that the atmosphere will be saved if only vehicle windows were glazed with metal oxide particles, is the very real problems this process would cause to the electronic devices that are in many respects not simply conveniences, but safety equipment in late model cars and trucks.

It’s not just the driver whose expensive satellite radio and GPS system fails to work who will be affected by the CARB Cool Cars proposal if it goes into effect. The problem goes far beyond simple convenience or economics (though those are important reasons to oppose what CARB is proposing). It can mean the difference between life and death. Will CARB step up to the plate and admit liability to the person who has been in an accident and who attempts unsuccessfully to use a cell phone, BlackBerry or built-in OnStar communications system to summon help; when that help doesn’t arrive because the signal didn’t go through, or the address data was jumbled because of interference from the metal oxide particles?

I doubt it would offer much solace to the driver sitting in that car waiting vainly for help to arrive, that he or she is sitting in a car slightly cooler than it would be if the “Cool Cars” coating had not been applied to the windows.

What will CARB tell California and federal law enforcement agencies, when the electronic locating devices they use with some frequency to track suspects’ vehicles, no longer provide discernible signals because the suspects are driving in “Cool Cars?” Perhaps agents of the California Bureau of Investigation & Intelligence or the FBI will shrug their shoulders and agree with CARB that it’s far more important to the state of California to have cars whose interiors are a few degrees cooler, than it is to be able to track terror suspects or organized crime figure en route to or from a heist. Perhaps; but I doubt it.

If California had a governor not hardwired to accept every hair brained scheme presented for his signature simply because it purports to limit guns and ammo, or promises to make the atmosphere freer of greenhouse gasses, perhaps the CARB Cool Cars proposal which is to be finalized late this month would be less worrisome. But the combination of a “cool” acronym, a “green” governor, and a regulatory mechanism with far too much time and money on its hands, is cause for very real concern.