Charging Full Speed Ahead, CNN Features Video on ‘E-ways’
It doesn’t seem to matter what consumers think about electric cars, the media can’t stop talking about them.
CNN recharged the topic on March 15 in a video package entitled “When the road charges your electric car.”
In that video for the “tech” section of its website, CNN Money reporter
David Goldman interviewed Mitchell Olszewski of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory on a (at this point mostly hypothetical) concept for charging
electric car batteries by installing magnetic coils in roads.
The
coils would generate a magnetic field when another coil, on the
underside of an electric car, passed over it, which could be converted
into energy to power the car. According to Olszewski, this could solve
the problem of heavy batteries in electric cars and low limits to the
distance that can be driven by such vehicles. The final version of this
technology is still at least 12 to 18 months away.
The
video felt more like a thinly veiled advertisement than a news package,
especially given its one-sided nature. Only Olszewski was interviewed,
no hard questions were asked and no critics were included to point out
potential problems with the idea.
At
least Goldman asked about cost. According to Olszewski, the
installation of these coils would cost somewhere around $800,000 per
mile of road for an “E-way.” But it was unclear whether that is on top
of the millions it already costs to build highways. Still Olszewski
thinks such roads are a good idea: “We believe that investing that kind
of money to free us from the dependency on oil is probably a fairly wise
investment. Goldman didn’t challenge that view or supply any rebuttal.
Taxpayers;
however, might disagree. CNN failed to mention that Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (which is itself a leftover from the Manhattan project) is
funded by the Department of Energy and therefore, tax dollars.
This
kind of one-sided reporting on “green” energy projects and electric
cars in particular is common in the media. Back in 2010, the Business
and Media Institute found that ABC, CBS and NBC were shamelessly
continuing to cheer the rise of the electric car and the fall of the
SUV, even while sales reflected the exact opposite.
