Click the photo to run the video – a commercial likely at the start

Why does someone with Progressive politics feature a video on his site starring one of the founders of the Tea Party movement? Because regardless of politics – and Rick Santelli is about 130 years behind the times – it’s hard to argue about mechanical and thermal facts. They’re reasonably immutable.

We can argue about the rate at which prices, costs, will change as something like this becomes a mainstream option. My usual comparison is with the first gen IBM PC for $3000 coming down to white box equivalent for a couple hundred bucks nowadays. This process is simple enough that Ford could do this on the production line for all their cars and the retail would be less than a hybrid conversion. Much less.

By the time you get to the end of the video you learn this cost about $8k and a home filling station would be about $5K. All today’s prices. That can be reduced 50-95% with the economies of scale. The finished truck runs at the equivalent of 80 mpg and a cost of 66¢ a gallon. That makes this worthwhile even at today’s prices.

I won’t wander off into the questions of which bridge to alternative energy gets us where and how soon. I’ll leave that – for now – to the folks who are members of the ecology “religion”. I’ve been an environmental activist for 45 years and haven’t seen the ivory tower crowd achieve a whole boatload more than folks who start out by trying to save people money in a reasonable timeframe – along with getting us to cleaner air and water.

The video is less than 12 minutes. I hope you have an adult attention span.