Well how ’bout it? Long time activist and longer time Canadian crooner Neil Young has some advice for our friends in Detroit. But is it any good? At first he seems to follow the John Delorean/TTAC/Brock Yates theory that the problem with Detroit is the insular, glass tower culture. Though unlike Yates, the Godfather of Grunge wants the end result to be cars that don’t contribute to global warming. Neil Young does refreshingly allow that Americans want big (if not really big) cars and trucks. We just don’t want gas guzzlers. Fair enough. His solution, or at least part of it? Transition Rollers. Say what? A Transition Roller is a current car built without an engine or transmission. Say a Corvette sans LS3 and transaxle. This would keep American factories buzzing along (except for the engine and transmission plants).Then these rollas are converted to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles), just like Mr. Young’s Linc Volt. Yeah but…

Assuming for a second that this is easily accomplished (big assumption), cool. Except that electric cars are inherently flawed in that the power has to inefficiently come from somewhere. Most likely from burning coal or natural gas. Which seems to fly in the face of the platitudes that Young espouses throughout his article. Stuff like, “Auto manufacturers taking advantage of a government bailout must only sell clean and green vehicles that do not contribute to global warming. No more internal combustion engines that run exclusively on fossil fuels can be sold period.” Yeah, well, do you know where the juice comes from when you plug a plug into the wall? Me either. So if I plug my hypothetical Transition Roller, I mean SCEV, in to charge, how do I know I’m not stinking up the planet? Sadly, I don’t. Meaning that the following just can’t be true, “Unique wheel covers will identify these cars on the road so that others can see the great example a new car owner is making.” And it won’t be true until our grid is 100% green. Or Atomic. But that’s my opinion; click over to read Neil Young’s. [Source: The Huffington Post]