Driving on the Bridges We Build
By Ron Cogan, General Manager, GreenCar.com
By Ron Cogan
Welcome to the premier issue of Green Car Journal, a magazine that's been on my mind since my years at Motor Trend in the 1990s. There, like here, my focus was advanced technology and environmentally-inclined vehicles and technologies. It's a comfortable and familiar niche, no doubt because of near-total immersion in this field through the Green Car Journal newsletter I've also published for the past twelve years.
Immersion is about right, too. It's difficult to report on this field without diving in. Fortunately, diving in is easy when the subject is so interesting, and so important, as the green car field is these days. Also important is building bridges between the auto and environmental camps, a core mission of this magazine that will provide a place for even-handed discussion of issues that all-too-often involve nothing but noise.
As the past decade has rolled on, it has left a legacy of both hope and frustration, of exciting advanced technology models that have made it to the showroom and others that have become the debris of changing whims and shrinking corporate budgets. There's no way of avoiding disappointment while witnessing the disappearance, one by one, of the battery electric vehicles sold or leased during the mid-1990s, especially if you've spent considerable time behind the wheel of these vehicles as I have.
Years of involvement in this field lend a certain perspective, I have to say. The news flashes that cause temporary but major stirs are often just that: temporary. Placing innovations in context is integral to understanding their real importance and the role they will likely play in the advanced technology vehicles coming to new car showrooms. The essential realization after years of doing this is that not everything is what it seems and,
importantly, there is no one single answer to the many challenges posed by our automobiles and the way we use them.
As you read this, you're taking part in an important process that's just now unfolding before us: the greening of the automotive industry. It's not necessarily happening fast or painlessly, but it is most certainly occurring.
Speaking for all of us at Green Car Journal, I'm glad you've tuned in and are allowing us to be your guide.
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