Side swipe
Tim Keen
“Tesla is the modern-day version of the water-powered
car or the peanut-powered truck”
B
EAR WITH me for a minute. Remember Stanley
Meyer? The guy who invented a water fuel cell
that allowed cars to run on tap water, then was
mysteriously murdered and had his research
confiscated by the US government? In case any shadowy
government operatives are reading this, I would like to state for
the record that story is completely NOT TRUE. Wink wink.
In fact, remember Rudolf Diesel? “Rudolf Diesel” sounds like
the star of a Christmas-themed Fast & Furious spin-off, or maybe
a male stripper that Mrs Claus slept with on her hen’s night, but
no – he is, of course, the bloke who invented the diesel engine...
except that he proposed that it be run on peanut oil instead
of fossil fuels... and then he mysteriously disappeared while
aboard a steamship to England. His body was found floating near
Norway 10 days later, so badly decomposed that they never did
an autopsy. And after that, diesel engines ran on fossil fuel.
Getting the picture? Remember Pacific Electric, the system of
electric street cars that criss-crossed Los Angeles? No, of course
you don’t, because you’re not a 90-year-old Yank – but they did,
before they were bought up by a conglomerate of car makers and
oil companies, and scrapped. The companies were fined under
anti-trust laws, but by then it was too late – Los Angeles became
an autotropolis.
Oh yes, there have been automotive conspiracy theories for as
long as there have been cars.
In the spirit of tin-foil hat-wearers everywhere, why haven’t we
heard more crazed fever-dreams about the problems at the Tesla
plant? Tesla is the modern-day version of the water-powered
car or the peanut-powered truck – disrupting the established
players, and making the oil industry fatcats nibble nervously on
their cigars.
Let us not forget that Tesla boss and all-round mega-brain
Elon Musk predicted his Fremont, California, factory would
be turning out thousands of Model 3s by late 2017.
And then they ran into some “production
bottlenecks”, which is a polite
euphemism for “we made about
three cars by hand”. Tesla’s
high-tech automated
manufacturing line is,
to use some technical
jargon, a bit rooted.
Die-hard conspiracy
theorists, in between
searching the skies
for con-trails and bio-
scanning politicians to uncover lizard people, will recall that
the automated manufacturing line at Tesla’s Fremont factory
is made of robots – specifically KUKA industrial robots. KUKA
is one of the biggest suppliers of industrial robots, especially
to the automotive industry – and was recently bought by
the Chinese mega-conglomerate Midea Group. It’s Midea’s
first foray into robotics – their main business is making air-
conditioners. In fact, Midea makes billions of dollars a year
from selling air-conditioners – a figure that will only grow if
global warming continues... and one of the ways to ensure that
happens would be to ensure that electric cars never replaced
fossil-fuel burning cars.
Is it a zany theory that only basement-dwelling crazoids would
believe? Sure – just like the theory that the world’s richest and
most powerful men gather once a year to perform pagan rituals
under a giant owl statue at a secretive getaway called Bohemian
Grove, which is also where the Manhattan Project that created the
first atomic bomb was created. Except, oh yeah, that one’s true.
Don’t worry, Tesla will surely figure out how to escape its
production hell – probably just in time for the robots to start an
uprising to take over the Earth and enslave humanity. No wonder
Elon Musk is also feverishly building rockets to escape the planet
with his Space-X company.
In case any shadowy government operatives are reading this
- perhaps even robotic operatives, sharpening their hydraulic
pincers – I would like to state for the record that this entire
column is NOT TRUE. Wink, wink.
Though for a different explanation, read just the first letter of
each paragraph.M
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