New Startup Aims at Ad-Supported Fuel Consumption
July 22, 2008
Doesn’t it make you sick every time you pull the receipt out of the gas pump after filling up? Mile after mile you drive! To and from work, school, running errands, meeting with friends, how about everyday LIFE!!! Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way of compensating YOURSELF for all that driving?
So begins the pitch to drivers for a new venture Gas for Free, which pays drivers up to $299 each month to place advertising on their cars.
I can’t decide what I think about this from a business perspective. It’s entirely possible — although I hope not — that Gas for Free’s founders have hit on the next big trend in advertising and are going to make a mint. It’s also possible that their target driver audience — people who are so attached to their cars that even $4.35/gallon gas won’t make them take the bus — will not be willing to deface their precious shiny automobiles with crass slogans.
From an environmental perspective, this makes me utterly sick. It’s bad enough that this venture aims to artificially support the completely unsustainable practice of driving fossil fuel-powered vehicles everywhere rather than taking public transit. (I love that they call themselves “eco-ethical.”) But on top of it, it further clutters the already overwhelming mental and emotional experience of driving. Billboards are bad enough. Now I have to stare at advertising on someone’s car as well?
This kind of reminds me of the GOP’s ham-handed attempts to reduce gas prices which includes:
- A gas tax holiday.
- Releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserves.
- The supply-and-demand-defying Find More, Use Less campaign, which asserts that if we excavate for more fossil fuel resources at the same time that we all voluntarily work together to conserve them, we can keep the price of gas low.
and last but not least…
All in all, it’s ludicrous. We’re all grasping at straws trying to fix a system whose time is beginning to pass. Let’s pull out our thinking caps and use some of that innovative brain power to actually solve our energy crisis, rather than putting yet another band-aid over a gaping wound.
[Via Mashable.]
I’m curious, you’re running the gamut of feasible short term solutions until alternative fuels emerge, and discounting them all out of hand.
Are there any economically feasible policies relating to oil consumption you support?
Mark: Thanks for commenting and welcome!
To answer your question: Yes - I support human intuition. People need to figure out how to drive less, or pool their resources by carpooling or even slugging as happens in many major metropolitan areas.
I’m a big fan of markets helping societies to make the decisions that are best for them. Scarcity drives higher prices which encourages people to look for short-term alternatives like public transit and carpooling and long-term alternatives like biofuels, hybrids and electric cars.
I know people are hurting right now, and that’s a legitimate and lamentable thing. But if we work to bring down the price of fuel, we risk reducing the public demand for a solution that will be effective in the long-term, and as the laws of supply and demand require, we also risk doing nothing to decrease our consumption of fossil fuels.
Personally I don’t support any solution that brings down the price of fuel - sure it’s easier on my wallet, but the long term price is much higher. I’d much rather hurt a little now, and get pure electric cars by 2015, than save few cents now and end up paying $7 a gallon in 2 years, $12 a gallon in 5 years, and who knows after that.