There’s a lot of money being thrown around in the direction of electric vehicles these days, and where there’s money, there are scammers and quick-buck manipulators. One of the jobs of journalists is to protect us by checking out information before passing it on. Last week, much of the media earned a great, big FAIL.
Have you ever heard of Aurica Motors? I hadn’t either, until the company issued a press release last week and a radio reporter called me asking about them. Numerous “green” media outlets and more traditional journalists gorged themselves on the press release from what they called the “stealth” EV company that’s “flying under the radar,” and basically regurgitated its contents with little or no digestion.
Essentially, the press release said that the company wants federal money to take over the NUMMI car manufacturing plant in the San Francisco Bay Area that Toyota is closing, so that Aurica could make electric cars. (Hey, I’d like federal money to do that too! Why didn’t I send out a press release! ) Combine the general excitement around plug-in vehicles with a desperate desire to find something — anything — positive happening around jobs and the economy, mix it up with a lazy press, and presto! You’ve got what’s probably nonsense being spread around like it’s news.
I’ve been a reporter and editor for 30 years, but you don’t even need to be a cub reporter for this story to start smelling fishy. The Aurica Motors website doesn’t tell you much about the company or give a way to contact them. It’s short on a lot of details. And really — does this image of their car (the only one on the company’s website) inspire confidence? The copyright on the website points to Aurica Labs, whose website is even more comical.
There — did that take long? A few clicks? Apparently, that’s too much for most of the journalists and bloggers who reported on Aurica. Motor Trend, Autobloggreen, Green Car Congress, and Gas 2.0 all posted credulous reports. The Gas 2.0 post got picked up by MatteR Network and by Reuters. The “Shifting Gears” blog on The Big Money, a Washington Post-Newsweek site, went so far as to criticize The New York Times for not devoting space to Aurica. And those are just the hits on page one of my search results.
Kudos to Richard Read at The Car Connection, who kept a healthy dose of skepticism at hand. And with the magic of the InterWeb, it’s easy to find insightful discussion outside the mainstream media, such as this thread in a forum on SomethingAwful.com.
Count me among the skeptics. Of course, I’d love to be proved wrong, and have Aurica turn out to be a wildly successful (if extremely discrete) company with a world-changing EV that will employ thousands of people in the NUMMI plant. I’d also like to sell you a bridge.
— Sherry Boschert (@sherryboschert on Twitter)
