Car of the Future

Join the "Car Talk" guys as they hit the road in search of a fresh breed of clean, fuel-efficient vehicles. Airing April 22, two thousand eight at nine pm on PBS Aired April 22, two thousand eight on PBS

Program Description

Is fresh technology about to convert the way we drive? Join "Car Talk" hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi as they take a look at plug-in hybrids, all-electric roadsters, biofuels and more in this lighthearted but shrewd take on America’s four-wheeled future. John Lithgow narrates as the brothers mix their trademark slapstick with serious nuts-and-bolts analysis of what it will take to make our autos more energy-efficient and secure a sustainable future for our environment.

In addition to the Editors’ Picks features at left, you can hear Amory Lovins describe an ultra-efficient "Hypercar" in Model of Efficiency and see a dozen alternative vehicles already on America’s roads in My Car of the Future, Today. Also, more than two hundred clips of footage from this program, including experienced interviews and scenics, are available for you to download in Open Content.

Transcript

Car of the Future

PBS Airdate: April 22, 2008

NARRATOR: Eight hundred million cars. If you put them bumper to bumper, they’d circle the Earth about one hundred times. That’s how many cars are on the road today. They come in all shapes and colors, but have one thing in common.

DAVID L. GREENE (Oak Ridge National Laboratory): Our transportation system is almost entirely fueled by petroleum, more than ninety five percent. A quarter of all the petroleum ever consumed in the history of the world was consumed in the last ten years. So we’re consuming it at an accelerating rate.

JOHN B. HEYWOOD (Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology): What is scary is that projections suggest that by two thousand fifty there’ll be two billion vehicles, two and a half times as many as there are today.

NARRATOR: Many experts agree there’s an energy shortage and soaring gas prices looming in the future, not to mention, melting ice caps from global heating and national security threats from dependence on foreign oil.

TOM MAGLIOZZI (Automobile Mechanic/Co-Host, Car Talk ): Can I switch the station?

RAY MAGLIOZZI (Automobile Mechanic/Co-Host, Car Talk ): No, you can’t. This is significant stuff.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is scaring me. I don’t like it any more.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, come on. Don’t be such a sissy.

NARRATOR: Two brothers have embarked on a quest.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where are we?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don’t know. We’re not in Kansas any more, I can tell you that.

NARRATOR: They want to find out what’s being done right now that will keep our cars moving in the future.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Stand back!

NARRATOR: They’re testing fresh technology and alternative fuels, and they’re getting behind the wheels of vehicles that might take us down a fresh and different road.

Join Click and Clack, the guys from Car Talk , on their search for the Car of the Future , right now on NOVA.

DOUG BERMAN (Producer, Car Talk ): Okay, let’s go. Stand by.

Ready? Open them up.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hello, and welcome to Car Talk , from National Public Radio with us, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. Are you ready to take a call?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: I’m ready.

NARRATOR: For thirty years, Tom and Ray Magliozzi have helped radio listeners solve their automotive problems.

CAR TALK CALLER: I have a Ford Ranger pickup, and I love the truck, but I hate the gas mileage it gets.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Well, see, if you drove less you’d like it better.

NARRATOR: Today, Click and Clack have a car problem of their own.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don’t think so, man. It’s not going to embark.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Come on, it’ll embark.

NARRATOR: Tom’s beloved roadster, a ’52 MG, is back in the shop.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it sounds like a sick cow. No, you know, this car’s done for. It indeed is time to budge on and look for another vehicle. This isn’t going to do it nymore.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Well, what could be better than this?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Almost anything.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: But where would I find another car?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Take a wild guess.

NARRATOR: To substitute a relic from the past, Tom and Ray head for Detroit, searching for the car of the future.

Each year in the Motor City, carmakers shop their latest models in what must be the world’s largest showroom. It’s a sideshow Vegas would envy.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Pretty damn spectacular display.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Sure is. Let’s go find your wish car. Let’s go find the car of the future, or maybe the car of your future.

I thought you were interested in these models.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: I am.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I meant the cars.

How many horsepower is this thing, guys? You must know, right?

CAR Showcase ATTENDEE: What is this, Five.

CAR Display SALESPERSON: Yeah, 500.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: A mere 500.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Looks like my MG.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, right!

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Not the MG engine, the entire MG!

RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is an absurd amount of horsepower to have in anything, I would think.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Ridiculous.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Absolutely ridiculous and stupid.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: But people want to buy them.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: They’re whackos!

NARRATOR: To lure buyers, cars and trucks have become thicker and more powerful every year. Since 1985, average vehicle weight has enlargened 1,000 pounds. Horsepower has almost doubled.

JOSEPH B. WHITE ( Wall Street Journal ): If you look anywhere in the world, not just the United States, you look anywhere in the world, people will buy the most horsepower they can afford. There’s something kind of primal and elemental about having a powerful machine at your beck and call and at your directive. The car companies know this; they’re selling emotion. If we just needed an appliance to get from A to B, we’d all be driving around in Toyota Corollas.

NARRATOR: As weight and horsepower increase, cars are consuming more gasoline than ever before, despite its growing cost. Even a former Texas oilman seems to get it.

GEORGE W. Thicket (President of the United States, 2003): For too long our nation has been dependent on foreign oil, and this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists.

AMORY B. LOVINS (Rocky Mountain Institute): Think about where your money goes when you put your credit card in the pump. Some of your oil money is going directly to arm people who are attempting to kill us.

NARRATOR: Searing oil is also switching the chemistry of the atmosphere.

AMORY LOVINS: Coming out of your tailpipe are all those carbon dioxide molecules. Those go up in the air. They’ll stay there for about a hundred years, messing up the climate.

NARRATOR: Enlargened carbon emissions are creating climate switches that scientists warn us are dangerous.

DAVID GREENE: We’re going to have to find other sources of energy to power the transportation system. And we’re going to have to make it more energy-efficient at the same time.

NARRATOR: The Alt.Wheels Festival, in Boston, is a different kind of car showcase that celebrates alternative energy and efficient transportation. If the Detroit car showcase is about primal thrills, Alt.Wheels is about social responsibility and concern for future.

Like the green movement itself, Alt.Wheels is petite, but bursting with enthusiasm about every conceivable technology that might curb our dependence on oil, including, perhaps, Tom’s wish car.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: I love it!

RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is right up your alley. I can tell, as soon as I witnessed this, that this is the kind of vehicle.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, that’s me, man.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: . that you would love.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: What makes it run?

ALT WHEELS EXHIBITOR: The motor scooter.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s got a gas, it’s got a gasoline engine that’s running, yeah?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it’s got a gasoline engine.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So, the only alternative about this is that it’s dangerous.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where’s the accelerator?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: This is the accelerator.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Is there a switch sides?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: No. Stop!

NARRATOR: Creating the car of the future is no petite feat. Whatever their environmental benefit, we expect our cars to be reliable, practical and safe.

The car of the future also needs to store a lot of energy in a puny space. And nothing does this better than petroleum, which comes from plants and lil’ plankton, like these, that were buried in mud millions of years ago. Over time, these ancient fossils were transformed into energy-rich molecules of hydrogen and carbon, or hydrocarbons, that are refined into gasoline.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: And you’re getting a hundred miles a gallon? It doesn’t seem like fairly enough to justify the danger.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is the kind of car you want to leave to your very first wifey.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: How you doing?

BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Hi, guys.

NARRATOR: Car companies have good hopes that hydrogen will someday substitute carbon and power cars that are emissions free.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So you pack up the tank. The tank must be in the back.

BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Yeah.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Right. One tank?

BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: One tank.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Can we see it?

NARRATOR: These companies have invested billions to produce puny fleets of prototypes like this one.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Now, if you’ve got a very narrow suitcase here, you’re in good form.

BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: You’re in good form, right.

NARRATOR: But until more hydrogen cars are on the road, it’ll be hard to find places to pack the tank.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: But they’re not going to begin investing in making the fuel available unless they have a commitment from Ford and the other companies that they’re going to. It’s a chicken and the egg kind of thing. I mean, you have to commence building the cars and.

BOB, FORD REPRESENTATIVE: Exactly, you’ve got to get those chickens out there before the, before the eggs, so the.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: So the chickens are very first? This is a time honored question. This is an age old question you’re about to reaction here.

NARRATOR: This chicken and egg question has no clear reaction. History shows that cars and gasoline evolved together over many, many years.

BETH LOWERY (General Motors, Vice President, Environment and Energy): There’s about 170,000 gas stations in the country now, so we have a very established infrastructure of internal combustion engine that everybody knows and loves in their vehicles today. And they go to the local gas station and they pack up their gas tank. And that’s a system we know.

JOSEPH ROMM (Center for Energy and Climate Solutions): We have a fueling infrastructure of gasoline that was built over the course of many decades. And it has been paid off a long time ago, and it is delivering gasoline very cheaply. So to produce an alternative fuel other than gasoline is no mean feat.

NARRATOR: Switching an economy based on petroleum is an almost insurmountable task. But a puny island nation is hoping to do to do just that.

Iceland has a thousand times fewer people and cars than the U.S. Still, rush hour in Reykjavik is no joke. In a country where gas costs almost eight dollars a gallon, Iceland’s fantasy is to stop importing oil by substituting conventional cars with hydrogen vehicles, if and when they come to market. In the meantime, a petite fleet of buses has been heating the population to the fresh technology.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is a nice bus, but it’s a bus.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yes, it is the bus. Yeah, it’s just a bus. Oh, yeah. No, there’s nothing different about it except that it’s a fuel cell bus, which is pretty interesting.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, but it sounds the same.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: No smell, tho’; have you noticed that?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: No smell.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: No smell, which is very nice, especially in the city.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: There’s a little smell, but I think that’s you.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: When we go back to the station, can we see you refuel the bus?

REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: Yes.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Is there a brick wall we can stand behind?

REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: If you dare.

NARRATOR: Like gasoline, hydrogen is volatile stuff. Recall the Hindenburg? That disaster almost ruined hydrogen’s reputation for good. But at the world’s very first public hydrogen fueling station, it’s stored securely in pressurized tanks.

Let’s hope so anyway.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Wait, I want to get a look at this.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Okay. Go ahead. We’re not afraid.

REYKJEVIK BUS DRIVER: Truly? You look like chickens.

NARRATOR: Pressurized hydrogen is pumped into storage tanks on the roof of the bus, where it’s combined with oxygen in layers of lean membranes called fuel cells. Hydrogen atoms are violated apart, releasing electrons that flow through a circuit, providing violet wand that propels the bus. The only emission is water vapor.

DAVID GREENE: There’s been a lot of progress in the technology, but hydrogen vehicles are not anywhere near ready for the market yet. They’re too expensive, the fuel cells are not durable enough, and, of course, we have problems with how do you store sufficient amount of hydrogen on board the vehicle.

NARRATOR: Iceland prides itself on helping to improve this technology by testing it every day.

Jí“N BJí–RN SKíšLASON (Icelandic Fresh Energy Ltd.): You go to a petite society like Iceland where a lot of things are simpler than a big society like the U.S. or Europe, you can actually test things out here. That’s actually how we think we can help the world.

NARRATOR: While vehicles are tested in Reykjavik, the fueling infrastructure is being developed in the countryside. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but doesn’t exist in unspoiled form. It’s made by splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, and that takes energy. Iceland gets this energy from water that flows from melting glaciers and from steam that rises from the ground.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Where are we?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don’t know. We’re not in Kansas any more, I can tell you that. But there’s steam coming up out of the ground.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: This is so weird.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: How do I look?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: You look marvelous. This is something.

NARRATOR: Iceland itself was created by volcanoes erupting from a crack inbetween two plates on the Earth’s surface. Power plants corset this geothermal energy to generate electro-therapy that can be used to make hydrogen.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Why is Iceland engaged in this geothermal power project, so to speak?

ALBERT ALBERTSSON (Svartsengi Power Plant): You know, geothermal and hydro is Iceland’s oil, actually. And, you know, Iceland is sitting astride two tectonic plates, the North American plate and the Eurasian plate. And gentlemen, we are just in the middle of the two plates.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Stir over a duo of feet. You might be sitting in a bad spot.

ALBERT ALBERTSSON: There is enough renewable energy sources in Iceland to produce all the hydrogen this nation needs.

NARRATOR: Someday Iceland may corset volcanoes to power cars, but the transition to hydrogen could take fifty years.

Jí“N BJí–RN SKíšLASON: A 50-year timeframe is not a long timeframe, actually. When you talk about a total energy paradigm shift in fifty years, that means a lot, a lot of switches for society.

NARRATOR: Fresh technology does not spring full-grown from the womb. And it’s too soon to tell if and when hydrogen transportation will come of age. But Iceland’s efforts may bring us closer to the reaction.

DAVID GREENE: They have vast amounts of renewable energy available to them and a very petite population. There’s no way, today, we can do what they’re doing. But we will learn from their practice. We’re going to build up from this effort that they’re making.

NARRATOR: The future of hydrogen may be shaped here, but for automakers, its greatest potential lies in larger countries where transportation systems are not yet developed. In China, bicycles are vanishing quickly. Experts predict that in two decades China will have the same number of cars as the U.S. and gas stations are racing to keep up.

BETH LOWERY: In China, we don’t have a gas station on every corner. And we’re looking at opportunities for fuel cells and hydrogen infrastructure in economies, such as China, where you’re not taking over an entire infrastructure and attempting to embark all over again.

NARRATOR: But for developed nations like the U.S., is there some alternative to gasoline that doesn’t involve reinventing the wheel?

It could be ethanol, or E85. Like gasoline it’s a hydrocarbon, but government studies display it produces twenty five percent less greenhouse emissions. Ethanol is made from corn sugar. If Iceland has volcanoes, we’ve got cornfields, which can be harvested year after year. In Brazil, ethanol produced from sugar cane now provides forty percent of the nation’s motor fuel.

CHEVROLET COMMERCIAL: What if cars and trucks could be fueled by corn?

NARRATOR: Ripple fuel vehicles that can burn ethanol and gasoline don’t cost much more than conventional cars. So that’s all the good news.

Now the bad news:

JOSEPH ROMM: It’s not that superb for the environment. It’s, it’s very energy-intensive to grow corn and extract energy from it.

NARRATOR: Fossil fuels are used to make fertilizer and pesticides to help corn grow and are also needed to ferment corn sugar. Some critics claim it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get out of it, while others caution that we can never grow enough corn to meet requests.

DAVID GREENE: There’s simply not enough of it, and we need a lot of it for food. So that’s not going to be the solution, but it’s going to be part of the solution, I think.

NARRATOR: Still, ethanol does have fine potential.

LEE R. LYND (Mascoma Corporation): There’s truly not much question, this is a good motor fuel. The question is, how inexpensively can we make it, and how much of it can we make?

NARRATOR: For twenty years, Lee Lynd has been attempting to response these questions. And, like many, he believes the solution involves something else besides corn.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Don’t go down here. It’s dangerous down there. It’s this way. Pay attention, will you?

Lee. Hey, how are you?

LEE R. LYND: Superb. How are you?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hey, did you bring the corn?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Well, of course I brought the corn.

LEE R. LYND: You guys are armed and dangerous.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Look, we’re down to about a quarter of a tank. Will this be enough to get us home? If not, we have a duo of cans of Jolly Green Giant Niblets out there, too. Maybe we can.

LEE R. LYND: We’re looking at making ethanol, and we’re looking at making it from a different part of the plant. So the actual corn ethanol comes from the seeds, same stuff we would eat, same stuff we’d feed the cattle. And there’s a lot of the rest of the corn plant, and there’s also a lot of other kinds of plants that can be grown. And what we’re interested in is called cellulosic biomass, not a household word, perhaps.

LEE R. LYND: Not yet, thank you. And so.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: But right now, what we use is the kernel.

LEE R. LYND: Is the kernel, right there, yep.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Those guys.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Now what’s the difference inbetween cellulosic biomass and the kernels here?

LEE R. LYND: Good question. This is cellulosic biomass, the cob, in here, is cellulosic biomass, and the entire stalk that held this up.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So everything that isn’t the niblets is cellulosic biomass.

LEE R. LYND: There you go, exactly.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s the stuff that we would ordinarily throw away.

NARRATOR: Cellulosic biomass is the woody structure that props up the plant. It’s found in waste products like wood chips, paper sludge, wheat straw and corn stalks, as well as switchgrass, a native plant that grows without fertilizer and pesticides. Like all plants, switchgrass pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to grow. When the grass becomes ethanol that’s burned under the rubber hood, the carbon dioxide is released back into the air and reabsorbed by the next crop of grass. If cellulosic ethanol can be manufactured without searing fossil fuel, net carbon emissions are, essentially, zero.

LEE R. LYND: This is nothing but ground-up corn stalks right here.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it is?

LEE R. LYND: This stuff is less expensive, very cost-effective raw material. So you might say, "Well, why aren’t we doing this already?" Reaction? Converting this stuff, the cellulosic biomass, into ethanol, is more difficult than converting.

LEE R. LYND: This stuff.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So how do you make it? Can you take us to the lab and showcase us?

LEE R. LYND: I’d love to. Come on in.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: You’re not going to kill us afterwards, are you? I’m afraid if we learn too much it might be dangerous.

LEE R. LYND: So, the question is, "How do we do this?" And it starts off with microorganisms, very petite living things that you can only see with a microscope.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: What’s the big thing? It looks like Tom’s car.

LEE R. LYND: That is a lump of cellulose. And you’ll notice that fastened to it there are the same sort of black rods. Those are bacteria that are adhered to the cellulose. In fact, there are some more of them on that little particle there.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: They’re doing a job on him.

LEE R. LYND: Yeah, they’re kind of ganging up on that little.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, yeah, he’s in trouble.

NARRATOR: These microbes are tearing cellulose apart, releasing sugar compounds locked within. In fermentation tanks, another microbial species turns that sugar into ethanol. Lynd’s aim is to combine genetic material from the two species into a single microbe that can make ethanol from cellulose in one efficient step.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Why is that turning two steps into one step such a big deal? I mean, what effect will it have overall on the costs of what we’re doing?

LEE R. LYND: This would be revolutionary, from an economic point of view, if you could get this into one rapid, efficient step. And we think we can prove this in a few years, and other people are assuming this is decades away. And time will tell if we’re right.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Thanks a lot, Lee. Hey, sounds excellent.

LEE R. LYND: Thanks for all the questions and all the interest. I indeed appreciate it.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Superb, thanks so much. Bye-bye.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh. We’re going to need these I think. It’s a long rail home.

It’s a good thing there are clever guys like Lee working on this stuff. If they had to depend on you and me, it’d take centuries.

NARRATOR: Advocates argue that we have the land to grow enough biomass to substitute at least a quarter of the gas we now consume with cellulosic ethanol. They also believe it could substitute gasoline altogether, if cars were more efficient.

Remarkably, today’s cars aren’t very efficient. In fact, less than one percent of the energy in the tank actually moves the driver. Ninety percent is lost inbetween the tank and the wheels, and the rest is used to shove the mass of the vehicle.

At the Sloan Automotive Lab at M.I.T., John Heywood and his students are on a mission to save energy by improving engine spectacle.

For more than a century, gasoline engines have powered cars by turning chemical energy into mechanical work. Vaporized gasoline comes in the combustion chamber; a piston compresses the vapor until it’s ignited by a spark, creating pressure that compels the piston downward; the spent gas is vented as harass. Working together, pistons turn the crankshaft that sends power to the wheels.

JOHN HEYWOOD: People say, "The internal combustion engine, it’s old technology. Why don’t we substitute it?" It’s going to take a truly long time to switch to something else, even if we got something else there, developed and ready. And we don’t yet.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Hey, John. Hi. Long time no see.

NARRATOR: Lured by smell of engine fumes, Tom and Ray comeback to the lab where they once spent time as M.I.T. students.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Well, you know, the last time I was here, I was with a classmate and Professor Keck, and I blew the cylinder head off an engine. I hope they won’t hold that against me.

JOHN HEYWOOD: Some of those things still happen.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I’m sure they do.

You folks have been working for a while on improving engines, and this is what you do here. And we want to know what you’re doing, what the future holds, where the frontier is. Enlighten us, please. We need all the help we can get.

JOHN HEYWOOD: Okay. Well, we’re attempting to help stir the technology forward. Some things we don’t understand very well. You know that.

This is where we’re working on engine lubrication and friction.

NARRATOR: One of the ways Heywood is improving engines is by reducing friction. Almost half the energy in the combustion chamber is lost to friction, as pistons fondle against the walls of the cylinder. Using a laser to observe the process, Heywood tests different lubricants and piston geometries to find petite ways to save energy.

MIT LAB WORKER: Anywhere you see white, like here, is oil.

JOHN HEYWOOD: And what we want is where the rings are, it’s dark, you want a little oil to lubricate the rings, keep friction low, but just enough. If it’s too much, it’ll go into the cylinder and we’ll lose some oil. So that’s what we’re learning about. And it indeed feeds back into designing all of this better and improving fuel consumption.

NARRATOR: Over several decades, automotive engineers at Sloan and other labs around the world have enlargened engine efficiency by thirty percent.

JOHN HEYWOOD: Engines and transmissions have got steadily more efficient, year by year by year by year by year. So it’s better technology. Then the question is: "What do we do with these more powerful and more efficient engines?" We’ve put them into enlargening vehicle spectacle so our vehicles accelerate quicker, more aggressively, and we’ve put them into larger vehicles, stronger vehicles. We’re better off because these vehicles are more efficient. Had they not been more efficient, we’d be even worse off. But we haven’t gained. We’ve sort of stood still.

JOSEPH ROMM: Technology, by itself, does not increase fuel economy. The role of technology is to enable brainy regulations, is to enable reductions in oil consumption and greenhouse gases through federal activity, not in place of federal act.

NARRATOR: History shows regulation does increase fuel economy. After the one thousand nine hundred seventy three oil shortage, Congress created mileage standards, forcing automakers to build more efficient vehicles. By 1987, average mileage had enhanced dramatically. But that caused oil prices to fall, which in turn led to public indifference.

JOSEPH ROMM: In the 1970s to early 1980s, we doubled the fuel economy of cars. And then embarking in the mid-80s, we stopped.

NARRATOR: Mileage standards remained unchanged from one thousand nine hundred eighty five to 2007, and truck and S.U.V. sales almost doubled. Because these vehicles have lower standards than cars, average fuel economy today is actually a bit less than it was twenty years ago, despite hard-won gains in engine efficiency.

Many people buy intense, inefficient vehicles because they feel safer. Amory Lovins is a champ of a revolutionary treatment to making cars that are efficient and safe.

AMORY LOVINS: I’m a recovering experimental physicist. And I’d been thinking about the physics of cars and why are they so inefficient that you know, your car’s using a hundred times its weight in ancient plants every day, and yet only 0.Trio percent of that energy finishes up moving the driver. This didn’t seem very good.

NARRATOR: In 1982, Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado think tank. Among the fifty fulltime staff are a handful of automotive engineers who have helped Lovins rethink the physics of the car.

MIKE, AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEER: One would argue, if you had half the car, you would need half the battery and half the motor to thrust it around.

AMORY LOVINS: And half the money to pay for it.

MIKE, AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEER: And half the money to pay for it, exactly.

NARRATOR: Lovins realized that cars could be more efficient if he could find ways to make the engine stir less weight.

AMORY LOVINS: We commenced digging into how to make the car lighter, with better aerodynamics, with lower rolling resistance. We ended up concluding it was fairly straightforward to triple the efficiency of a car, at toughly the same cost.

NARRATOR: Lovins’s group substituted the conventional auto assets with fourteen light-weight components that lock together to form a reinforced shell with half the weight of steel. From the tapered roofline to the sleek underbody, every surface is streamlined to reduce haul.

AMORY LOVINS: If you directly save a pound in a car, then you actually save more like a pound and a half, from needing less engine to accelerate it, less brake to stop it, less suspension to hold it up and so on.

NARRATOR: The "Hypercar" reduces weight without reducing size, by making parts from little carbon fibers that are heated with nylon to form a composite stronger than steel. The wings and much of the fuselage of Boeing’s fresh seven hundred eighty seven Dreamliner are made with carbon composites, which will save twenty percent in fuel.

Race cars are also made with carbon composites. After hitting a wall at one hundred sixty miles an hour, the driver in this car walked away.

NEWS REPORTER: How are you feeling?

KATHERINE LEGGE, DRIVER: A bit shaken, but I’m okay, as you can see. Oops, sorry. All my bits are intact, so it’s good. Goes to display how strong the cars are.

AMORY LOVINS: With such light but strong materials, you can make cars that are big, which is protective and comfy, without also making them strenuous, which is hostile and inefficient. Therefore you can save oil and lives and, indeed, money, all at the same time.

NARRATOR: Today the Hypercar is still just an idea embodied by this one-of-a-kind prototype sitting in the corner of Lovins’s shop. Carmakers have spent a hundred years perfecting ways to mass-produce cars from steel, and Lovins has failed to woo them to make a radical switch in materials. Carbon fiber is expensive, and molding it into parts is labor-intensive. Undaunted, Lovins is now developing machinery that can mass produce parts at an affordable price.

Drawn by curiosity and skepticism, Ray has come to the Rockies, leaving Tom in bed with a cold.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, my brother didn’t want to come out here. I knew it. Too cold. He spotted the weather forecast, figured he’d call in sick. He had that phony little sniffle. Hah.

AMORY LOVINS: Ray. Hey, welcome.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Thanks for inviting me.

AMORY LOVINS: Oh, my pleasure. We’ve got such cool stuff to demonstrate you.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Jeez, I’m truly struck because I thought this was going to be like a carnival car, you know, some little little little thing that you’d have to get shoehorned into. This is a real car.

AMORY LOVINS: This will carry five modern-size adults in convenience.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Super-sized adults.

AMORY LOVINS: . and up to sixty nine cubic feet of cargo. In fact, we figured this could cruise on the highway at fifty five miles an hour on the same power to the wheels that today’s SUVs use on a hot day to run the air conditioner.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Truly? That’d be pretty neat.

AMORY LOVINS: This is the most sophisticated and intensely loaded part of this car. It’s the entire side assembly.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, it’s where the doors would go.

AMORY LOVINS: Yeah, exactly right.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, sure.

AMORY LOVINS: Yeah, and I’ll bet you can lift that with one mitt.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: You think?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don’t know. I’m a pushover. Oh, it’s pretty light.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s a few pounds, it’s.

AMORY LOVINS: Isn’t that amazing?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, it is amazing.

AMORY LOVINS: Which means any part, any of the fourteen assets parts can be lifted by one worker with no lift, so you don’t need jigs and robots and welders. It just snaps together and you glue it. Then it’s stronger than the original material. So you just got rid of the assets shop. That’s why this is so revolutionary for manufacturing.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Neat. Well, I did bring a chunk of test equipment from my lab. Can I use it?

AMORY LOVINS: You wicked fellow!

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Stand back!

AMORY LOVINS: It’s strong.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s strong. But jeez, and you know, there are a duo of lil’ little scuffs, and then nothing got telegraphed to the back. The back is totally unscathed.

NARRATOR: The case for carbon fiber is very strong. But until costs are diminished, ultra-light cars will not be on the sales lot any time soon. For those who want efficient cars now, one reaction is to buy a hybrid.

The Prius was the very first commercial success, and now other companies are getting in the act.

A hybrid is a gas-powered car that also has an electrical motor and a battery pack. When the car idles, it uses tens unit instead of wasting gas and spewing fumes. The gas engine is used at speeds when it’s most efficient, and it charges the batteries at the same time. Batteries are also charged through braking wheels when the car slows to a stop. The result is a car that gets the same pickup as a regular car but burns less gas.

Because hybrids have batteries and a motor, it takes a bit more energy to manufacture them, but over their entire lifespan, hybrids still consume thirty percent less energy and produce thirty percent less carbon than non-hybrids of the same size.

But hybrids still burn gas. At his shop at U.C. Davis, Andy Frank is switching that. Andy and his students are building a hybrid that can charge its batteries through a wall socket. This connects the car to the electrified grid so it can get energy from distant power plants.

Andy is the inventor of the plug-in hybrid, and for twenty years he’s been developing and improving his concept. Compared to standard hybrids, the plug-in has more batteries and a larger motor but needs less space for the engine and the gas tank. Like many, Andy hopes this evolutionary design will cause an energy revolution.

ANDREW FRANK (University of California, Davis): This kind of a car can transition us off of oil and onto electro-stimulation.

DAVID GREENE: It’s a major switch, in that, now, you can get electric current from the grid. You can take it from your home. You can take it from almost anywhere. So this is a massive difference, in terms of the energy source for transportation.

NARRATOR: With an overnight charge, the batteries hold enough juice to go sixty miles, more than the average daily commute. And for longer trips, it’s got an engine that extends its range to six hundred miles.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: If, when we stop at Motel Five, for example, we buttplug the thing in overnight.

ANDY FRANK: That’s right. We borrow a little energy from Motel Five.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: They won’t even notice a 50-foot—I love it—a 50-foot extension cord.

ANDY FRANK: Well, or you would be a long ways and they’d be.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: You want your room on the 2nd floor? No, no, we’d choose to be on the very first floor.

ANDY FRANK: Got to be on the very first floor. But that’s the entire point. Whatever available 110- volt socket is all you need to charge this car.

NARRATOR: Skeptics say that all plug-ins do is shift the pollution source from the tailpipe to the smokestack, but studies showcase that powering cars with electro-therapy from today’s mix of power plants could reduce greenhouse emissions by about forty percent. Further reductions are possible if electrified power gets cleaner.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Even if you have to build power plants, you’re not using any gasoline.

ANDY FRANK: That’s right. That’s the entire point.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: The entire point.

ANDY FRANK: You’re shifting off of gasoline onto an electrical society, and that, once you walk into the electrified society window, you open the door to the possibility of direct renewable energy. Electrical play can be generated in a lot of different forms. And in particular, it can be generated with solar cells on top of your roof, it could be generated from wind. In other words, today’s sunshine would give you tomorrow’s driving. And you put that energy. store it in the batteries. I think one of the things that this kind of car motivates is the possibility of individual wind and individual solar.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: My brother’s been responsible for a lot of individual wind.

ANDY FRANK: So now we’re cruising on electric current alone.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s good! It’s superb. And people don’t care as long as it does what they want it to do.

TERRENCE WILLIAMS (Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Davis): But you know what it does do that’s better than your car? It’s quicker.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s quicker, yeah, yeah. And it gets better mileage?

TERRENCE WILLIAMS: That’s correct.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: And it doesn’t pollute as much?

TERRENCE WILLIAMS: That’s right.

ANDY FRANK: The most significant thing is the capability to use a renewable energy directly from the sun.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Right. And if I can ever get my home nuclear reactor kit to commence working, I’ve got it made.

NARRATOR: It costs four times less to power Frank’s plug-in from the grid than it does to run it on gasoline. But if plug-ins become the car of the future, will there be enough tens unit to keep them all running?

DAVID GREENE: Our existing electrical utility system could treat ems of millions of plug-in hybrid vehicles if they would be recharged during off-peak times, such as at night.

NARRATOR: With today’s batteries, plug-ins can only go so far on electro-stimulation, but Frank believes they’re a viable step toward more efficient transportation.

ANDY FRANK: I’m hoping that the car companies indeed get serious and begin building these things, because the sooner they get it out in the palms of the public, the sooner we can begin to transition ourselves off of oil.

NARRATOR: Martin Eberhard is coaxed that cars can be powered by batteries alone. He’s the founder of Tesla Motors, and his electrical sports car is built to prove electrons are a hands-down winner over gasoline.

MARTIN EBERHARD (Founder, Tesla Motors): A gasoline engine is terribly inefficient. It’s below twenty percent efficient, typically. But an electrified car like ours is, you know, in the neighborhood of eighty five percent efficient. It’s that kind of difference. So it would be like one hundred thirty five miles to the gallon equivalent: big difference in a car that does zero to sixty in four seconds.

NARRATOR: The Tesla Roadster can go two hundred fifty miles on a single charge. But it takes a lot of batteries to go even that far, and they come at a price.

MARTIN EBERHARD: The Tesla Roadster costs $92,000, right now. You can buy options and spend more if you like.

The fine big hairy objective we have is to create the next excellent American car company. It’s insane, right? We are up against some big guys out there.

NARRATOR: The very first six hundred roadsters are being handmade overseas. At Tesla headquarters in Silicon Valley, engineers are refining hardware and software for the next, more affordable model.

MARTIN EBERHARD: A lot of the complexity that you find in a typical car has moved out of mechanical things and into electrical things and software.

NARRATOR: The mechanics of the Tesla are gorgeously elementary. The electronics module is the brain that controls the battery pack, which accounts for at about a third the cost of the vehicle and powers a 75-pound motor that drives the rear wheels.

MARTIN EBERHARD: If you look in our motor, there’s one moving part. And that drives a very, very plain transmission. But to make that motor do its thing requires a fairly large box of fairly sophisticated silicon and a lot of software behind it to make it do what it needs to do. So a large amount of the drive train development was pretty natural to do right here in Silicon Valley.

NARRATOR: The power supply is packed with lithium ion batteries that have revolutionized portable computers and electronics.

MARTIN EBERHARD: Well, very first of all, lithium ion batteries are just the best battery technology today. Lithium is readily available and fully recyclable. The significant advantage of lithium ion is it’s not a strenuous metal, so, in the treating process, you don’t have a health hazard.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s already violated. They have it on the lift.

MARTIN EBERHARD: Practically the very first thing they put in this building was the lift.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: You know, we have the same lifts in our shop, except ours are all covered with grease. Where’s the grease, Martin? Where is the grease? This is a grease-free shop.

MARTIN EBERHARD: So this is all carbon fiber assets, and even the structure behind, you can see, is carbon fiber.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So this is the battery pack, and it’s got little batteries in it?

MARTIN EBERHARD: Yeah, fairly a few little batteries. I might have one here, hold on. There you go, yeah. Like that.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Just like that.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: And how many of these are in there?

MARTIN EBERHARD: Six thousand eight-hundred and thirty-one, approximately.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: How do you write that number? Couldn’t you round it off to seven thousand?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I don’t mean to throw a moist blanket on the entire issue here, but I know there was some talk about some laptops that were catching fire and.

MARTIN EBERHARD: Yep. We were actually fairly worried about what would happen if one of these batteries were to catch fire, early on. And we set about designing the battery packs so that if one battery catches fire, it doesn’t set the neighbors on fire.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: What is it about lithium ions that makes them so special and makes them so different from other batteries?

MARTIN EBERHARD: Energy density—how much energy can fit into a petite package. Lithium ion batteries are about four times the energy density of previous car batteries. And that’s a phenomenal difference. That’s like a four-times fatter gas tank. So, that’s where the driving range comes from. It comes at a price, today, but I think that the driving range is one of the most significant things to make electrical cars become acceptable.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: I’m in. Put your seatbelt on. Say your prayers.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: You don’t mind if I don’t look?

NARRATOR: Perhaps foolishly, Martin lets his multimillion dollar baby out of glance without a chaperone.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: See you!

MARTIN EBERHARD: Very first time driving?

NARRATOR: Tom’s next car might be a two-seater with no tailpipe, if he’s got the money.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: We could be in Mexico in about two hours with this car.

NARRATOR: Pushing the envelope of technology always brings a cost. But if alternative vehicles are going to curb our oil addiction, they must be sold not by the hundreds but by the millions, at a competitive price.

This is a challenge for large automakers, but to meet it, they must make big switches in what they sell.

JOSEPH WHITE: The question is whether the car companies can shift from selling horsepower and begin selling high fuel economy. We’re commencing to see that.

CHEVROLET VOLT COMMERCIAL: Ladies and gentlemen, the two thousand seven Chevrolet Volt concept.

NARRATOR: Meet the Chevy Volt, a hot fresh contender in the green car sweepstakes, a car that’s designed for a world without oil.

ROBERT A. LUTZ (Global Product Development, General Motors): So if your daily driving, whether to work or running errands or recreational use, is forty miles a day or less, and you charge the vehicle every night when you get home, you will never need to buy gasoline during the entire life of the vehicle.

NARRATOR: Under the fetish mask of the Chevy Volt is an electrified motor that can be powered in several different ways. Lithium ion batteries charged from the grid give it a driving range of forty miles. Batteries can also be charged by a generator that burns ethanol or gasoline, extending the range another six hundred miles. The motor can also be powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The Volt is a prototype built to promote the idea that affordable, practical cars can be powered from diverse energy sources. But it’s not for sale yet. The problem is batteries are not included.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So tell us, when’s this going to happen? Or is it going to happen?

JOSEPH WHITE: Both are good questions. I think General Motors would earnestly like for a car like this to happen. The question is.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Well, of course.

JOSEPH WHITE: The question is they don’t have the battery technology yet to make it work. And, because they don’t have the battery technology, this is, essentially, an imaginary car. It’s a very nice imaginary car, but it’s an imaginary car.

NARRATOR: How long the Volt will remain an imaginary car is unclear. GM says batteries must get cheaper, safer and more reliable before the Volt becomes a reality.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: If you can tell us without killing us, when can we expect this car?

ANTHONY POSAWATZ (Vehicle Line Director, General Motors): We will be ready when that battery is ready, there’s no question in my mind.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So, five to seven years?

ANTHONY POSAWATZ: But, most importantly, when General Motors brings a product out like the Chevrolet Volt, it has to be a product that the battery will last ten years, that’ll be safe for the customers, and will meet all their needs. They don’t want any compromises.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Alright, Tony, tell us. When is it coming out?

JOSEPH ROMM: I think General Motors should be taken earnestly. I think that if they build it, people will buy it, plus, the competition—Toyota, Honda—will introduce plug-in hybrids, I have no doubt. So I think that there is much more reason to be optimistic now than in a very long time.

NARRATOR: G.M. hopes to commence producing the Volt by the end of the decade, but today it stands alone in a sea of muscled trucks and high-powered road machines. Will cars like the Volt ever substitute them? Tom and Ray aren’t so sure.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: It’s right next to the Ford Mustang with five hundred fifty horsepower.

BETH LOWERY: Yes. And the Camaro convertible. Isn’t that good?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Yeah.

BETH LOWERY: America is all about choice. If you want a Camaro, buy a Camaro.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: But if we’re about hugging trees.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: With five hundred horsepower? Who the hell needs five hundred horsepower?

BETH LOWERY: Obviously not you.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Why do you make such sh-t? I mean it’s ridiculous!

BETH LOWERY: You mean these popular vehicles that are on the floor?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah, these popular vehicles. Five hundred horsepower. jeez!

BETH LOWERY: It creates a little excitement, doesn’t it?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: You’re good, Beth.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Thanks a million.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Thanks for your time.

BETH LOWERY: Thanks.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Sorry for providing you a hard time.

BETH LOWERY: That’s okay. I’m used to it.

NARRATOR: After a century of making cars fueled by gasoline, how quickly can carmakers switch their course?

ANDY FRANK: We’ve got to get alternative vehicles into our society as quickly as possible. Because when shortages commence to occur, we will have economic disruption like you cannot believe.

JOSEPH ROMM: We can’t wait. We have to reduce our emissions embarking in the next few years. If we don’t we’re going to find it virtually unlikely to avoid catastrophic heating.

NARRATOR: But is there too much at stake to be left in the mitts of carmakers and consumers?

DAVID GREENE: We’re not able to rely on individual decisions in the marketplace to solve the problem of climate switch, to solve the problem of oil-dependence. It takes collective act. It takes government activity.

JOSEPH WHITE: It’s asking a lot of the auto industry to force the switch all on its own. It’s not indeed their job.

BETH LOWERY: If we determine we indeed want to reduce dependence on petroleum as a society, then we have to have the collective will to do so. And that includes making sure we have the right government policies in place, that we have the right vehicles in place, the right fuels, and the customers understand that that’s indeed a priority.

NARRATOR: But will customers buy these fresh kinds of cars if carmakers build them? How willing are we to embrace switch in something so fundamental to our lives?

AMORY LOVINS: Ultimately, as citizens and as consumers, we’re responsible for the world we create. If we don’t like the way it’s turning out, let’s switch it.

JOHN HEYWOOD: Individual choices and deeds matter. They truly do. And it all adds up.

NARRATOR: If we do embrace switch, future generations may look back fondly on today’s cars as dinosaurs from a bygone era, relics from the age of oil.

DAVID GREENE: This is an achievable objective. It’ll take time. We can’t do it tomorrow. We can’t do it even in five years. But every year that we work on it, the situation will get better.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: So let me know, are you ready to stir on and get something fresh? I mean, are you.

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Well, I’ve seen a lot of very interesting technology, and I know what I want.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Truly, what’s that?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: I want you to turn that into a plug-in hybrid.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Indeed?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Yeah.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Oh, let me see, we’ll throw in some fuel cells, maybe. We’ll throw some carbon fiber panels on it. Let’s get out of here, will you? Ethanol tank, fuel cells, so what else do you want?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: That’ll do.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: When do you want it?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: How about tomorrow?

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Sure. Five o’clock?

TOM MAGLIOZZI: Five o’clock is fine.

RAY MAGLIOZZI: Works for me.

Broadcast Credits

Car of the Future

Janet Driscoll Smith Consulting Producer Doug Berman Edited by David Cohen Director of Photography Mark Knobil Music Andreas Bjí¸rck Sound Recordists Frank Coakley

Christopher Strollo Gaffer Matt Thurber Assistant Camera Gustavo Blanco

Drew Eckman Animation Ice Cold Milk

Boo Wong Online Editor Eric Ramistella Colorist John Crowley Audio Mix Sue Hartford Engine Animation Courtesy of General Motors

Designed by Kennedy Associates

Dan Zowada Archival Material ABC News VideoSource

Chariton Valley Biomass Project

David Hannan Productions/Footage Search

Iowa Public Television

Phototake Special Thanks Aaron Borchert

Emery Tree Service

Sal Leo Tree Service

Dar & Ben Thomas

Nick Zielinski NOVA Series Graphics yU + co. NOVA Theme Music Walter Werzowa

Musikvergnuegen, Inc. Extra NOVA Theme Music Ray Loring Post Production Online Editor Michael H. Amundson Closed Captioning The Caption Center NOVA Administrator Ashley King Publicity Eileen Campion

Lindsay de la Rigaudiere Researcher Gaia Remerowski Production Coordinator Linda Callahan Unit Manager Carla Raimer Paralegal Raphael Nemes Legal Counsel Susan Rosen Assistant Editor Alex Kreuter Associate Producer, Post Production Patrick Carey Post Production Supervisor Regina O’Toole Post Production Editor Rebecca Nieto Post Production Manager Nathan Gunner Supervising Producer Stephen Sweigart Business Manager Joseph P. Tracy Producers, Special Projects Lisa Mirowitz

David Condon Coordinating Producer Laurie Cahalane Senior Science Editor Evan Hadingham Senior Series Producer Melanie Wallace Managing Director Alan Ritsko Senior Executive Producer Paula S. Apsell

A NOVA Production by Fresh Wrinkle, Inc. for WGBH Boston

© two thousand eight WGBH Educational Foundation

All Rights Reserved

Photo composite

Participants

Sources

Links

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is the U.S.’s primary lab for the probe of renewable energy and energy efficiency. On its extensive Web site, find information on alternative-energy sources, hydrogen fuel cells, "green" building materials, and much more.

Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

This Web site from the U.S. Department of Energy offers a wealth of information on fresh green energy technologies. Learn about the latest research on alternative fuels, energy storage, vehicle systems, and more.

Transportation Technology R&D Center

Argonne National Laboratory conducts research on transportation-related technologies such as fuel cells, batteries, biofuels, and vehicle software. Find information about its latest projects on this Web site.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Energy Page

Read about current projects in energy research and engineering on this Web site from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) Model

This computer program, written by Argonne National Laboratories, permits users to evaluate the energy and emission impacts of various vehicle and fuel combinations.

Transportation Energy Data Book

This downloadable book from the U.S. Department of Energy is a veritable bible of transportation data dating back to 1976. Hard copies are also available for free through the DOE Web site.

Find information on fuel efficiency, vehicle emissions, and alternative vehicles on this Web site from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The California Cars Initiative

On this Web site from the California Cars Initiative, read about fresh hybri-car technologies and find links to extra online resources.

Electrified Auto Association

Founded in 1967, this organization strives to educate the public about the benefits of electrical vehicles. On its Web site, find a glossary of electrified terms, participate in online forums, and more.

This Web site from the National Biodiesel Board offers links to a number of online resources, including biodiesel fact sheets, treating and use guidelines, frequently asked questions, and more.

How Ethanol Is Made

Find out what it takes to manufacture ethanol fuels on this Web page from the Renewable Fuels Association.

Fuel Cell Vehicles

On this federal government site, compare the spectacle of a fuel cell car with that of a hybrid or conventional vehicle, get tips for conserving gasoline, read about fuel cell construction, and more.

National Academies Press

Learn about the possibilities and challenges of hydrogen power in The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs. All chapters of this two thousand four publication are available for free download as .pdf files.

On this popular car blog, find hundreds of auto-related entries on everything from minivans to high-performance concept cars.

This Blog from Wired magazine covers the convergence of transportation and technology. Find discussions of alternative vehicles, fuels, concepts, and more.

On this Web site, read news stories and featured articles on sustainable transportation technologies, the energy that powers it, and the people who are making it happen.

Progressive Automotive X Prize

This competition, which is open to teams from around the world, challenges engineers to build and bring to market an alternative car with an efficiency level that’s the equivalent to getting one hundred miles per gallon.

On the companion Web site to this popular NPR program, find podcasts and audio excerpts, a guide to fresh alternative-fuel sources, and an archive of car advice from hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi.

Books

ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

by Vijay Vaitheeswaran and Iain Carson. Twelve Publishing, 2007.

Sustainable Ethanol: Biofuels, Biorefineries, Cellulosic Biomass, Flex-fuel Vehicles, and Sustainable Farming for Energy Independence

by Jeffrey Goettemoeller and Adrian Goettemoeller. Prairie Oak Publishing, 2007.

Tomorrow’s Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet

by Peter Hoffmann. MIT Press, 2002.

Green Designed Future Cars: Hybrid, Electrical, Bio Fuel Cell

by Ulrich Bethscheider-Keiser. Avedition Books, 2008.

Hell and High Water: The Global Heating Solution

by Joseph Romm. Harper Perennial, 2008.

The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate

by Joseph J. Romm. Island Press, 2004.

The Hydrogen Energy Transition: Moving Toward the Post Petroleum Age in Transportation

by Daniel Sperling and James Cannon, eds. Elsevier Press, 2004.

Forward Drive: The Race to Build "Clean" Cars for the Future

by Jim Motavalli. Sierra Club Books, 2001.

The Electrified Car: Development and Future of Battery, Hybrid and Fuel-Cell Cars

by Michael H. Westbrook. Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2001.

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