Exit Ramp From Oil Expressway
How the world will reduce its oil dependency in future? A nice overview is in Getting Off Oil.
Excerpts :
Yet in 2007 20 new hybrid models will enter the American market, and operating efficiency will finally become entrenched as carmakers’ top design priority, locking in oil savings for decades. Biofuels, too, will continue double-digit growth as Brazil’s 2006 oil independence and Sweden’s 2020 off-oil goal spur emulation.
Tripled-efficiency, ultralight petrol-hybrid SUVs were designed in 2000, paying back in one year at European and Japanese fuel prices or two years at America’s much cheaper pump prices. In 2007 the Automotive X Prize will start moving such designs to market.
In 2007, too, Toyota will emerge as the leader in super-efficient plug-in hybrid cars: electric for short commutes, petrol-hybrid for long trips. This could double the already doubled petrol efficiency of a Prius. Next, make that car ultralight and its petrol efficiency redoubles. Biofuel it and you quadruple petrol efficiency again, to 30 times today’s norm.
That transition already shapes competitive strategy. Wal-Mart’s new heavy trucks will be a quarter more efficient in 2007 than in 2006. By 2015 they will be twice as efficient, saving over $300m a year. Next will come trebled efficiency, which yields a 60% internal rate of return.
Alan Mulally, whose efficiency-based Boeing strategy is beating Airbus, will bring to Ford Boeing’s focus on ultralight materials (the 787 is 50% advanced composites), systems integration and breakthrough design.
In Washington, DC, a surprisingly strong voice in 2007 for getting off oil will be the world’s biggest buyer both of oil and of renewable energy—the Pentagon. The risk and cost of vulnerable fuel convoys, easy prey to roadside bombs, will persuade military leaders that only super-efficient platforms dragging dramatically slimmer fuel logistics tails, or none, can fight persistent, dispersed, affordable wars. This strategic shift will not just save hundreds of lives and tens of billions of dollars a year. It will also speed key technologies, like ultralight materials, that can triple the efficiency of civilian cars, trucks and planes—just as military R&D created the internet, GPS, and the jet and chip industries. Thus the Pentagon will start to lead America, and the world, off oil so nobody need fight over it.
China’s 2005 adoption of energy efficiency as a top development priority will start paying off.
Excerpts :
Yet in 2007 20 new hybrid models will enter the American market, and operating efficiency will finally become entrenched as carmakers’ top design priority, locking in oil savings for decades. Biofuels, too, will continue double-digit growth as Brazil’s 2006 oil independence and Sweden’s 2020 off-oil goal spur emulation.
Tripled-efficiency, ultralight petrol-hybrid SUVs were designed in 2000, paying back in one year at European and Japanese fuel prices or two years at America’s much cheaper pump prices. In 2007 the Automotive X Prize will start moving such designs to market.
In 2007, too, Toyota will emerge as the leader in super-efficient plug-in hybrid cars: electric for short commutes, petrol-hybrid for long trips. This could double the already doubled petrol efficiency of a Prius. Next, make that car ultralight and its petrol efficiency redoubles. Biofuel it and you quadruple petrol efficiency again, to 30 times today’s norm.
That transition already shapes competitive strategy. Wal-Mart’s new heavy trucks will be a quarter more efficient in 2007 than in 2006. By 2015 they will be twice as efficient, saving over $300m a year. Next will come trebled efficiency, which yields a 60% internal rate of return.
Alan Mulally, whose efficiency-based Boeing strategy is beating Airbus, will bring to Ford Boeing’s focus on ultralight materials (the 787 is 50% advanced composites), systems integration and breakthrough design.
In Washington, DC, a surprisingly strong voice in 2007 for getting off oil will be the world’s biggest buyer both of oil and of renewable energy—the Pentagon. The risk and cost of vulnerable fuel convoys, easy prey to roadside bombs, will persuade military leaders that only super-efficient platforms dragging dramatically slimmer fuel logistics tails, or none, can fight persistent, dispersed, affordable wars. This strategic shift will not just save hundreds of lives and tens of billions of dollars a year. It will also speed key technologies, like ultralight materials, that can triple the efficiency of civilian cars, trucks and planes—just as military R&D created the internet, GPS, and the jet and chip industries. Thus the Pentagon will start to lead America, and the world, off oil so nobody need fight over it.
China’s 2005 adoption of energy efficiency as a top development priority will start paying off.
posted by AshishBhardwaj at 11:35 PM
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