interview > romm > romm 14

Romm 14 (0:57)
Topic(s): Electric & Hybrid / Government
User Comments

Video Transcript

After two decades of not changing fuel economy regulations, our cars have gotten bigger and heavier and overpowered and very inefficient. And the opportunity is to make those cars efficient over the next two decades, particularly by introducing hybrid technology. So that's sort of phase one. Phase two is then to move from hybrids to the advanced hybrids or plug-in hybrids, and start actually switching out gasoline for electricity and also for cellulosic ethanol.

So in that two-phase transition, by the middle of this century the cars might emit 10 percent, 20 percent of the greenhouse gases that they emit today. It's not going to happen overnight, particularly because people own their cars for two decades now, so it takes a while to shift out the old cars and bring in the new cars. But I do think that steady push by the federal government is the ticket to reversing the emissions trends on greenhouse gases and finally cutting them down.