interview > romm > romm 26

Romm 26 (1:10)
Topic(s): Alt Vehicles / Auto Industry / Future Transport
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Video Transcript

Well, there is a chicken-and-egg problem where, until the vehicle is attractive enough to be bought in large numbers, it's only made kind of special custom manufacturing, which is quite expensive. So early on, these alternative-fuel vehicles are very expensive, and that discourages people from buying them. So you have to figure out a way to increase sales incrementally, to increase technology improvements incrementally. That's why I tend to think we're going to see this two-phase transition: to hybrids and then from hybrids to plug-in hybrids. I think that's what we're going to see in the future.

I think that, you know, it is hard to have a revolution in cars overnight, because "A," people keep their cars for 20 years; car factories last, you know, two to three decades. We have a fueling infrastructure of gasoline that was built over the course of many decades and it has been paid off long time ago and it is delivering gasoline very cheaply. So to deliver an alternative fuel other than gasoline is no mean feat. Someone has got to build fueling stations for an alternative fuel or else it just won't become popular with the public.