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White 9 (1:53)
Topic(s): Alt Vehicles / Auto Industry / Foreign Oil
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Video Transcript
Part of the problem that the car, the big, certainly the U.S.
car companies have, and I think maybe the Japanese car
companies have the same desire, is that at the end of the day
if they could get somebody else to pay for this, they'd love
that. I think the U.S. companies are a little more open about
saying, you know, to our, you know, United States government
and I think to governments overseas and elsewhere, "If you
want this stuff, if it's a priority for you to have plug-in
hybrids or you want fuel cell cars in your government fleets,
stuff costs money. Help us."
I think, I mean, there's kind of a desire that I think is
occasionally actually voiced that if this is so important to
the political leadership of this country, you know, the United
States, or any other country, if it's so important, then why
aren't we essentially doing a Manhattan Project, you know, to
use the U.S. metaphor. But you know, big, kind of space shot
Manhattan Project approach to this. And it's a good question.
I mean, that's not happening.
And the oil industry certainly isn't going to pay for, you
know, its own demise. So that's not going to happen. And
nobody, at least not in this country, I mean, again, it's a
different situation in Europe, nobody in this country, in the
United States, has wanted to say to the, to the average
customer, "Look, you know what, three bucks a gallon, you're
complaining about that? What you should be paying is six. And
we ought to be taking two of that six and putting it against,
you know, massive federal subsidies to kind of moving to a
different kind of automotive technology."
Or I suppose if you want to be really radical about it, you'd
say, "You know what, you know, every time you burn a gallon of
gas, you're going to, you're going to pay for the share of the
defense budget that's related to protecting the Persian Gulf."
Some people I think have actually seriously discussed that.
But do you see anybody proposing that in a serious way? No.
