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While I was reading the very last parts of ‘The World is Flat’, I found one section particularly illuminating. In it the author talked about why hybrid and flexible-fuel vehicles can be very effective in reducing America’s dependence for foreign oil. The incredible practical feasibility of developing this new type of environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient vehicles surprised me and made me wonder why they are not taking over the roads already. Although these cars only account for a tiny percentage of all car sales globally at the moment, I’m quite certain that fuel-efficient eco-driving will quickly become a big global trend in the face of growing international competition for oil (ever rising oil prices) and potential environmental disaster in the not too distant future. In fact, road transportation is already one of the biggest sources of air pollution on the planet, with rapidly growing number of vehicles hitting the roads every day, which is especially so in many developing nations, we will probably have no choice but to start driving environmentally friendly to avoid any terrible environmental consequences.

Below are some excerpts from the book.

As Luft points out: The majority of U.S. oil imports go to fueling the transport sector, primarily cars and trucks. Therefore, the key to reducing our dependence on foreign oil is powering our cars and trucks with less petroleum. There are two ways we can do that right now. One is electricity. We grenerate most of our needs with coal, hydro, nuclear, and natural gas. Toyota’s hybrid cars, like the Prius, run on both gasoline and electricity that is generated by braking and then stored in a small battery. But, says Luft, if you had a hybrid that you could plug in at night, the battery could store up twenty miles of driving per day. So your first twenty miles would be covered by the battery. The gasoline would kick in only after that. Since 50 percent of Americans do not drive more than twenty miles per day, the battery power would cover all their driving. Even if they drove more than that, combining the battery power and the gasoline could give you one hundred miles per gallon of gasoline used, Luft notes.

Then add to that flexible-fuel cars, which have a special chip in the fuel line that enables them to burn alcolhol, gasoline, or any mixture of the two. Some four million U.S. cars already come equipped this way, including models from GM. It costs only about $150 a car to make it flex-fuel ready. Brazil, the leader in this area, hopes to have almost all its new cars flex-fuel ready by 2008. As Luft notes, if you combine a plug-in hybrid system with a flex-fuel system that burns 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent gasoline, you could end up stretching each gallon of gasoline up to five hundred miles.

In short, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel or wait for sci-fi hydrogen fuel cells or dramatically cut back our standard of living in order to set the right example for the rest of the world. The technologies we need for a stronger, more energy independent America are already there. The only thing we have a shortage of now are leaders with the imagination and will to move the country onto a geo-green path.