Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

change, with large solar companies seriously viewing solar power as being competitive with fossil fuel plants.
    ELECTRIC CAR
    Since about half the world’s oil is used in cars, trucks, trains, and planes, there is enormous interest in reforming that sector of the economy. Thereis now a race to see who will dominate the automotive future, as nations make the historic transition from fossil fuels to electricity. There are several stages in this transition. The first is the hybrid car, already on the market, which uses a combination of electricity from a battery and gasoline. This design uses a small internal combustion engine to solve the long-standing problems with batteries: it is difficult to create a battery that can operate for long distances as well as provide instantaneous acceleration.
    But the hybrid is the first step. The plug-in hybrid car, for example, has a battery powerful enough to run the car on electrical power for the first fifty miles or so before the car has to switch to its gasoline engine. Since most people do their commuting and shopping within fifty miles, it means that these cars are powered only by electricity during that time.
    One major entry into the plug-in hybrid race is the Chevy Volt, made by General Motors. It has a range of 40 miles (using only a lithium-ion battery) and a range of 300 miles using the small gasoline engine.
    And then there is the Tesla Roadster, which has no gasoline engine at all. It is made by Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley company that is the only one in North America selling fully electric cars in series production. The Roadster is a sleek sports car that can go head-to-head with any gasoline-fired car, putting to rest the idea that electric lithium-ion batteries cannot compete against gasoline engines.
    I had a chance to drive a two-seat Tesla, owned by John Hendricks, founder of Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel. As I sat in the driver’s seat, Mr. Hendricks urged me to hit the accelerator with all my might to test his car. Taking his advice, I floored the accelerator. Immediately, I could feel the sudden surge in power. My body sank into the seat as I hit 60 miles per hour in just 3.9 seconds. It is one thing to hear an engineer boast about the performance of fully electric cars; it is another thing to hit the accelerator and feel it for yourself.
    The successful marketing of the Tesla has forced mainstream automakers to play catch-up, after decades of putting down the electric car. Robert Lutz, when he was vice chairman of General Motors, said, “ All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is ten years away, and Toyota agreed with us—and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, ‘How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this and we can’t?’ ”
    Nissan Motors is leading the charge to introduce the fully electric carto the average consumer. It is called the Leaf, has a range of 100 miles, a top speed of up to ninety miles per hour, and is fully electric.
    After the fully electric car, another car that will eventually hit the showrooms is the fuel cell car, sometimes called the car of the future. In June 2008, Honda Motor Company announced the debut of the world’s first commercially available fuel cell car, the FCX Clarity. It has a range of 240 miles, has a top speed of 100 miles per hour, and has all the amenities of a standard four-door sedan. Using only hydrogen as fuel, it needs no gasoline and no electric charge. However, because the infrastructure for hydrogen does not yet exist, it is available for leasing in the United States only in Southern California. Honda is also advertising a sports car version of its fuel cell car, called the FC Sport.
    Then in 2009, GM, emerging from bankruptcy after its old management was summarily fired, announced that its fuel cell car, the Chevy Equinox, had passed the million-mile mark in terms of testing. For the past twenty-five months 5,000 people have been testing 100 of these fuel cell cars. Detroit, chronically lagging behind Japan in introducing small car technology and hybrids, is trying to get a foothold in the future.
    On the surface, the fuel cell car is the perfect car. It runs by combining hydrogen and oxygen, which then turns into electrical energy, leaving only water as the waste product. It creates not an ounce of smog. It’s almost eerie looking at the tailpipe of a