Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars

by Margo Oge, Fred Krupp (Foreword)

Now in paperback, with a new foreword by Fred Krupp, an expert's illuminating preview of the cleaner, lighter, smarter cars of the future.In Driving the Future, Margo T. Oge portrays a future where clean, intelligent vehicles with lighter frames and alternative power trains will produce zero emissions and run at 100+ mpg. With electronic architectures more like those of airplanes, cars will be smarter and safer, will park themselves, and will network with other vehicles on the road to drive themselves. As the director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, Oge was the chief architect behind the Obama administration’s landmark 2012 deal with automakers in the US market to double the fuel efficiency of their fleets and to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2025. This was America’s first formal climate action using regulation to reduce emissions through innovation in car design.Offering an insider account of the partnership between federal agencies, California, environmental groups, and car manufacturers that led to the historic deal, Margo discusses the science of climate change, the politics of addressing it, and the lessons learned for policy makers. She also takes the reader through the convergence of macro trends that will drive this innovation over the next forty years and be every bit as transformative as those wrought by Karl Benz and Henry Ford. Driving the Future is for anyone who wants to know what car they’ll be driving in ten, twenty, or thirty years-and for everyone concerned about air quality and climate change now.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Environment, Technology, Green

422 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2015

Reviews

[Angel Valenzuela · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title says Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter cars but really it’s more of a retelling of quite literally the policy enacted over the course of a year. It doesn’t really talk about cars getting cleaner or smarter with the exception of ONE CHAPTER. The book just tells the story of the bush administration sitting out the climate change epidemic and Obama enacting a new policy once he’s elected. There is very little, if any, talk about how cars are changing to fight climate change. Not worth the time I invested to be honest.

[Nancy Richner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing is clear and presents a great team effort to move forward

In these times of fear and lies been spread without facts been checked it is extremely important to learn the history of where we were and why things changed to where we are now. This book explains the science behind the policies and shows how a team worked together with industry and leadership to help us all breathe better. It is a must rad if you want to become informed on how our current world works.

[Gregg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This should be condensed to one chapter of a broader book. The entire book is about a regulator making policy. This is the least interesting aspect of of the problem set. She didn’t build anything, invent anything, sell anything, or solve any problem. The book is also dated now which is why it was free. 2 stars.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis:
Part One: Climate Journey. Climate is cyclical and humans are impacting that balance; this discovery in the mid-19th century revolutionized the way humans interact with the environment. Many of those industries with a stake against regulation (automobile, power production, and manufacturing) claimed that the available climate science was insufficient to argue anthropogenic causes.
Part Two: The Big Deal. The EPA was formed by Nixon because the smog in LA was causing obvious health consequences. The regulatory body initially focused on pollutants that were directly harmful to human health, then went on to regulate emissions that may cause environmental damage such as acid rain, ozone depletion, greenhouse effect. Introduction of the catalytic convertor is seen to be one of the great wins of the agency because it was a fairly cheap solution that saved millions of lives. The Environmental Protection Agency worked with domestic industries and states to develop enforceable rules against pollution. Convincing the EU and China to join in the emissions reductions is critical to prevent fracturing of the global market.
Part Three: Imagining Tomorrow. The EPA has laid the groundwork to force automobile manufacturers to improve fuel economy of their fleet by an average of around 5%/year for the next 25 years. Technologies to accomplish this include: lighter vehicles (carbon fiber, aluminum), hybrids, fully electric, ethanol fuel compatibility, and fuel cells. Vehicles are more interconnected to improve safety and drivability. Innovations such as ZipCar and Uber make it much easier for individuals to get around without owning a vehicle. The future may trend towards self-driving cars that are rented on demand similar to public transportation. This trend would reduce parking and congestion issues drastically.

I picked this book up expecting a window into the development of futuristic cars, however Margo Oge describes herself as “not a car expert,” and the superficial technical descriptions confirm as much. The opening section on climate change focuses primarily on legislative resistance to regulation rather than discussing the mechanisms of greenhouse gas or human contribution to our climate. The first two sections come off as partisan giving the “blocking Republicans” and self-serving auto industries a bad rap. The middle section in particular is a fairly self-aggrandizing narrative of Oge’s journey in accomplishing a very small amount of legislation to force the auto industry to build more efficient cars. I was pleased to see that she mentioned the indirect costs of petroleum through the USA presence in the Middle East and subsidies for oil drilling. The economics of internal combustion vs. hybrid vs. electric helped me to see the picture more clearly as well. The third part was really the only one I found interesting, and though it lacked technical details, it did discuss the trend of future cars.
Recommendation: If you find this book before 2020, read the last section of this book for a top level view of the future of cars. After a few years, I’m sure some of the predictions will be a reality and some will appear comically uninformed. The rest of the book may be beneficial if you are interested in the EPA’s relationship with car manufacturers between 2000 and 2015. This is not the book for climate science information. See The Whole Story of Climate: What Science Reveals About the Nature of Endless Change by Kirsten Peters.