Customer Reviews

ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Two Economist reporters teamed up to write Zoom. That shows. The book takes a good look at cars, their past and their future. But it reads more like a series of magazine articles than a book. That makes the book somewhat simple and superficial. Nothing deep or meaty.

That being said, Zoom does provide a good read. The authors like to talk about people as much as things. And they are good at little character sketches. Stan Ovshinsky. Henry Ford. Bob Lutz. Elon Musk. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Larry Burns. Lee Raymond. Thomas Edison. Amory Lovins. James Woolsey. And tens of others. Probably a hundred people altogether.

The authors do well with people. They do not do so well with the technology. A few (not many) out and out errors. (And again like a magazine but unlike a book, not a single footnote or citation to let us check on sources.) But mostly the book takes just a quick look at technology, not the close look that would have helped.

The hydrogen economy, for example, gets mentioned several times throughout the book. But the pros and cons are never discussed. Same with climate change. Maybe an in-depth look at those complex issues would not work in a magazine article. In a book, a careful look at those key issues not only works, but its lack glares as a weakness.

In a review like this, it's easy to focus on the critical and pay less attention to the good things about the book. I've done that here. On balance, this book covers a very important topic in an entertaining, well-researched and well-written manner. The authors should be commended. And their book, Zoom, should be read.

Zoom is not what I expected. I thought I'd get a survey of the various alt-fuel vehicle approaches that are being pursued today. Instead what I mostly got is an examination of all that's wrong with Big Oil, Big Auto, and Washington DC. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. I certainly learned a lot.

The book does seem a bit rambling and unfocused, certainly in contrast to the laser-like focus of Cool It. Some have criticized it for including large tracts of text from earlier articles that appeared in The Economist. Well. . . I don't subscribe to The Economist, so this was all new to me.

As we are led down this winding path, we get a schooling in how Big Oil and Big Auto have corrupted the political process. We see how dependent the world has become on the Middle East. We find that both Big Oil and Big Auto -- squabbling partners, like siamese twins who detest one another yet can't be separated -- are facing serious problems in the coming decades. The authors believe that grassroots political pressure, a great awakening, will eventually force a change to overwhelm the armies of lobbyists and fountains of campaign money that they have showered on politicians. Pressure is rising up from consumers, it's rising up from voters, it's rising up from the states and local governments, and Washington DC will be the last place to come around.

One big insight here relates to global warming. The authors don't see global warming as a critical problem -- provided that we move away from gas guzzlers toward more efficient cars and energy sources. However, that is only one path that industry could follow. The other path leads to tar sands, oil shale, and coal-to-liquids. If these become the replacement for conventional oil, then our global CO2 emissions could skyrocket.

Even Bjorn Lomborg would object to that. Even I, a long-time skeptic of global warming, would object to that. Making large changes to the composition of our planet's atmosphere seems. . . imprudent, to say the least.

So, what do the authors recommend? They are economists. . . It's not surprising that they advocate leveling the playing field so that free markets can solve our problems. They're in favor of a carbon dioxide tax, to "internalize" the various social, national security and environmental costs of fossil fuels. This, they believe, would head off the dirty fuels scenario. They want to end subsidies for ethanol and other biofuels, but also end protective tariffs against Brazilian sugar and ethanol. However, their loudest cry is to end subsidies for the oil companies. They paint a truly disgusting picture of these subsidies in the book. According to the authors, most alt-energy advocates haven't lobbied to get rid of these subsidies. Instead they've been happy to support hundreds of billions in giveaways for Big Oil -- as long as they get a few crumbs for their pet wind, or solar, or biofuels projects along with it.

Another point the authors make is that government must not try to "pick a winner" among the various alt-fuel technologies. Governments have always done a lousy job of picking technologies, that's something for the free market to decide.

Unfortunately, they aren't too good at taking their own advice, as throughout the book they repeatedly name the "hydrogen economy" as the ultimate answer. At one point they even make a condescending remark about James Woolsey because he dared to say hydrogen isn't the answer. Yet, at no point in the book do the authors ever explain what advantage hydrogen supposedly offers over battery-electric cars.

Zoom is a good book if you understand what you are getting and what you aren't. If you're looking for something that truly captures the excitement of all the innovations bubbling up in the auto industry now -- from Tesla and Phoenix, Toyota and GM, Nissan and Subaru -- then you better look elsewhere. These developments are mentioned in passing, but not really focused on. You'll get more and better info from reading AutoblogGreen regularly.

However, Zoom does have some good insights about how our industries and political system got to where we are today, and how we can start getting out of this mess. As an economic and political manifesto, I'll give it a qualified recommendation.

Almost entirely a history of everything that's "bad" about cars and the auto & oil industries. Very little OF SUBSTANCE about what they could become and HOW TO GET THERE. Also, the book could have been 1/2 it's final length if the authors hadn't kept repeating things. Disappointing.

The problem with oil and the internal combustion engine can be understood by a few statistics. Car ownership in the US is more than one per person - 1,148 cars for every 1,000 Americans. In China and India it is about 10 cars per 1,000 persons. Current global oil consumption is about 86 million barrels per day. If car ownership and oil consumption levels in China and India reached half the US-level, an extra 100 million barrels daily would be required; if they equaled the US-level, yet another 100 million barrels daily would be needed. You don't even need to believe in global warming to see that this trend is unsustainable.

The authors, Iain Carson and Vijay V Vaitheeswaran, are transportation journalists and techno-optimists. They love cars and see a bright future for car ownership, provided that one or more of the host of new fuel and energy technologies are embraced - everything from flex-fuel ethanol engines to plug-in hybrids. They are pessimists, however, about the will of Big Oil and Detroit - and politicians - to meet the challenges of carbon emissions, declining oil reserves, and the rising energy demands of newly developing nations such as China and India. This is very telling since both authors worked for the pro-business magazine The Economist.

Although their sharp criticisms of business will have them pegged as anti-business or "leftist," their censure of politicians is across the spectrum. The story about the Clinton/Gore intiative in 1993 with the Big Three, known as the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, would have been funny were it not so tragic. The Big Three went through more than a billion dollars worth of subsidies to produce new fuel-efficient vehicles. The vehicles were rolled out for the 2000 North American Auto Show in Detroit as concept cars, but by 2002 and with a new administration, they were all scrapped because they were deemed to be flawed. (We are going through the same charade today with biofuels.) Ironically, Toyota took the challenge seriously and started develpment on what is now the Prius. According to the authors, what Clinton and Gore needed to do was tax carbon emissions - something that is politically suicidal.

The Bush administration and the automakers have since embarked on an ambitious project known as FreedomCar (as in freedom from foreign oil). This vehicle would be fueled by pure hydrogen. Along with this, Governor Schwarzenegger has initiated a plan to build a hydrogen refueling infrastructure in California. (Read 21st Century Complete Guide to Hydrogen Power and Fuel Cell Cars: FreedomCAR Plans, Automotive Technology for Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Production, Storage, Safety Standards, Energy Depart for more information.)

Cynicism aside, this might be the fuel of the future. Stanford Ovshinsky has been advocating hydrogen fuel for over 40 years. It is a zero-emissions technology. The hydrogen loop starts with water and ends with emitting only water vapor into the atmosphere. The hydrogen storage system he invented is used in the Prius, as well as other new hybrids coming into the market. From hydrogen batteries, the next step is pure hydrogen fuel which, by the way, is already being used in the new Honda FCX.

The race to build the car - and the fuel - of the future has thus far, according to the authors, been a race by Big Oil and the Big Three to prevent the future from arriving. But with the success of the Prius, the rising cost of fuel, and the instability of oil producing countries, there are signs that the culprits might be changing. The authors recommend higher fuel taxes to accelerate change. At the same time, they discourage government subsidies for such things as ethanol production. That sounds tough for business and for the ordinary consumer, but it might be the bitter medicine that is needed.

I subtracted one star because I felt this book focused too much on the mistakes of the past, and too little on future technologies.

How can anyone take seriously a book that markets itself as being a guide to the fuels that might drive cars of the future when it completely misses one of the most obvious solutions: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). They quote the inventor of the Ovonic battery but not about batteries but about hydrogen fuel cells. There is no mention of the Ovonic NiMH battery that successfully powered the EV1 and still powers 700 RAV4s, or the successful lawsuit by Chevron to stop Toyota from using the batteries in their cars. They call the EV1 the first generation of electric vehicles, never mind the fact that BEVs were the dominant automobile 100 years ago.

The authors know a lot about oil and liquid fuels but very little about battery technology or electric vehicles and it shows. ZOOM is a pretend book about the future of the automobile as though written by a frightened oil industry trying to look like they are doing something.

The authors praise hydrogen fuel cells to the sky, a distant technology by any account, while they mock enthusiastic supporters of of solar and wind energy as "pie in the sky" thinkers. Covering oiland ither fossil fuels for 90% of the book, the authors bash environmentalists and energy independence people with subtle but carefully chosen jabs and put downs. In a smug and demeaning tone, they accuse environmental orgs of cowardice for not pushing for carbon taxes for individuals completely omitting the fact that many of these orgs are pushing for taxes on big oil and industrial polluters. The political reality is that carbon taxes on individuals will do nothing to stop big polluters but will cause a huge backlash against anyone who tries to implement or support them. This just happened in BC to the current government. So the authors are encouraging environmental groups to shoot themselves in the foot.

Biased free market opinions fill the book making it useless as a resource for solutions. Anything that does not fit their narrow economic view is offhandedly discarded without sound reason. There is even some anti oil nationalizing rhetoric about a small corrupt third world country as a warning where the authors claim that an oil exec coined the term "asymetric warfare"

A highly misleading book, really about salvaging oil in the eye of the consumer and guiding them to tax and regulate themselves but not the oil or auto industry. Subtle and insidious greenwashing.

"Zoom: the Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future" is a pretty good book. It reads much like a history lesson on oil, cars, and energy in general. I found that a bit over much as I was wanting to look more ahead to solutions, rather than rehash the mistakes and things of the past. Also I found some of the information rather sloppy. For example in several places the author makes reference to the EV1, the car GM created and then refused to sell to consumers. They only leased it. Yet on page 287 of "Zoom" the author writes, "...EV1, the sleek, all-electric car that was sold only in California..." How many other of these types of infractions are in the writing? Since I am not an auto engineer, I can only speculate, but it did make me wonder about the rest of the book. Nonetheless, the book does have some good points. And hopefully, there will be a car that gets us all away from oil.

This book provides a good overview of the history of the auto and oil industries, the political pressure applied by these industries, and how growing environmental awareness and technological innovation could ultimately displace them.

Based on the title, I expected more of a focus on the various emerging alternative fuels and the vehicles that will use them; however, as other reviewers have noted, these topics are not discussed deeply.

The book reads like a succession of Economist articles and at times does not flow well from one section to the next. Also, the different writing styles of the two authors is noticeable; some of the writing about the auto industry in particular can be rambling and redundant (which is surprising since the author is an editor at the Economist).

Still, this book is worth reading and introduces the reader to many different topics, peaking the reader's interest so that he or she will most likely want to delve further into some of the topics discussed.

Zoom - The global race to fuel the car of the future is something more than just cars and the fuel. It combines in it the story of a century of human exploitation of natural resources, our ever growing demand for resources our planet Earth can no longer provide, the nexus between politics and industry and how a recent awakening in the young entrepreneurs of the world has given us a chance to save the world.

The book is very well organized in terms of the topics it covers. It starts of by stating the problems plaguing the Oil and the Car industry and how it is linked to the bigger problem of running out of Oil and to issues of carbon emissions and climate change. It then moves on to discuss whether the dinosaurs of these industries can learn to dance to the tunes of the new challenges and then suggests what needs to be done to get things right. It poses some real good questions as to why a country with an ever growing dependency of oil and a major contributor to the current climate problem is not doing much to change things while developing countries like China are leap-frogging towards a cleaner eco-footprint. It also poses certain questions for the voters to ask when they choose their representatives next time around.

Though the topics are well organized, one frustrating thing is that many lines are repeated in subsequent chapters. It is irritating to read the same line thrice in a book. The book also has some spelling mistakes. It also does not give citations along with the text but at the end. It is a good book for someone who wants to know about how the automobile industry is planning to solve its fuel problems in the future. It discusses a whole lot of opportunities but does not go in detail. The conclusion it draws is that we will need more than one or perhaps, as the book calls it "a portfolio of alternative energies" to survive the future.

If you are looking only for knowledge on the energy crisis that we might face, this is not the book for you. But if you are an automobile fan, it gives a good insight into the past of the automobile industry and the issues facing it today. Look at the book from an automobile perspective rather than an energy perspective and you will enjoy it!

Happy Reading!

Very disappointing. Just a lot of tired old ideas - GM and oil company conspiracy theories. Not worth the money. I did not finish it.

Vijay's "Power to the people" was a pioneering work in highlighting the various issues including geo-political tensions, pollution, and the immediate need to find an alternate substitute for oil (My 5 star rating for this book on [...]). Since then, in direct correlation with and also perhaps in anger against the rise in oil prices, particularly the world's dependence on Middle East oil, several books have been published in the last 5 years. America and the Automobile that were once described as " The Siamese Twins" and Automobiles that was once hailed as "the Industry of Industries" suddenly became the sinner of them all. Emotions and rhetoric apart, facts need to be analyzed with a view to the future. This book scores well on this count.

The fact that the US Automobile companies have almost lost their race to "imports" particularly from Japan is no longer a secret. The path breaking MIT research that led to the excellent tome "The Machine that Changed the World" by Womack et al, gave a surgical 3 D view of the Japanese strengths that Uncle Sam could not emulate till date. Thanks of course for the money well spent on the project.

I do not understand why the authors have to take us back in history to narrate the old story again and again when we have well written books and reports on this topic.

Coming to the point, I expected the book to straight get into the topic (as I had expected from the title) "The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future". More than anything else, most of the book is about the past, without concrete conclusions or inferences about the future.

Many of the technologies, names of Companies doing research on Hydrogen Fuel Cells and other concepts are repeated from "Power to the people". In fact I got a little impatient till about two thirds of the book till which I came across nothing original except quotes from many well known publications and books published in the last 5 years.

At his point in time I could reflect on some of the best books that have done original work on the topic of Oil and the US Auto Industry.

- The End of Detroit by Michelin Maynard
- The End of Oil by Paul Roberts
- Twilight in the Desert - Matt Simmons
- Addicted to Oil - Ian Rutledge (A classic completely missed out in this book. I strongly recommend this book for your intellectual stimulation.)

Throughout the book, I remembered King Hubert, who had rightly forecast that oil will soon reach its peak output, at least on this planet. As I was reading the book, Oil had touched $[...], a new record.

Criticisms apart, the book has its own merits.

- Excellent read for those who want an overview of the Automobile Industry- Past, present and future.
- Non technical and easy to comprehend
- You are alone on a long train journey in a desert, and have nothing else to do.
- The last few chapters try discussing new technologies and you know nothing about technology.

Amidst this confusion Toyota leads the way in Hybrids. But if we are to apply the core concept of "The Innovators Dilemma" by Prof. Clayton Christen of Harvard Business School, incumbents may not be the winners in launching the car of the future. Keep "Googling" to find out who can give us the solution for a clean and green future!!

Good luck to those who have bought the book.