For an alternative perspective on the future of the automobile, it may help to look at an alternative film. " Fuel" by Josh Tickle is a thought-provoking documentary that examines America's addiction to oil and what we can do about it.
Tickle does a good job of keeping the serious subject rather upbeat and hopeful, as he travels the world in his so-called Veggie Van, fueled by used vegetable oil. The film is engaging and friendly, cajoling audiences into sympathy with its message, not browbeating them.
Tickle is a fan of biodiesel, and a lot of the movie is focused on that fuel. Biodiesel is a promising alternative that until recently had problems only with scalability. It worked terrifically for the few consumers who made the commitment to use it, but it looked difficult to supply enough to fuel more than a million or so of America's roughly 240 million cars. (Read " Diesel vs. biodiesel vs. vegetable oil.")
"Fuel" also documents the growth of the algae biofuel movement, which promises to create economies of scale that biofuels have not had before. (We'll look into this fuel movement and share our own findings later.)
Statistics on alternative fuels are notoriously squishy. Different studies show different advantages. But as a student of these studies, Tickle's numbers are within the range of those cited by neutral sources, unlike those of some other documentaries on the automotive industry.
That's not to say the movie doesn't occasionally paint a rosy picture. As with other documentaries, its problems are more of omission, rather than commission. Framing the discussion around biofuels results in a myopic exclusion of any discussion of fuel cells, batteries, or the micro-level economics fundamental to most American families.
For example, after it spends a significant amount of time interviewing officials and citizens of some European countries moving off of oil, and noting how they may pay less for biodiesel than for petroleum-based fuel, it fails to mention that consumers in the United States almost always pay more.
And "Fuel" misses the point that the government is now heavily subsidizing the development and distribution of electric cars and plug-in hybrids to wean the U.S. off of oil. And while it touches on the future of wind and solar power, it never mentions the fact that these alternatives also need advanced batteries that can piggy-back off the development of new batteries for cars.
One amazing statistic in the film compares the cost of funding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (to protect American access to oil, the film posits) with the cost of providing enough solar panels to meet the electricity needs of every household in the United States. Based on our check of government and solar industry figures, the cost would be about $350 billion, or about three years of averaged war funding. (Admittedly, the issue is more complex than pure dollars, but it is an interesting bit of trivia, nonetheless.)
Accepting the biodiesel emphasis for what it is, leaves an informative and engaging documentary. It raises interesting questions worth considering, and it's worth seeing even for those who consider themselves pretty well informed on alternative fuel issues.
