All roads seem to point back to the late 1960s and early 1970s when the movement to make automobiles more ecologically friendly and fuel efficient was launched in earnest.  Authors Sperling and Gordon insist that Ralph Nader’s consumer safety campaign, which kicked off in the sixties, and the establishment of Earth Day in 1970, were instrumental in persuading Congress to pass and President Richard Nixon to sign into law the Clean Air Acts Amendments of 1970.  “An aggressive campaign was begun to reduce pollution from gasoline combustion engines, forcing the insular, maturing automotive industry to embrace innovative pollution-reduction technology and, soon after, safety and energy innovations as well,” the authors write.

The Demand Response post pointed to OPEC as the main culprit motivating the electricity industry to look inward and come up with some substantive solutions to help wean them off of being so heavily dependent on foreign oil for sustenance.  OPEC’s oil essentially single-handedly fuelled the transportation industry back then, so that crisis also reverberated through the automobile industry, moreso than the electricity industry.

“One-fourth of all the oil consumed by humans in our entire history will be consumed from 2000 to 2010.  And if the world continues on its current path, it will consume as much oil in the next several decades as it has throughout its entire history to date.  The increasing consumption of oil, and the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from it, are the direct result of dramatic growth in oil-burning motor vehicles worldwide.  Barring dramatic events  such as wars, economic depressions, or newfound political leadership, these trends will continue….Motor vehicles are fundamentally unchanged from a century ago….Perhaps most important, the vast majority of vehicles on the road are still powered by an inherently inefficient technology – the four-stroke internal combustion engine developed by Nikolaus Otto in 1867 and first incorporated in a car by Karl Benz in 1885.  These ancient engines are still fueled by petroleum, essentially the sole fuel for all global mobility.  Gasoline engines still waste more than two-thirds of the fuel they burn and directly emit 20 pounds of CO2 into the air for every gallon of fuel burned.” (From Two Billion Cars:  Driving Toward Sustainability by Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon)

As can be seen from the above timeline, the first hybrid vehicle was actually developed at the very end of the 19th century by a young engineer named Ferdinand Porsche.  Porsche’s design fused battery-powered electric motors into the front wheels to make them roll.  It is interesting to note that this innovation was also used in what was the first 4×4, pictured below.

Fast forward to today and we find that the automobile industry has only recently started mass-producing vehicles based on technology that is over a hundred years old.  This New York Times article detailed the development of the technology.

In the interim, other methods of improving fuel efficiency included the use of the biofuel ethanol, which is made from corn.  In Burton Richter’s book, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors:  Climate Change and Energy In The 21st Century, he states:  “…[C]orn ethanol takes about as much energy to make as is in the gasoline it displaces, results in the emission of nearly as much greenhouse gas as gasoline, and has driven up the price of food.”  Natural gas is also used as an alternative fuel to further reduce the carbon footprints of motor vehicles, but it is still not widely available.

We are now seeing automobile manufacturers hustling to improve their offerings of more eco-friendly and fuel efficient vehicles.  Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and hydrogen fuel cell models are now in production or are being developed for use by the masses.  They seem to be trying to increase gas mileage by eventually eliminating the use of gas altogether, for the sake of maintaining our planet for generations to come.