2009/09/14


Brazil, oil and hybrids

A little letter I sent to The Week Ahead, a podcast from The Economist...


Hello,

In the last show you said that hybrid cars have disadvantages over battery powered, "all-electric" cars. What exactly would that be? As far as I know hybrids are "the best of both w
orlds" between battery and fuel based vehicles. Only problem might be related to production and marketing...

Hybrids are a natural evolution for current vehicles, and an exciting one too. I have a hard time trying to understand the delay in its adoption, and often paranoically blame secret influences from oil companies who would dislike too efficient cars to suddenly take the streets. I can't understand, for example, why is it still so difficult to buy a Prius even after years of existence and success. What is wrong here?

Speaking of long-term planning of oil use, as a Brazilian I was quite interested to hear the advice to follow Norway's policies for the exploration of natural resources. Where can I get more information about this?

One interesting aspect of Brazil is that oil competes with our sugar cane alcohol, specially in cars. At the same time the oil exploration and the agricultural production are not exclusively related to energy, but also to the whole petrochemical industry and food production. It's a complicated equation!

The future we should be aiming at right now is having hybrid cars powered by small and extremely efficient turbines burning dimethylfuran produced by renewable organic means. The efforts on batteries, hydrogen and solar vehicles are a bit of a time waste, in my most humble opinion...

Thank you,

++nicolau

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