In a Huffington Post interview Jim Woolsey notes:
Any bailout money for Detroit should be used to maximize the speed of a shift toward the use of electric hybrids and flexible fuel vehicles. Both are necessary in breaking oil’s monopoly on transportation in the U.S. Both would utilize existing infrastructure such as electric power grids and filling stations, and the technology is already there, and in use, for the engines themselves. So it can be done relatively quickly.
When I say electric, I don’t necessarily mean all-electric cars. With an electric hybrid, you only need a battery than can take you 30-40 miles on an overnight charge — along the lines of what the Chevy Volt (scheduled for 2010) can do. Three quarters of the cars in the U.S. go less than 40 miles a day. On three days out of four, you can use all electricity. For anything beyond that, with a hybrid, you’d have liquid fuel to take you the rest of the way where you need to go.
Flexible fuel vehicles should have an “open standard,” which means they can use not only ethanol but methanol, butanol or other alcohol-based fuels. This can be done quickly. Brazil went in only three years from having 5 percent of its news cars using flexible fuel to 75 percent.
Putting this shift front and center will not only help save jobs in the auto industry but create news jobs — for example in the production of batteries for electric hybrid vehicles. It will create a whole new set of suppliers.
Read the whole thing.