THE CAR OF THE FUTURE - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 116

Nonetheless, some persisted. In 1993, President Bill Clinton announced
the New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) program, a research consortium
among the U.S. government and Ford, GM, and Chrysler . 31 For perhaps
the i rst time, government-funded research in hybrid technology was sub-
stantial: the program included an investment of $1.25 billion in order to
create an 80-mile-per-gallon car by 2004. 32 (PNGV was canceled before
the milestone could be met.) While the project was under way, Toyota
unveiled its Prius hybrid sedan at the 1995 Tokyo Motor Show. 33 h e
car made its U.S. debut in 2000. By 2012, it occupied the number three
spot in global car sales, third only to the Ford F150 truck and the Toyota
Corolla. 34
h e surprising success of hybridization was making many people
bullish on a much bigger step, the move to fully electric cars. But some-
thing important was missing: there needed to be bat eries that could
store enough juice to power cars over hundreds of miles, deliver accel-
eration in powerful bursts, and be small, light, and inexpensive enough
to actually i t in most cars.
Mark Schulz, recently retired from one of the top positions at Ford,
has been looking at bat eries for a long time. “California mandated zero
emissions vehicles, so we had to do electrics,” he explains over iced
teas at a country club outside Detroit, as he rel ects on the experience
from the early 1990s. “Back then you used heavy lead acid-type bat er-
ies. . . . You could dial in whatever performance you wanted. A lot of the
young engineers thought this was great. You could dial in zero to sixty
in i ve seconds. But your cruise range would go from thirty-i ve miles
to four.” Bat eries have come a long way since, but they still aren't ready
for prime time, at least not at a tolerable price. h e Focus Electric has
a range of only seventy-six miles, and that's at er using up what looks
like half its trunk space to i t in more electric cells.
Atul Kapadia, the Silicon Valley bat ery executive who in Chapter 2
bragged to me about his natural gas car, is determined to change that.
Kapadia worked most of his life in the information technology business.
In the seven years he spent as a venture capitalist at Bay Partners, the
i rm made dozens of investments, backing everything from shopping
sot ware and semiconductor manufacturing to online poker. Only twice,
though, did it venture into energy. 35 In 2007, as oil prices skyrocketed,