THE CAR OF THE FUTURE - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 119

the next three days, and there's no way I'm willing to foot the bill
for the gas-guzzling monster. At er some back and forth, I set le on
a Chevy Impala, a far more sensible option.
Before I drive away, though, I take a quick peek online. h e clerk told
me that the Impala would get thirty miles to the gallon on the highway,
which sounded good. But as I look up the Mustang, I am taken aback:
its miles-per-gallon rating is thirty-one. I go back to the desk and trade
in my keys. h e rest of the trip is a blast.
Electric cars and plug-in hybrids might be the next big thing, but for
now the biggest fuel savings are coming from changes in conventional
cars. “We're spending a lot of time in the near term on . . . our advanced
gasoline engine technology,” explained John Viera, head of sustainabil-
ity and environment for Ford. “And a lot of people would say, 'h at's not
sexy, why aren't you working on electric vehicles?' We are working on
electric vehicles. But from a volume standpoint, the most cost-ef ective
technology solution in the near term . . . is still to work on improvements
of advanced ICE [internal combustion] engines and diesel engines.”
Indeed, when you take a look at how the Environmental Protection
Agency and Department of Transportation believe that automakers will
hit their fuel economy targets over the next decade, the overwhelming
changes come in traditional cars and trucks. h e volumes sold don't
change much (though they do drop a lit le), but the vehicles' character-
istics shit dramatically. 37 h e average fuel economy of a new gasoline-
powered car, for example, rises from about thirty-two miles-per-gallon
today to about i t y-one by 2025; every other class of conventional
vehicle sees a similar shit too. 38 Automakers are counting on advances
in high-tech materials and automobile design to allow them to build
lighter cars—particularly lighter big cars and small trucks—without
sacrii cing safety. 39 Because lighter cars take less energy to move, this
leads to much-improved fuel economy. h e companies are also pinning
hopes on technologies that make engines more ei cient. One of them,
called stoichiometric gasoline direct injection, uses advanced comput-
ing to control fuel injection far more precisely than before; it could
improve the ei ciency of big cars by more than 15 percent. Another,
called cooled exhaust gas recirculation, takes advantage of the fact that
lots of energy is lost when hot exhaust gas is pumped into the engine;