Max S. Dunn

ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
by Vijay Vaitheeswaran

I wanted to like this book - I really did. With a name like "Zoom" and the promise to show the car of the future, I was excited to read it. But in the end, the book turned out to be a dud. The authors went on and on about how great hydrogen powered cars would be and that there were ways of producing hydrogen for free using spare windmill and dam capacity, but they never even once talked about the efficiency of this process or how it would even be done. They gave a ton of useless background on the history of Detroit, but mentioned all-electric vehicles only briefly. These guys seem like they prefer sitting in their office typing away whatever comes into their heads rather than bothering to do any serious research to verify their assumptions. Some of their blunders include:

1. Restating without question Aramco's assumption that Saudi Arabia can "maintain an output of 15 million barrels per day or higher for 50 years" (Page 94) when Saudi Arabia is actually only producing 11 mbd and has even stated that this is likely to be the maximum they will ever produce.
2. Saying "Coal could prove a squeaky-clean source for that hydrogen" (Page 216) thinking that if the just sequestered the CO2 from coal it would be clean without realizing that coal is a major source of mercury, heavy metals, and radioactivity and there is currently no efficient way of cleaning up these un-clean emissions
3. Stating that one advantage that China has in developing sustainable transportation is: "the local and federal authorities have meaningful power to enforce green mandates." (Page 218) Have these guys even been to China? One look at the countryside will change their minds when they see truck weight limits being routinely flaunted which quickly destroy new roads or pollution belching small power plants in flagrant violation of emission standards.
4. Now the biggy: "In America, the two biggests obstacles to fuel-cell cars have been the lack of an infrastructure to supply hydrogen to gas stations and the burden of historic investment in internal-combustion vehicles." (Page 219) I could go on about how hydrogen is mainly produced using natural gas so it won't really reduce fossil fuel dependency, how inefficient the process is, how it leaks from tanks or how it won't power a car very far, but the fact that they don't make any mention at all of these issues is enough to discredit their work.

So while I really wanted to like this book, in the end I think it is more damaging to the future of clean cars then helpful and I would recommend that everyone NOT read this book.

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