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Spymaster Drives For Sixty Cents Per Gallon
Former CIA director James Woolsey makes no secret about wanting to reduce the amount of U.S. petrodollars flowing to the Middle East: his devotion extends to the car he drives, a plug-in hybrid.
“Electricity today is like driving on about sixty-cent-per-gallon gasoline,” Woolsey told reporters this week. “There’s no way that the Saudis undercut that.”
Called “part-geek, part zealot” by the liberal magazine, “Mother Jones,” Woolsey lives in a solar-powered farmhouse near Annapolis, Md., and makes the hour-long commute into Washington where he has a private law practice and is a security consultant.
Lately, he’s been advising GOP presidential hopeful John McCain on energy and security policy.
McCain is offering a $300 million reward to the company that can build a low-cost, high-powered battery to lead the auto industry away from the age of the internal combustion engine and into the era of the electric car.
Woolsey plugs in his hybrid at night to take advantage of low-cost kilowatts.
“There’s no way oil prices come down enough to compete with off-peak, overnight electricity prices,” said Woolsey. “Electricity is going to come along nicely,” as an auto power source, he said, “if we have the batteries.”
Comments
By Kabud
July 4, 2008 12:18 PM | Link to this
There is not enough lithium in the World to provide for even 10% of automobiles
TOYOTA PRIUS the car that James is driving ALREADY cut sales BECAUSE THERE IS NOT ENOUGH BATTERIES for older PRIUSES to replace!!!!
Dont buy into electric cars. They will never become feasible.
Instead promote METHANOL as a fuel and as a basis for direct methanol-electricity fuel cell