Tom Friedman on plug-in hybrids on PBS Charlie Rose Show
May 24, 2006 (From the CalCars-News archive)

Acclaimed NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman was interviewed last
week by John Doerr, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins
Caulfield & Byer, acting as guest host on The Charlie Rose show on
PBS. At the inaugural meeting of the Greentech Innovation Network
(which Friedman talks about in today's column, "A Millioni Manhattan
Projects"
<http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/24friedman.html>),
their dialogue ranged over energy policy, oil dependence, and
geo-green technology.

Below is our transcription of the short section where Friedman talks
about PHEVs. You can also watch the excerpt -- Quicktime video clip
at <http://www.calcars.org/audio-video/doerr-friedman-22may06.html>.
Or you can buy the hour for $0.99 at Google Video
<http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=tvshow%3ACharlie_Rose&so=1>.
And see a discussion area at
<http://boards.charlierose.com/board/topic.asp?ti=15737>.

Air Date Monday, May 22, 2006

Doerr: Joining me now is Tom Friedman. He's a columnist for The New
York Times and a three time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He argues
that our dependence on oil not only has grave implications for the
economy but for our national security, our environment and for
democracy and free markets around the world.

[Excerpt about two-thirds of the way into the hour-long program.]

DOERR: Tom, imagine the world you want to see ten or fifteen years
from now; describe that world to us.

FRIEDMAN: Wow. Well, it's a world where certainly every car in
America will at worst be a flex-fuel hybrid car, a car that is flex-fuel...

DOERR: but many are now...

FRIEDMAN: it will be flex-fuel -- and, out of respect for my friend
Felix Kramer -- plug-in, hybrid... that is, you will be able to plug
it in at night and, ideally, take the first 100 miles on electricity
-- electricity drawn from a clean grid, or a largely clean grid, not
coal-fired or fossil-fuel-fired; and then, when you're out of
electricity, you kick into the gasoline tank, and it's running on
flex-fuel -- 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

So in effect, you are driving a car that will get 500 miles per
gallon of gasoline you use. In fifteen years, that would be my dream
for America. That will not only be a cleaner world, I guarantee you,
John: it will be a safer world -- if everyone is driving a plug-in
hybrid car that runs on flex-fuels.

DOERR: In that new world, what happens to "Big Oil?"

FRIEDMAN: I would suspect that Big Oil will become "Big Energy." They
have the resources, they have the technological foundation;
otherwise, Big Oil will become like Data General, to use a local ...
it will become like Control Data -- this will be an inflection point
and they won't make the leap.