Physicist Amory Lovins has called the modern automobile industry “the highest expression of the Iron Age.” (Natural Capitalism)

Optimizing the typical automobile’s 15,000 parts to “meet … the conflicting demands of price, safety, performance, reliability, emissions, and market appeal” is a Herculean engineering task, says Lovins. Soon, it will be easier and cheaper to simply replace the century-old Internal Combustion Engine with something wholly new. The “central design concept” of the industry “is about to be overtaken,” he says. “The contemporary automobile, after a century of engineering, is embarrassingly inefficient: Of the energy in the fuel it consumes, at least 80 percent is lost, mainly in the engine's heat and exhaust, so that at most only 20 percent is actually used to turn the wheels. Of the resulting force, 95 percent moves the car, while only 5 percent moves the driver, in proportion to their respective weights. Five percent of 20 percent is one percent—not a gratifying result from American cars that burn their own weight in gasoline every year.”