Reinventing the Wheels: Hypercars and Neighborhoods Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with a description of the ills of a traditional automobile society: waste in production, toxic emissions, the land given to concrete roads, and the number of deaths that result from their use. In 1990, the Rocky Mountain Institute made their hypercar design public domain, and still, the U.S. automotive industry continues to operate as if still in the Iron Age. Cars are still made of steel, requiring a very heavy frame to support their weight, and heavy engines to move them.

The solution is proposed in three parts: to make cars ultra-light, to build them more aerodynamically, and to give them hybrid-electric motors, so that a fraction of the gas used by a regular car is used to charge a battery that runs an electric motor. Ninety percent...