Work progresses on vehicles and fuels, but how do we change driving behavior and lower vehicle miles?

Earth is now home to more than one billion vehicles. That number is expected to hit the two-billion mark within 15 years.  In January 2009, more cars were sold in China than in the U.S.

Dan Sperling spoke a bit about the future of automobiles at a Venture Capital summit hosted by Matt Trevithick of Venrock and organized by Kumar Gogineni of the Cleantech SIG.  Trevithick, a partner at Venrock, doesn’t strike me as the giddy sort, but said that he was “giddy about the future of the automotive industry” in this current era of innovative expansion in the cyclical automotive industry.  His firm is an investor in stealth battery startup Atieva.

Sperling is the co-author of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, a board member of the California Air Resources Bureau (CARB), a professor of engineering and environmental science & policy at the University of California, Davis, and founding director of UC-Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies.  He has authored 10 books and over 200 technical papers and reports on transportation and energy and has been a guest on The Daily Show.

For more, see:

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Two-Billion-Cars-and-the-Hope-of-Zero-Emission-Vehicles/