I like to take folks back to the turn of the century when people said 'gas cars can never replace horses because you can feed horses at your house, you get along with them, they're nice.'

What oil companies don't want you to know is that refineries use a huge amount of electricity in refining gasoline. And that's usually not even figured into reports about gas cars' overall energy use.

Resistance to change is always the biggest obstacle.

In the case of all the carmakers, there's a certain amount of greenwash. Take Toyota: They were pushing the Prius while they were meanwhile marketing the hell out of the Sequoia and other models with terrible gas mileage.

I think electric cars can help save Detroit. They reflect good decision-making, and there has been bad decision making in the auto industry for so long, in my view.

I like to take folks back to the turn of the century when people said 'gas cars can never replace horses because you can feed horses at your house, you get along with them, they're nice.'

Obviously the horse can still do things that the gas car can never do, and the gas car will always be able to do things the electric car can't do. But they have really different uses and advantages.