Remarks at the 2008 Washington Auto Show

Assistant Secretary Alexander Karsner's remarks to the Washington Auto Show in Washington, D.C.

January 22, 2008

Thanks so much, John. I appreciate your leadership at Motorweek and particularly all of the things you've done over the years to educate and reach out and make sure that consumers are aware of all their choices. I just had my first chance to glimpse what's in the hall and it looks so different than last year. I wanted to comment on that first of all. I didn't have the good fortune of being in Detroit, but I heard that Detroit was different than last year.

It all excites me a great deal because they used to say that the green auto show was in Los Angeles, the policy auto show was in Washington, and the big show was in Detroit, but today all those things are coming together. Today, all the auto shows are relatively inspired by policy, technology, and economics in the marketplace, and our car companies are responding as never before with unusual agility and speed to bring models to the showroom floor that will end up in our garages in abundance. Not just concept cars, not just feel good cars, not just something that looks weird that we may never see or touch or feel, but things that we can be driving in 24-36 months to make a real difference to our great challenges of oil security and of climate change. So I'm so grateful and stimulated that they're all green auto shows, and that is not likely a trend that will be reversing itself.

Last year when I stood here, I actually tried to challenge our friends in the auto industry to move towards this result—to get beyond concepts, to get beyond prototypes and get into the cars that make a difference to the aggregate and global good. And today, what we see is we have moved beyond those concepts. We've heard it in the announcements of the chief executives. I was in Detroit recently meeting with all of these senior executives and there is a real commitment to move fast, move forward, and understand the magnitude of the challenges that we have so we can make changes in our vehicle fleet in a timeframe that is consequential and commensurate with the problem.

If you were not in Detroit, let me put in a shameless plug right here and right now and say you should go to Fueleconomy.gov, which summarizes this auto show and other auto shows and gives you a consumer's guide to everything you need to know about which cars offer which technologies, where they are available, where to find E85 pumps, and how your federal government can help you make informed decisions about the better vehicles for your family's pocketbook, for our environment, and for our global security.

And today, I'm going to ask those of you who are in the hall to join us as we actually take an energy security walking tour across the floor and see the car choices that will make a difference. I encourage you to go by the DOE booth and pick up your guide to our energy security and climate walking tour and to the other information that will help you move the needle—help us all move the needle.

And I am so grateful to be joined today by a non-partisan, a bipartisan group of friends, but also people that I would characterize as national heroes when it comes to the topics that we are addressing today to revolutionizing our vehicle fleet. I don't think they need any introduction because you've likely seen them on different channels across the different media. But suffice to say that when you have the former director of the CIA, Jim Woolsey, who understands the global geopolitical realities of our addiction to oil; when you have David Sandalow, the Clinton administration senior official for negotiating the Kyoto Protocol— he has just written an excellent book on how to rid ourselves of our world oil dependency—Robbie Diamond, who has been instrumental on moving thinking on Capitol Hill through the Secure America's Future movement; and General E.X. Kelly, the 28th Commandant of the Marine Corps.

All of these gentlemen are going to join me. You'll hear from them shortly, but they too will have comments and ideas about how the revolution is going on in Detroit and with the vehicle manufacturers that service the US market can make a real difference and a real dent into our problems.

Let's understand the proportionality and scope of what we are talking about today, because that actually hasn't abated. In fact, it has been exacerbated in the year since we spoke. According to the EIA, 57% of global energy demand will increase between 1980 and 2004. It did increase, rather. It's expected to go another 60% again between now and 2030. There's an estimated 230 million vehicles on America's highways today. Many of them parked in traffic jams, congested and idling. And there are more than 16 million vehicles that are coming out this year. Transportation in the United States is the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions. It already accounts for one third of the US contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. So we don't have the luxury to look at this in an insular way. We have to act and we have to act with a sense of urgency and we have to pay attention to how this is affecting global trend lines.

I just came back from a rather interesting trip. It started in Antarctica, where the kind of science being done can only be done at the bottom of the world, where we have the purest ways to measure, through ice core samplings, through the particle physics, what is actually going on with the rate, and the pace that the world is warming. And it is alarming.

But as alarming is where I finished that trip, in Beijing. Looking across the foyer of the main terminal in Beijing, I saw a big countdown clock. The Chinese are very fond of big countdown clocks looming towards big events, and I saw hundreds of people gathering near the countdown clock talking about the forthcoming Olympics. But when I looked closer, it wasn't the clock that they were looking at. It was a giant black American made SUV with no miles per gallon on the window only advertising the laser disk inside and the leather seats, and needless to say, with Chinese automotive production increasing 24% last year even as our own production declined, with their vehicle fleet rising to 9 million and projected to reach up to 20 million in the near future, we have to pay attention as to the technologies that are proliferating not just from our laboratories, but through our manufacturing facilities, and we have to be strategic about how the car park rotates.

In Detroit, we saw numerous announcements that came out of our auto industry optimistically projecting plug-in hybrids for our consumers in the 3-5 year time frame. And we are enthusiastic as we diversify our own technology portfolio, and balance protons and electrons as energy carriers and alternatives to gasoline, that we will be able to deliver the dents in oil dependency that began with metrics this year being the first time in more than 30 years that the United States imported less oil than it did the year before. So we're already beginning to have an impact. And this is encouraging, but of course it is not going to be enough, and whether you rely on the IPCC Report or Pew or the Hewlett Foundation, they basically say we have 10-15 years to get the climate change piece of this puzzle right. Ten to 15 years. But it takes 17 years for a vehicle sold today to exit our car park.

And so at the end of my trip, when I cuddle my 8 month-old daughter, I think that it won't be until her high school graduation that the vehicles sold today actually rotate out of our fleet. We have to face down the urgency and shorten the design times and the supply chains from our laboratories to our manufacturing floors to our car garages and that is what our alliance with the car industry is expanding is all about.

Bottom line is, as I said a year ago, we need more prototypes. We need more than thousands, we need more than hundreds of thousands—we need millions, and we need it to begin now and we need to take stock of the progress that's been made in a year and maintain this trajectory of new technology on board like weighting of the vehicles, new materials science, new direct fuel injection engines, dieselization of the fleet, hybridization, electrification of the drive trains, plug-ins, hydrogen fuel cells in heavy vehicles, all the things that will be necessary to create a diverse portfolio of technology to face down the great challenges of our time.

And we did some of these things that were announced by my colleague, Bud Albright, in Detroit just over a week ago. The plug-in hybrid vehicle solicitation continues our trend line of doubling almost annually the amount of money to be put in new vehicle on-board storage capacity. So that we can give consumers a choice that one day they can have vehicle to home and vehicle to grid technologies in their garages and maybe then avoid gas stations altogether for months at a time depending on the length of their commute.

We also announced the new USAutoPARTS alliance together with the state of Michigan and many sub-suppliers to begin looking at things like lithium-ion batteries has strategic commodities that must enter into the US supply chain to make a difference in the way our manufacturers have accessibility to technology that can be warranted by good companies with healthy balance sheets and flow through to the consumers for reliable products that are safe and that they can count on to make a difference in the near future.

Of course, the big news immediately before Christmas when the President came over to the Department of Energy was the landmark legislation that came about. Energy legislation after just one year—after just one year—from the time of the State of the Union. To put that in context that it took 10 years to get to the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

But on a bipartisan basis, standing with Speaker Pelosi and House Leader Reid over at the Department of Energy and our agency officials, the President signed historic legislation that is unprecedented in size, in scope, and in timeframe to introduce a mandate for renewable fuels that for the first time in American history fundamentally decouples the price of oil from the price of alternatives and assures their entry of tailpipe reducing, greenhouse gas emitting renewable fuels into the marketplace. And we will assure that multiple pathways, embellishing our efforts, encouraging E85 to get out further with stronger promotional methods, moving towards intermediate blends, working together with the auto companies to see what is technically viable to scale these things as the renewable fuels requirement allows and most importantly the revision, modernization, and elevation of CAFÉ vehicular efficiency standards gives us an advantage to say we will be lean, green, clean and competitive, commensurate with our national aspirations.

So, in conclusion, let me say that I hope you all will join us and these great leaders on the stage as we tour this new fleet of vehicles that don't have a one off or an interesting green aspect, but are really coming to dominate this show and are in line with the new policies, direction, and competitiveness that bipartisan cooperation has compelled in this town to face these great problems. Last year, it was on the date of the State of the Union that I stood here and talked about what could be. This year I am so proud to see the way that our industry responds in the face of great, great challenges.

The cars we will see today are all related to the Department of Energy's programs through our cooperative research, through our MOUs, through our laboratory relationships. They are evolutions in technologies that have been funded by the taxpayer and then filled the pipeline and then manifesting themselves today. You will in the coming months see us increasingly involved in more commercialization and deployment and promotional efforts, together with our friends in the car industry and together with agents of disruption in new technology through programs like Challenge X, where students design cars of the future. Through the Automotive X Prize, where people are going to be trying to set the bar on new and creative vehicle concepts that can exceed 100 miles per gallon. The Eco Car Challenge, working together with the Indy Car Series and the Lamont Car Series for green car racing.

So watch this space. It is dominated by the bipartisan national effort of those united through the need to address our addiction to oil, enhance our energy security, address climate change with urgency and together with industry we are making a real dent and a real difference.

Thank you all for coming today.