http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/23/t-boone-pickens-natural-gas-electric-cars/Pickens embraces electric vehicles, predicts $140 oil by 2011
Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens, who once pushed natural gas as the only way to get off of oil imports, said at today’s National Clean Energy Project (see live-blogging here):
"Diesels should be replaced by natural gas. Light-duty vehicles go to the battery."
Yes, the 80-year-old Pickens has been edging slowly in that direction, since running cars and light trucks on natural gas never made much sense (see “Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb” and “Pickens’ natural gas plan makes no sense and will never happen“). But this was the bluntest I had heard him.
The problem for his messaging, of course, is that even if you replace half of highway diesel use with natural gas over the next decade — a huge accomplishment — that would be under 10% of all U.S. petroleum use and barely make a dent in oil imports and the trade deficit 10 years in 2020.
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