ZOOM
The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
Chapter One
The Terrible Twins
Cars and oil wrote the history of
twentieth-century American
capitalism
After a century of prosperity and power, the industries that shaped
America more than any others are now at a crossroads. The age of oil
and cars is giving way to something new. Together these two
industries dominate world business because of their sheer size. The
big five of oil-ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP, Chevron, and
ConocoPhillips-and the world's automobile giants-General Motors,
Toyota, Ford, Daimler, and Volkswagen Group-dominate the lists of
the global top-fifty corporations. Each has sales between $100
billion and $200 billion.
They spend huge sums each year looking for oil, extracting it,
making today's cars, and developing technologies for the cars of
tomorrow. GM in the past five years has spent the seemingly awesome
sum of $1 billion on research into c ... read full excerpt from Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future ebook
