Energy Guru To Carmakers: Time To Bet Big

(CNET) Amory Lovins, a renowned author and big thinker on energy, specializes in making the impossible real..

His 4,000-square-foot Colorado home has no furnace, uses a few dollars' worth of electricity a month, and features an indoor tropical garden with banana trees and papaya plants. In conversation, he's quick to pull out his iPhone to show a car prototype inspired by the Hypercar, which is three to five times more efficient than conventional cars..

He's the chief scientist and co-founder of nonprofit advisory firm Rocky Mountain Institute, which develops environmentally friendly solutions using business as a lever. Among the organizations it advises are Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, and the Pentagon..

On Tuesday, Lovins spoke to investors and entrepreneurs at a forum on clean tech organized by Xconomy, where he was interviewed by venture capitalist Paul Maeder about energy and the environment. (On Wednesday, he spoke at Harvard University.).

With the U.S. automakers' financial woes and an incoming president high on everyone's minds, Lovins offered his trademark unconventional thinking bolstered by a blizzard of data..

The biggest danger to cash-strapped U.S. auto companies is making incremental changes to their product lines, he argued. Instead, they need to make radically more efficient cars by adopting several technologies aimed at efficiency. (Lovins coined the term "

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