The US-Israel-Iran war and the Russia-Ukraine-Europe war are compounding petrol and diesel shortages worldwide. The economic stability of many nations has already reached a crisis point, with the entire world paying the price for the whims and fancies of a few.
It is difficult to understand how international petroleum supplies and pricing are determined. If it were merely a question of economic complexity, experts could easily answer it. However, the issue of oil transcends economics, involving supply chain logistics, international politics, and to some extent, religious complexities. Consequently, relying on specific suppliers for the long term is impossible—a fact known to all nations. Amidst this volatile era marked by war, maritime blockades, targeted attacks on oil rigs and refineries, and terrorism, fuel stability has transformed into a major global crisis, pushing the world toward a situation where immediate relief is impossible.
Every drop of petroleum fuel—whether petrol, diesel, or kerosene—that burns consumes our money, drives up goods prices, fuels inflation, and causes foreign exchange losses for the nation. The sole long-term solution to this problem is to significantly reduce reliance on oil through alternative technologies. While achieving this for vehicles will take several decades, other industrial, medical, and agricultural uses of petroleum products—such as rubber, paint, plastics, pharmaceuticals, detergents, and ammonia production—must continue. Finding alternatives for these sectors requires substantial time and money. We can only bid farewell to petroleum dependence when technologies for efficiently utilizing alternative fuels and energy sources on a large scale become fully integrated into daily life.
Geopolitics of Alternative Energy Sources
Even so, the politics of “alternative energy sources” must be managed. God has not created all nations equally; those with abundant resources and raw materials naturally attempt to manipulate others to serve their own interests. Political maneuvering is already underway in the alternative energy sector, much like the petroleum industry. Whether stable supplies are possible depends heavily on the chosen alternative energy source.
If advanced, “indigenous” solar technologies enter the mainstream, India will be in a favorable position. However, if relying on “rare-earth” minerals remains the only option, dependence on China will become excessive.
Current electric cars use expensive lithium-ion batteries with a maximum storage capacity of about 500 km per full charge. Such batteries and the vehicles that house them are exceptionally costly. To eliminate petroleum dependence, these batteries must become affordable, and entirely new types of batteries must emerge. While research is underway in India and other nations are exploring alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, gaining an upper hand in global politics requires India to be the first to manufacture the world’s most advanced battery model.
Currently, roughly 17 types of “rare-earth metals” are essential for chips, batteries, touchscreens, magnets, lasers, fiber optics, superconductors, and fuel cells. Because these are not found in every country, nations possessing them often exhibit the same mindset as petroleum-producing states. Rare-earth materials are found in China, the US, Africa, Australia, India, and Brazil. Although different regions hold varying deposits, China leads overall production, mining, and processing, with the US in second place.
Although India has discovered significant oil and rare-earth resources, complete self-reliance is not possible anytime soon and will take many decades. Extracting and processing our domestic deposits is an urgent priority, but processing is exceptionally difficult, highly toxic, dangerous, and capital-intensive. Nevertheless, if India is to reduce its dependence on China, it must achieve breakthroughs in processing while accelerating the search for additional deposits.
Finding permanent solutions to energy problems is imperative for a high-ambition country like India, requiring massive, long-term investments in research and development. There is no other way.
Stagnation of Automobile Innovation
Unlike digital and telecommunications, breakthrough thinking has not transformed all sectors equally. Had research, modification, improvement, and development in the automobile and energy sectors advanced as rapidly as in electronics and computing, the world would be lightyears ahead. Computers that were of the size of cars have evolved into pocket devices, becoming thousands of times more powerful. If a similar research revolution had occurred in transportation, old cars would have long ago evolved into something entirely different—perhaps resembling UFOs—with revolutionary new vehicles ready for deployment.
Yet, this transformation has not happened. “A wheel, a cart on top, and the cart moves as the wheel turns” – the 10,000-year-old concept of the wheel is still there. This is a concept from antiquity, not modern science and technology. What does it mean that it still exists?
The batteries of today’s pocket computers—which possess a thousand times the capability of old mainframe computers—consume less than one-hundredth of the electricity used by those mainframes. Viewed from that perspective, cost-effective cars running 200 km on a single liter (or equivalent cost) of fuel, alongside affordable battery-operated electric or solar cars, buses, and trucks, should have saturated the roads and become obsolete by now. But they haven’t. Our genius researchers have not given personal commuting the same priority as personal computing. Why?
Unlike the computing field, which is welcoming quantum computers, the automotive sector has seen no comparable revolutionary shift. Compared to cars from the 1930s and 40s, modern vehicles differ primarily in speed, luxury amenities, and electronics integration rather than foundational technology. Cars in the 1940s and 50s achieved about 15 km per liter of petrol—roughly the average fuel efficiency of our luxury cars today. While car speeds have increased alongside processor computing speeds, fuel technology has remained stagnant.
Comparing the automotive sector to computer and electronics progress reveals a stark contrast. Computers from the 1950s and 60s differ vastly from modern machines, having crossed multiple generations of technology. No such generational leap has occurred in the automotive sector; Moore’s Law—where computing power doubles every 18 months—has no equivalent in automobiles. Why?
The American petroleum lobby, international petroleum politics, and vested, profiteering beneficiaries have systematically and intentionally blocked research into revolutionary alternative fuels. Although flying car prototypes exist, they largely combine old car technology with vintage aviation technology rather than introducing a truly novel paradigm.