Book review: The Great Race - The Global Quest for the Car of the Future

The Great Race traces major events over the last 115 years that shaped the development of the electric vehicle (EV). Author Levi Tillemann, who’s a fellow at the New America Foundation, strings together these landmark instances that took place across the US, Japan and China into a narrative that reinforces the belief the shrewd government policy is key to driving auto manufacturers to innovate. The book clearly illustrates that the mission to build the vehicle of the future is indeed a race now between these three nations.

Personalities involved have been neatly fleshed out with rich back stories " from a Caltech professor who cited automobile emissions as the cause of the smog that hung over California, to Japan’s champion of nuclear energy, Takafumi Anegawa, to China’s Minister of Science, Wan Gang, whose vision led to …