Brad Pitt: What If Cars Were Invented Today?

In an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, actor Brad Pitt asked a simple but provocative question about our entrenched approach to powering cars. Pitt appeared on the show to promote Money Ball, the award-nominated movie about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's use of economic analysis to draft his players.

Pitt said that Beane’s success was based on a questioning of 150 years of baseball knowledge. “Just because we’ve doing it this way for so long, does that mean it’s right?” asked Pitt. That’s when he drew a comparison to cars.

“I equate it with the automobile," he said. "What if we invented the automobile today? Would we say, I know, we’ll run it on finite fossil fuels, we’ll export a half-trillion dollars of our GDP, we’ll spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to protect that interest, and it will pollute the environment?”

Pitt—reportedly a Tesla Roadster driver—is, after all, just an actor and celebrity. But his voice adds to a growing chorus of people seeking a re-evaluation of our petro-powered transportation infrastructure, and a demand for oil-free no-tailpipe alternatives such as electric cars.