Yeah, some of this occurred to me too. I thought that 1) true to his words, the idea really would have been simply to replace currency with units of energy while retaining the rest of the mechanisms that dictated control, etc while 2) shifting the balance of power toward capitalist centers, essentially away from banks to energy manufacturers (which would benefit a different segment of society perhaps, but not in a truly decentralized way). And 3) I wonder if he was betting on the idea that wars could be replaced by a more profitable venture.

It would be interesting to find more from Ford directly about the idea.