When my friend Paul Scott, co-founder of Plug-In America took a trip to Yokohama last June to test drive the Nissan Leaf, I never dreamed it would include a private lunch with CEO, Carlos Ghosn — and ultimately — a gig selling the Leaf at Santa Monica Nissan. If you’re in town and want a great EV made by a team truly committed to the future of clean transportation, ask for Paul. Tell ’em Craig sent ya.
See his blog post on the subject here.
If you haven’t seen British comedian Robert Newman’s The History of Oil, I beg you: set aside 45 minutes and check this out.
I spend a great deal of my life looking for ways to express the imperative to break our addiction to oil, based on explicating concepts like peak oil and wars that are secretly about oil. But I never dreamed that someone with an unimaginable level of understanding and talent had done it 100 times better than I could ever hope to. Enjoy.
Thanks so much to frequent guest blogger Cameron Atwood for bringing it to my attention.
Here’s a post on philosophy — relevant to our discussion as it deals with the proper role of government in defining policy and in our lives more generally.
It happens to be the birthday of John Locke, 17th Century British “empiricist,” meaning that he believed that all knowledge is derived from the senses. He’s actually better known for his political philosophy; Locke was one of the first to assert that all people had different classes of rights, and that the role of government was to protect those rights. His thinking figured prominently into our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution about 100 years later — and for that, we all owe him our gratitude. (more…)
I try to stay at least partially connected to the mainstream coverage of renewable energy and electric transportation – not so much because I believe there is truth there, but because I need to know what the mainstream consumers believe. This morning’s article in the Wall Street Journal on the Nissan LEAF was telling, for two reasons:
The author asserts, “Such a car would have been science fiction five years ago.” This, of course, is utter tripe. Until they famously killed the electric car over a decade ago, GM was making EVs that its customers absolutely adored. Some insiders report that the project was killed not because it was a failure, but for the precise opposite reason: it proved that the world had a huge appetite for electric transportation, and GM had no sincere interest in heading in that direction. At the same time, Toyota was having a similar experience with its electric RAV-4. When the decision came to recall and crush all the EVs, a maelstrom of protest arose, the remnants of which are still present in our conversations today. In any case, it most certainly completely untrue that the LEAF would have been science fiction five years ago. Anyone trying to follow this subject with any level of precision and honesty has to wonder about the agenda that could drive revisionist history like this.
The other obvious point the author repeats dozens of times through the article is that the driving experience is a nonevent. “I can think of hundreds of ways to describe the Maserati’s ear-strafing exhaust, but I’m at a loss to describe the nearly mute and rheostatic squeeze-and-go response of the LEAF,” he writes. He goes on with similar language to describe the braking system, the turning, etc. – ensuring that any reader will feel like less of a person to purchase a LEAF.
Again, one wonders about the agenda here.
I just got a call from a gentleman from Montgomery Street Research who asked a very good question: Is there a single, current document that lays out the state of the art in biomass-to-energy? There are so many wrinkles to this, but principally, I suppose, these two:
* Dozens of different technologies – any one of which could be appropriate to a certain kind of site and feedstock.
* Different levels of commercial viability depending (obviously) on the cost of feedstock and the price of take-off — but also on government incentives that would tend to make a project this more attractive – or less so.
Occasionally I come across something that looks perfect, only to glance down and see that it’s ancient. Anything more than a year old, I would suggest, is probably out of date.
If anyone can point us in the right direction, that would be terrific.
I try to offer my observations and opinions on the widest possible range of subjects within the technology and politics of renewables. But, since I’ve been a marketing consultant for more than 25 years – largely to the Fortune-sized tech and industrial companies of the world: IBM, FedEx, Xerox, etc. — I tend to see marketing issues everywhere I look. Maybe I’m like the man with the hammer who views every problem as if it were a nail. My first inclination with my clients is normally to determine how marketing can be used to drive demand, revenue, and ultimately — profit.
I was thinking about this recently in terms of the “tough realities” theme, and decided to write down a few ideas in a short white paper I call The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales in Green Tech Businesses.
I discuss a variety of things: how to build a business that transforms your customers’ lives, reaping the benefits of our wired world, how to identify your true target market, and finding cost-effective methods for generating demand.
Click the following link and download it – absolutely free:
The Tough Realities of Marketing and Sales in Green Tech Businesses.
All I ask is that you provide your honest feedback. If you find it valuable – or even if you don’t — please let me know. Thanks very much.
I just got off the phone with Michal Lenchner, whom I had met at the Plug-In 2010 conference for electric vehicles not too long ago. A committed environmentalist, Michal writes a column for the San Francisco Examiner (linked above) that’s a true fountainhead of information on a range of eco-issues.
In particular, she wrote me recently suggesting that I look more deeply into water: desalination, re-use of gray water, the energy required to move water around, and the water required to extract oil and gas. While it’s not a subject of which I have a deep understanding, it most certainly is an interesting and important one. I recall what the late Matt Simmons of Peak Oil fame told me when I interviewed him for my book:
Oil and gas exploration uses a remarkably large amount of water — and often other energy. The oil sands of Canada use just a phenomenal amount of potable water and natural gas to actually steam it out of the sands. In California, something like two-thirds of their oil supply comes from Kern County’s heavy oil, and while the San Joaquin Valley is one of the key food supply sources of America, they’re having a very serious drought.
I’ve asked Michal to become a guest blogger here; I very much hope she’ll take me up on my offer.
In his recent article on Renewable Energy World titled Electricity markets are weird: why a carbon price isn’t enough, Sean Casten provides several scholarly reasons that establishing a carbon tax is tricky business. I encourage everyone to read this; it’s really worthwhile.
But at the end of the day, Mr. Casten seems to be to be splitting hairs. Where we are now is a million miles from where we need to be in terms of providing a level playing field for renewables. I simply ask Congress to get us into the right galaxy – then we can start talking about Pareto-efficient markets and cost/price causality. As long as the fossil fuel energy industry receives multi-billion dollar government subsidies, favorable treatment from the Bureau of Land Management, and immunity from the costs of the environmental damage it’s causing, I can’t see the reason to get too heavily into the microeconomics here.
We need to make wholesale changes in the way we view the costs of energy. Until that time, the energy industry is looking on at this discussion and snickering as they continue on their path of rape and ruin.
While the Florida utility company Progress Energy has led the conservation charge for its consumers in Florida, in Virginia, a conservation program has been launched by the Virginia State Corporation Commission at the bidding of the State Assembly. The Virginia Energy Sense program was launched in late July 2010, and is geared to help residents and businesses become smarter energy users and reduce electricity use. The tag line used for the program is “Value your power.”
Perhaps as each state, community and/or company tackles energy conservation and education, the message and knowledge will spread. Will a federal energy program and more ‘buy-in’ for renewables follow in Washington?
The Virginia program offers a comprehensive interactive website, with step-by-step videos, budget tips, education on appliance use, and a tool to track energy consumption. Rewards can be earned to use at local retailers, too.
Virginia Energy Sense is the state’s outreach and consumer education program under the State Corporation Commission (more…)
We certainly see a great deal of the old “David and Goliath” metaphor in our conversations in this industry – especially in electric transportation. Though a number of EV start-ups have gone belly-up over the past few years, there are still many such Davids, feverishly ramping up to take on the Goliaths of Nissan, GM, and the other traditional automakers.
Bob Lutz, former co-chairman of GM, said on CBS’s 60 Minutes about a year ago that only experienced carmakers have the background to deliver electric vehicles. Horse hockey. That’s self-serving garbage, and he knows it. Obviously they have an advantage – especially since they’re approaching the problem with $85 billion of your (taxpayers’) money. But we’re about to see exactly what a whole slew of nimble companies with good ideas and cutting-edge technology can do, in competition against the stodgy behemoths.
I know I’m not alone in wishing that this weren’t the worst period in history for capital formation since the Great Depression. But even in their hamstrung condition, we’re about to enter some exciting times in the electric vehicle market. In addition to Tesla – a company that garners an astonishing amount of ink each week, we have Phoenix Motorcars, Coda, BYD, Fisker, and many others right behind them.
I’m wondering what effect this new, competitive environment – and a true paradigm shift in driving – will have on the GM IPO. What’s investors’ forecast for a company like GM, selling into an auto consumer base that doesn’t think or act like the baby boomer generation? Where will the modern car-buyer go who wants a high-quality automobile that doesn’t make him a slave to the oil companies? I guess we’ll see shortly – but I see another rock to the head coming for Goliath.
