Discovery News: Powrtalk

Failure to Launch

Automakers must be allowed to fail if they are to succeed. To date they've been supported just enough to muddle somewhere above the line of failure. But failure at least allows concrete recognition that the current model does not work. Creating the possibility for new models, new incarnations of the existing companies, growing room for the emerging companies. There is a sentiment that in the thirty five years since the '73 Oil Embargo the Big Three haven't been able to respond effectively, and that government efforts to protect the auto industry are part of the reason they remain chained to a model that doesn't work. Like parents rescuing teenagers from the troubles they get into, bad grades or brushes with the law, so that they can't mature and grow to meet their potential. The auto industry continues to not work because it isn't allowed to fail.

There are vibrant solutions waiting to be born. The death of the Big Three as we know them could create room for new life, just as the death of old, diseased trees opens the forest canopy, letting light in for new trees to grow (to include seedlings from the old: Saturn,the Volt, all the management and labor talent trapped in the diseased model). But the opportunity would also exist to plant the seedlings that will perform going forward, the startups: Better Place, Aptera, Tesla, Fisker, Venture Vehicles, ACPropulsion.

It's time to get the thirty-something Big Three out of the house.

Photo: akiruna on flickr

The Wind-Car Trials

 

One fifth is commonly held to be wind's limit in the power mix, given wind's tendency to blow at times but not at other times. If you could store wind power for later use, could you push the mix higher, could you make wind more than a fifth of the electricity production capacity mix?  Store it in a battery, perhaps?

If you had a country with electric cars and wind, could you use the car batteries to store the wind? If so, would wind be cheaper because you don't need to back it up with conventional power plants ?

Let's try. Let's blanket a country that gets a fifth of its power from wind with electric vehicles. Let's get Denmark to do so in 2011. And let's get the potent startup Better Place to drive the plan.

The Oil Embargo pushed Denmark from being completely dependent on foreign oil in 1973 to being energy independent today, in large part because a fifth of their electricity comes from wind. Better Place has intentions of putting a full scale Electric Recharge Grid in Denmark by 2011, with tens of thousands of electric vehicles to match.

When they do, we'll get to see if it's possible to buffer wind with car batteries at the grand scale of an entire country. How fortunate that Denmark responded with foresight to the Oil Embargo so that the wind is in place to permit the experiment. If the experiment works, there'll be a Place for all that pent up venture capital hunting for the good green bet, and all the regular capital, and manufacturing capacity, and labor looking for jobs, and governments looking to craft forward-thinking energy policy.

Photo: Y on flickr

Motor City Man

"Why should we hang on oil when we can hang on the sun? The sun is much more permanent, more democratic, and there's plenty of it." 

                                -- Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel

Rummaging through the August edition of Wired, I stumbled upon the future: the utter revision of motor transport as envisioned by Shai Agassi. We've reported on Agassi before*, but back then we presumed he was just talking about the future (you know, kind of like PowrTalk talks about the future: a lot of talk, not a lot of action). We didn't know he was gonna go. But Agassi and company Better Place are acting. Now. On a plan that simply leapfrogs cleanly and clearly over the combustion engine.

In a nutshell: he promises smart electric vehicles that use recharging stations scattered generously around the places where we work and live. The vehicles dock themselves upon parking (the driver doesn't do a thing), but there would also be the option to pull into battery-swap stations for those extended trips where recharging isn't feasible. As added bonus, drivers should spend less time and money fueling their ride. Shai explains here on MSN.

There you have it. Agassi takes the way we get around, tears it apart and reassembles it, in a way that is so audacious that your initial reaction is to be dismissive. But Agassi has the backing, underwritten by signed agreements, of an array of world and corporate and financial leaders, including the man who goaded him to action, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. And also including current Israeli PM Olmert, French President Sarkozy, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, the utility Danish Oil & Natural Gas (DONG), Australian utility AGL and wads of venture capital (from the likes of Morgan Stanley). Further, Better Place is in talks with Daimler-Benz, Portugual, Hawaii, San Francisco, and the Congress of the United States.

Peres and Sarkozy take a spin in the Better Place mobile.

To recap Agassi's world changing paradigm shift happening on a continent near you:

• a business model that ditches the combustion engine
• hard backing from the governments of Israel, Denmark, Australia and France
• in partnership with Renault-Nissan and in talks with Daimler-Benz
• agreements in place with utility companies DONG and AGL
• one billion dollars lined up to build the Electric Recharge Grid in Australia
• a working prototype vehicle
• charging stations soon (if not already) in Israel and Australia

Renault-Nissan electric prototype at the Better Place roll out in Denmark.

The Wired article foretells of a Googilian style spread of Agassi's venture. Better Place will have charging stations in Tel Aviv soon. It has the prototype all-electric vehicle shown in the pictures upstairs. It has backers and signed agreements and money and a solution to a big problem and throngs of people who want to work there (best Agassi quote from the article: "once you have a mission, you can't go back to having a job").

Better Place is well placed to be the next big thing.

*Our boss actually talked to Shai one year ago, and reported here.

Photos: "Back Online!" by Chee Seong on flickr; other photos by Better Place on flickr

"All they said, don't disturb your head, about the work we do. Stay in school, and someday you'll do what we couldn't do. But run, Boy, run in the summer sun...on a summer day. You know what you know and you can't wait to grow. Be on your way."

                                  -- Motor City Man, South Austin Jug Band

Dawn of the New Energy Order

How will America change the way it uses energy? Last month we offered a draft speech that would let the new US President to tell us how. Here's the speech updated with the most excellent insights of our readers.

Big Green Taxi

You want to change the world a little bit?  Next time you need a car service in Boston or San Francisco (why be anywhere else?) try hailing a Planet Tran Prius. Planet Tran is an all hybrid car service in operation since 2004. For the geeks out there, there's tech galore in these babies beyond the  hybrid engines and regenerative breaking systems. The Boston Globe covered the GPS-based schedule optimization and in-car wifi aspects nicely here last year.

In addition, other great social responsibility aspects of PT are:

• PT drivers are employees get a regular paycheck along with benefits (i.e., they'll take tips, but won't go hungry without them)
• PT clients get Impact Reports that show the carbon savings of each trip and multiple trips over time

I have an friend at Forrester Research who covers Corporate Social Responsibility - he's going to love this.

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr: Political Raider

The consummate corporate raider has become a political raider of sorts with his launch of the PickensPlan. If you think about it, the core motive of each type of raider is the same. A corporate raider targets a company that is not in balance with the market, buys enough shares in that company to effect change, and if it ever gets that far, does change things by getting rid of top management, downsizing, or liquidating the company.

T. Boone is adapting corporate raiding strategies to target a country with an energy balance sheet that is not balanced. But instead of buying company stock, he is drumming up an "Army" of citizens to support the PickensPlan, giving him the backing of a bloc of voters who support drastic, focused change to energy policy.

T. Boone, Political Raider.

Here are some of the notables of Pickens's approach:

• A plan with specifics: replace natural gas with wind to supply electricity (then replace 38% of oil with natural gas for transportation)
• A challenge to the Presidential candidates to adopt his plan or come up with a better one
• A call for action by the new President within 100 days of election
• A trans-partisan tone that sets the stage for the creation of a common will and a unified effort
• A unique way for business to engage Washington through voters

If you always wanted to be part of a big power play, here's your chance. Visit the PickensPlan and sign the petition. Even if you don't agree with all of the particulars (or worry that profit might be his motive), you might still choose to sign because you're being offered a novel way to register a vote that you want fundamental change in the way we use energy.

Photo: *M-C1* on flickr

8:00 p.m. EST January 21, 2009, Dawn of the New Energy Order

Here's a little speech we worked up for the next President to deliver at 8 p.m. eastern standard time on his first day in office. Say something good and we'll tuck it into the final draft which publishes before the election. We're told this speech could go viral, and with a few tweaks, be delivered by the next President. So, if you want to touch history, if you want a piece of the first democratically crafted presidential speech ever, jump in. (Like the democratically crafted movie "Snakes," only without the flop part). This speech could well be the marker for the dawn of the New Energy Order.

Click here to read the speech.

The Draft

It's good to see what you're doing. The PowrTalk Driver Ed post made the case that you could shave five percent off your gas use if you could use fuel consumption displays to see what you're doing. Fellow Discovery blogger Alyssa Danigelis reports on the ScanGuage II which provides information on fuel consumption.  You can put ScanGuage in the car you own now to see what you're doing. And at $169, it would likely pay for itself in a year. The key though, the difference maker, is that any such device provide you with crisp, continuous feedback.

To be clear: in a Toyota hybrid, the display provides right now, graphic feedback that does much to shape driving habits.

To illustrate, one of the deep mysteries rolling around in my head since I was in, maybe, third grade is whether you really can improve mileage and save gas by drafting behind a truck. The fuel consumption display put the thirty-some-odd year mystery to bed. Driving back from Dallas one evening, I slipped into the slot position behind an eighteen wheeler (at safe two second separation). At 67 miles per hour I was getting gas mileage in the mid-sixties, where performance typically hovers around 50 mpg for similar conditions, no draft.

The fuel consumption display. Unravelling life's little mysteries.

Photo: Dusko Almosa on flickr

Hair on Fire

At first they were dots to be connected, the dream-vision dots of a sustainable, self-sufficient energy platform for America. The dots are connecting. The dots were there in, say 2004, but the lines between them were not. The lines are now coursing to connect the dots. This is exciting. The dream dots in 2004 were:

• Plug-in hybrids
• Wind power (and other renewables) on buildings
• the Smart Grid

Plug-ins and the smart grid are on the way (see our post Grid, Ready to Talk). And now, it seems, wind powered buildings are coming to the U.S. BroadStar Wind Systems will install (will install!) 70 turbines by February, having made deals with 15 major corporations (like JC Penney) and in talks with 17 more. The Discovery Tower in Houston will integrate ten wind turbines in an architecturally pleasing manner at its roof line (catch them on the virtual fly through on their webpage).

Each piece of the car-building-grid system will stand on its own cost-wise. But consider the bonus cost synergies when the pieces marry. Cars buffering intermittent wind. Wind powering cars at a fraction of the cost of gasoline. The smart grid leveraging the peformance of both. And then as added bonus, the car-building system will go beyond its finite cost structures to work on external costs: to secure our access to oil, for ozone caused health care, from having a brittle, centralized electrical grid.

The pieces of this breathtaking system are being stood up now. And the latest developments in building-sited wind turbines are enough to set your hair on fire if you're a dot watcher.

Photo: .....dotted..... on flickr

Greater and Lesser Hybrid Announcements Yesterday

Honda and Chevy just made some noise about their upcoming hybrid offerings. Honda revealed a little more than Ford, but both remained relatively coy about their new green tech cars. Sometimes you wish new tech could come on line faster than the current trickle, but with cars anyway, it takes time to do it right.

Honda committed to delivering a 5 door vehicle that would beat Toyota's Prius on price by April of next year. It also confirmed a new hybrid sports car to be delivered later in 2009 and the likelihood of a hybrid version of the small SUV Honda Fit in 2010.

Chevrolet, meanwhile, showed a couple of preview angles and re-committed to delivering its company-saver, the Volt, no later than late 2010. It's far less than Honda, but for GM, home of the Hummer and killer of the EV-1, it's still a great leap forward. Personally, I'm rooting for both companies to hit their target dates and get on to their next versions, plug-ins and full electrics. (Hat tip to HybridCars.com, a great one-stop site for all things hybrid.)

Photo courtesy of Josh Schwartz