The future is now

Speaking of electric cars, do listen to Shai Agassi's bold plan for mass adoption of electric cars - not in the distant future but in the next 2-3 years, with battery and other technology where it is today!

His recent talk at TED was posted this month

 
And links to some other recent talks/interviews:

•  A Moment of Transformation? - Shai Agassi Speaks in Washington, DC - 25:26 - Mar 12, 2008 
•  Web 2.0 Summit 08: Shai Agassi (Better Place) talks to Tim O'Reilly
  

I first heard of Shai Agassi when Thomas Friedman wrote about him and his company, Better Place, in his columns. (For eg: see this column from about a year ago. TF called him the Jewish Henry Ford!)

My thinking, till recently, was that electric vehicles (EV) were still far away from mass adoption because of battery life/cost issues but after some recent reading and lots of news press [1] about EVs, I realize that it may become a common option for many (in Europe for sure, but even in US to some extent) in the next 3-4 years even! Like the Prius helped hybrids make a significant dent into the overall market share [2] in the last 5 years, the next 5 years will see EVs on the road quite a bit if some of these plans come into play.
 

[1] In the news, just this week...

CT & MA could get EV charging network http://is.gd/sopk

Chicago gets first solar powered EV charging station

And last week..

PDX & SFO battle for electric car domination

London mayor pledges 100000 EVs & 25000 charge points

China Vies to Be Leader in Electric Vehicles

[2] I will have to dig out the numbers to see how significant the impact of hybrids has been s in terms of #s but it certainly made a dent on the attitudes of car companies. The success of Prius made all car companies sit up and take notice. Many have come up with their own hybrid versions now, though none have achieved the success of the Prius. Also, Detroit, in its infinite wisdom, has come up with versions of "hybrid SUVs", which to a "green ogre" like me sounds like "clean coal" i.e. an oxymoron! ;)

In fact, it is not just Detroit. Just this week, I read that Mazda also had taken a typical ostritch-with-head-in-sand approach regarding hybrids and EV. Now, they are also changing tunes, and hope to play catch-up and deliver hybrids & EVs by 2015. 

My feeling is that the current woes in the auto industry will be good for it. The innovative forward looking companies will survive. Innovation and car2.0 will be what we will gain, once the ostrich-head-sand car companies roll over and die! The "Innovate or Die" adage (now almost cliched) applies to all industries but the car industry is perhaps a living (dieing?) example of this!

I'll leave you with two key questions I still have regarding EVs:

a) How much more efficient (GHG emission wise) is it to run cars on electricity when most of the electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. I believe there are some reports about this which I plan to hunt down and read soon.

b) Can the grid take it, if every one had an EV and came home and not only turned on their ACs and other house equipment but also plugged in their car. The answer, not merely for EVs but also to accomodate solar, wind, and other renewables into our energy bin is to have a major overhauling of the grid. But this post is about EVs only and I'll leave the little I have read about Smart Grid Technology to another post some day.  

That's all for today. You can now go read more about plug-in transportation in the cover article of March's Solar Today.