Archive by Author
Live Blogging OG09: Clorox’s Beth Springer Brings It On
Posted on 08. Nov, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Beth Springer, Executive VP at The Clorox Company gave a high-energy, information dense presentation about how a nearly 100 year old company took the road towards sustainability. Beth followed on the heels of Joe Laur, an author and sustainability consultant, who talked about breaking down patterns — and recognizing new ones — in large organizations. The two complemented each other beautifully.
Speaking Frankly and Intelligently
Beth certainly didn’t dumb things down, and she was frank about where Clorox has not met its goals in terms of greening and sustainability — all of which contributed to the power of her presentation, by outlining just how difficult and deep-reaching sustainability initiatives must be, especially for established corporations.
The most important take-away from Springer’s talk? Probably that change must be sustained and systemic. Take your time, plan, plan some more, set achievable goals — then take action.
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Live Blogging OG09: Chris Jordan’s Photography Presentation
Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Ben Upham.
I think I speak for everyone in the Covell Center main ballroom when I say Chris Jordan’s photos of the remains of sea birds, killed by the plastic they unwittingly ate, were arresting. Saddening. Maddening. And hopefully, inspiring.
The photos are of dead albatrosses on the island of Midway, one of the most remote islands in the Pacific. Mother albatrosses on Midway gather bits of plastic floating in the Pacific and bring it home to their chicks, mistakening the plastic for food. The chicks eat the plastic and then die by the thousands. What’s left, after their bodies decompose, is the plastic that killed them. It’s unsettling — like our consumption has consumed these birds from within, like a cancer. Another way to the think about it, is that for a billion years, when animals die, their remains are reintegrated into the natural world. But no longer.
I can’t think of a clearer call to action on the environment. For more of Chris Jordan’s photos, check out his website: www.chrisjordan.com.
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Live Blogging OG09: Cleantech VC Panel Insightful, Sobering
Posted on 07. Nov, 2009 by Ben Upham.
OG’s Cleantech Venture Capitalist breakout session, led by John Babcock, Partner at Rustic Canyon Partners and Colin Bryant, VP at Paladin Capital Group, was a sobering reminder that not only did cleantech VC funding take a big hit in 2009, but that cleantech VC may never be quite the same.
Babcock and Bryant make their money by asking the tough questions, and frankly, by saying “no” many more times than “yes.” So they need to lean towards the pessimistic side in their analysis. But while both men do believe cleantech has a bright future, as Bryant said there may be a new “new normal” for cleantech VC, one where companies need a much clearer route to profitability (and thus a clearer exit route for VC funders).
According to Bryant, a consensus is growing that cleantech is unlikely to have the same returns on investment as other high-growth sectors like technology. The regulatory environment remains challenging as well: projects and even whole cleantech sectors can still depend on whether a national or local government passes a specific rebate or regulation. And the entire industry is waiting for Congress to act on cap-and-trade or some other far reaching environmental plan that will provide a true cost for fossil fuels, and even the playing field for renewables and efficiency measures.
Efficiency, in particular, remains attractive to VCs. A product that reduces energy consumption, whether in your house, car or elsewhere, even if only incrementally so, is more likely to attract capital than, for instance, a renewable energy system that will depend on a host of outside factors for profitability. This was a trend also mentioned at the OCTANe automotive cleantech panel OppGreen attended last month.
The answer to whether this new “new normal” is indeed so will have to wait until OG 2010.
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Interview with Rohit Aggarwala, NYC Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by Ben Upham.
As Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability for America’s biggest city, or what locals like to call “the Center of the Universe,” Rohit Aggarwala has one of the most high-profile sustainability positions in government. In 2007, Rohit’s boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, launched PlaNYC, a 25 year plan for the city made up of 127 separate initiatives grouped into six major areas of concern: land, water, transportation, energy, air and climate change. Central to PlaNYC is sustainability and efficiency in land, energy and water use, as well as various plans to reduce the city’s carbon footprint. Rohit spoke with Opportunity Green about PlaNYC, congestion pricing, and why it’s important to reduce NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions when it is already the lowest, per capita, of any city in the nation.
Opportunity Green: How does one become Director of Long-Term Planning for the City of New York?
Rohit Aggarwala: One of the things Mayor Bloomberg likes to do is bring people in from the private sector. I was at Mckinsey, where my specialization was in transportation. The deputy mayor called me to see if I was interested in this. He had a hypothesis that the politics around the greening of transportation are so intense that he thought it was more important to have a transportation person than to have a green person. My background is in efficient transportation systems. I’m not an environmentalist, and have had to learn about greening and sustainability over the last three years on the job.
OG: The Deputy Mayor may have been right about transportation, given the recent controversy over congestion pricing in Manhattan. Can you talk a little about that?
RA: In New York City, one of the most important things to do is to fund the transportation system. Whereas in most places, the question is whether to build a public transportation system, here the consensus is that it works, but needs to be invested in. Fundamental challenge is getting people out of their cars when we know they don’t need to be in their cars. Not quite the same as the rest of the country. In LA for instance, it’s hard to argue that most auto commuters really have a legit transportation alternative.
The mayor still believes that congesting pricing is a good idea. The question is…the mayor’s leadership took it as far as he could take it. Somebody in Albany really has to chose to lead on it. The fact is the MTA still doesn’t have a sustainable source of capital [the MTA was to rely on revenue from congestion pricing for many budget needs]. Last year the MTA reconsidered congestion pricing, but instead imposed a payroll tax, and a taxi trip tax. But these don’t solve prob by any stretch. We have to find another solution, and at the end of the day there are only a handful of choices.
OG: Tell us a little about PlaNYC. What do you consider the most important initiatives in the plan?
RA: The most important initiative is the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan. The problem it addresses is how do you green existing buildings in a systematic way? The fact is in 2030, 85% of buildings we have then we already have today. Then take into account 75-80% of our carbon footprint comes from building energy consumption. The trick is to get people to do things they weren’t already doing. What the mayor proposed, along with the [City Council] speaker, is a set of four bills that we think would reduce New York City’s carbon footprint 4%.
One, a couple of revisions to energy code that would close loopholes, and would mandate that as buildings are renovated, the renovated portions be brought up to energy efficiency standards (the rest of the building would not be effected).
Two, a requirement that every building over 50,000 square feet use EPA benchmarks for determining energy efficiency, and then putting that score on each building’s tax assessment, so people doing due diligence on a building can take energy efficiency into account.
Three, at some point over the next 15 years, all lights in the city would be exchanged, brought up to whatever the then-current energy code is. We wrote it that way because even in the last four years the energy code for lights has become 30% more efficient.
Four, and most controversial, requiring a once a decade energy audit, requiring capital improvements that have a 5 year payback. The capital upgrade is controversial, in part because there is no clearly available financing option for people.
OG: New York City has the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions of any city in the US [for a variety of reasons -- see this article for a discussion]. Why is the country’s most efficient town feel the need to shrink its footprint even more?
RA: First of all, we’re not just doing this for props, we’re doing it because everything makes economic sense. It’s fine that we’re the most efficient, because in that way helping New York City grow is itself an environmental initiative. If we get a million more people to live here, that’s a million less living in a suburban sprawl. Even if we didn’t believe in climate change, everything [in PlaNYC] was necessary anyway. For instance, efficiency becomes a way to free up land by not requiring a power plant. Furthermore, most of the things that emit carbon also emit other air pollution. For instance, a New York City taxi cab is part of our transit system — our taxi cabs drive between 70-90,000 miles a year. It’s a no brainer to convert them to hybrids. You don’t have to believe in climate change to believe in PlaNYC.
OG: Assuming you do believe in climate change, what sort of measures is New York City taking to prepare? Several studies have predicted that the city could be in serious danger of frequent flooding if and when sea levels rise.
RA: Three of the initiatives in PlaNYC are about planning for climate adaptation. We put together a climate change panel based on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), bringing together various experts. The NPCC issued a preliminary report several months ago, and will issue a final report at end of year. What’s important is that scenarios that they identified have been used by a working group of entities that own and operate infrastructure to begin a risk assessment for the city. Both public and private entities. Some of these companies are beginning to incorporate climate change thinking into their capital infrastructure. It’s important to think about these things in a gradual way, just like the process of climate change. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to build a flood wall around a power plant that you know is not going to be in operation 25 years from now. People’s reaction to climate change adaptation can be somewhat panicky. Like any risk, it’s important to sit down, and plan for it in a comprehensive, methodical way.
OG: How did you hear about Opportunity Green?
RA: We heard about Opportunity Green through an event Opportunity Green had here over the summer. I’d like to let the participants know about things were doing here in New York City. Get people thinking about the city as a place where sustainability is happening and as a place to do green business. From other participants, I’d like to learn what sort of cutting edge business plans are in the green space. Innovations in business have to inform innovations in policy, and vice-versa.
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OCTANe Event on Automotive Future Packs the House
Posted on 29. Oct, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Close to a hundred automobile execs and entrepreneurs, plus the venture capitalists that support them, as well as the curious and inspired, filled an auditorium at UC Irvine yesterday for a panel on the future of the automobile. The panel was sponsored by OCTANe, a group of businessmen and investors looking to spur business opportunities in Orange County.
Featuring some leading automobile “futurists,” including Bill Reinert of Toyota, who was instrumental in the roll out of the Prius in this country, the panel also had: W. Brian Olson, CFO of Quantum Technologies, a lead investor and provider of technology to start-up Fisker Automotive, which plans to launch the Karma extended range luxury electric sports car next year; Dave Barthmuss of GM, who talked about their Volt; Ben Knight, VP of Engineering at Honda Americas, who touted their fuel cell car the Clarity, and a representative of Mitsubishi, which will introduce the MiEV electric vehicle next year.
Reinert, who is National Manager of Advanced Technology for Toyota, is known as an electric-vehicle skeptic, and last night’s presentation fit that view to a T. Reinhart presented graphs from Lux Research, which predicted minimal market penetration of EVs for oil prices at less than $200 a barrel. He also said people will be buying fewer cars in the future, and that car share companies like Zip Car will take an increasing share of miles driven by urban dwellers.
Execs from GM, Honda and Mitsubishi were more optimistic about EVs and plug-in hybrids, and not surprising, since GM in particular has a lot riding on its extended range EV Volt, due out by November next year. And since the panel took place at UC Irvine, home of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, there was a lot of discussion of fuel cell cars as well, even though that technology has gotten short-shrift lately as electric vehicles have become the technology to beat.
Following the executive’s presentations was a panel with two venture capitalists that specialize in clean tech and efficiency technologies, Walter Schindler, Managing Partner at SAIL Venture Partners, and Dipender Saluja, Managing Director of Capricorn Investment Group. Both men have directed VC money at automotive cleantech. Capricorn, which was started by Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc., has invested many millions in Tesla Motors, the all-electric car company.
Schindler of SAIL, a much smaller fund than Capricorn, brought along Stephen Smith of Enerpulse, an impressive small company which has figured out how to make a more efficient spark plug. Enerpulse’s spark plug, called the Pulstar, increases fuel efficiency an average of 4-7%, while increasing power 4-12%. That may not be as sexy as Fisker’s Karma, but it’s an innovation that could have a real, long term impact — and make a lot of money. From Enerpulse’s press material:
If, during the normal replacement cycle, PULSTAR™ replaced spark plugs, 250 million existing cars per year could reduce fuel consumption by an average of 6% or 22.5 billion gallons (536 million barrels). Since each gallon of gasoline (6.3 lbs/gallon) generates almost 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, a potential contributor to global warming, pulse plugs alone could actually reduce this greenhouse gas by 450 billion pounds (200 million metric tons) within four years. Extrapolated to the worldwide replacement of spark plugs, pulse plugs could potentially reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 1 billion metric tons per year.
It’s these little innovations, “building a better mousetrap,” that, over the long run, will have just as great an impact as a total sea change in the kinds of cars we drive. Which was why Enerpulse’s lowly spark plug may have been the most inspirational presentation of a very inspirational evening.
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OCTANe Presents SoCal Automotive Cleantech Forum
Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Ben Upham.
In terms of reducing greenhouse gases, no advance will be more important than how we run our cars. Pollution from automobiles constitutes about 35% of overall emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary contributor to global warming.
A steady drumbeat of announcements from automakers about their new hybrid, electric or hydrogen cars suggests the question is not “if” but “when” the industry makes the switch to low or zero emissions vehicles. Meanwhile, complicated issues concerning which technologies will have the advantage in what markets, and how the infrastructure necessary to shift away from gasoline, are all still playing out. All of this means there is immense opportunity and uncertainty in this emerging market, and a need for quality information is paramount.
In that spirit, OCTANe, the Innovation Development Corporation of Orange County, presents the Southern California Automotive Cleantech Forum, at UC Irvine October 28. The forum will bring together business leaders and scientists in automotive clean tech from across Southern California to discuss the future of the industry, and emerging business opportunities in it.
Speakers include representatives from General Motors, Honda and Mitsubishi, leading venture capitalists, and the head of the UCI National Fuel Cell Research Center. In all, ten industry leaders will speak in a densely packed four hour program.
For more information, click here. OCTANe is a media partner of Opportunity Green, which is proud to support this forum.
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MIT Sloan’s Michael Hopkins: Tracking the Changing Nature of the Business of Sustainability
Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Michael Hopkins is editor-in-chief of the MIT Sloan Management Review, which recently released a comprehensive survey of sustainability practices and trends in business, including interviews, case studies, and insights into how businesses world-wide view the growing field. Hopkins spoke with us about the survey, the differences between green “novices” and “thought leaders,” and why sustainability is really about collaboration and transparency.
One of the most baffling results from your survey is that while 92% of respondents said their company was “addressing sustainability in some way,” 70% said they still had not developed a clear business case for it.
That is the contradiction that gets to the heart of the issue, and as we continue with the second round of the survey that is probably where we’re going to do the most digging. It’s one thing for an executive to understand that sustainability is going to have a major impact. It doesn’t mean they understand how to make a case for investing in products that will capitalize on it. 
One reason for this contradiction is this enormous gap between experts, or “thought leaders,” and novices. Novices recognize sustainability is going to have a big impact, but they are stuck in the “green” silo. To them, sustainability can seem like a cost rather than a benefit. Unfortunately, that’s not going to drive company behavior.
Thought leaders see sustainability in system-wide terms. Improving products, motivating employees, lowering costs, and improving relationships with governments, the public, the capital markets – even competitors. They think about many, many different things – it’s a bigger way to think. Suddenly opportunities to create value seem much more obvious.
According to your survey, improving company reputation seems to be the major driver of sustainability. Do you see this as a weakness, going forward?
I can see it cutting both ways, both for good and for ill. Depending on how well we do in ferreting out green-washing. For the typical company, reputation is the reason they think they’re doing sustainability, so if they got away with making false claims, that would be bad. And yet as a driver of activity, what’s wrong with reputation being a good return loop, a good feedback loop?
Reputation is very complex when it comes to sustainability. One of the examples is Nike. They have made amazing progress in improving the sustainability of their products, by redesigning them to use fewer materials, for example. But they are really in a quandary because they don’t feel they can promote that fact, because they worry it stands in direct contrast with what their customers want them to do.
Nike fears that by going out and saying look what we’ve done –- and it’s really win win — customers will say “wait, I thought you created your product solely to make sure I got the best performance out of it — sustainability has to compromise your other goal.” Nike is really worried about it, and as a result, they’re quite decidedly not pushing it.
I think reputation benefit is a driver now, but will greatly diminish as one. As time passes, reputation will just be table stakes. Already seeing that in certain parts of the food industry: almost becomes difficult to find a product that is environmentally sound because they all claim that they are.
How is sustainability changing the way companies operate?
When you talk to people that are trying to do sustainability initiatives in companies, it’s a completely different business process, because it requires collaboration across all different boundaries, both inside and outside the firm. Inside firms, sustainability often requires collaboration across divisions and departments that don’t have to deal with each other. Outside, it requires collaboration with governments, NGOs, communities, citizen groups, and competitors about standards and practices. It requires an ability to collaborate that is unprecedented. Most execs don’t have that ability, or don’t know how to apply it.
It also means companies will have to find ways to be more transparent about their practices and activities. People want to collaborate with people they can trust. If Company A runs their operation in a way that allows me to see inside it, then I’m more likely to collaborate with them. Certain things about management, like accounting and financial reporting, have to change.
It’s the same with the greening the supply chain, where suppliers are being asked to go into detail about manufacturing processes, materials, etc. Of course, some suppliers say “thanks, but no thanks” we’re not going to share that information with you. [Sustainability leader] Herman Miller‘s response is, well then we’re going elsewhere. Plenty of people would rather hold their cards close to their chest, but it is going to be less beneficial to do so, and more beneficial to be more transparent.
Sustainability issues are going to drive management harder towards transparency than almost any other challenge we’ve seen.
Sounds like a tall order — I’m thinking of companies trying to survive in a highly competitive market. Why risk being more transparent?
The risks far outweigh the rewards. Like for instance, protecting patents. A lot of companies don’t care about patents at all. Patents aren’t going to protect them, if [competitors] know what they do and how they work, by the time they copy it they’re on to the next thing. Companies need to think about service.
Also, companies will begin to see that in an age where it’s harder to get capital than it used to be, if you can be the kind of company to make outside providers of capital more comfortable, you’re going to attract more capital.
- More capital
- Better employees
- Better partners
There are a lot of green companies that are glad about the widespread mistrust of sustainability – they realize that “because these other folks are too scared, I have a competitive advantage. My competitors are in the stone age.”
One would think that, during the current downturn, sustainability initiatives would be the first programs cut, but your survey shows fewer than 25% of respondents had cut their sustainability initiatives recently.
Honestly, I don’t understand it. I have posited a thesis to others which is that in some measure, especially early on in the trajectory, sustainability is often about savings and waste, and so there are ways in which a downturn can push a company to invest more in efficiency. “If we use less materials and cut emissions, we know it can save us money.” There is a menu of sustainable activities that look more attractive when you’re in a downturn.
Could it be that sustainability is a “growth industry,” and thus immune to the downturn?
I am hesitant to say it’s because it’s a growth industry, because I think the typical business person is still an novice, and I don’t think they believe it’s a big enough business opportunity yet. But, that 92% [who believe it is important] number is huge, and that fact plays into this. People really do believe they’re likely to keep paying attention to it because they don’t want to be blindsided.
How central is sustainable business for the Sloan Management School?
It’s a giant issue for MIT, the entire university. Sustainability was signaled out by the President of the institution as how MIT can give back to the world. [MIT Sloan’s] piece of that pie is to try to look really hard at the management implications of sustainability. In this project it is to think about the questions that an executive has even if he or she honestly doesn’t care about sustainability. Interested in talking to the skeptic, not the choir. If we can disassemble the impediments that the skeptic has about sustainability, then we have progress.
How did you come to be involved with Opportunity Green?
One of my colleagues came to me about the possibility of going; I had never been to Opportunity Green before. What intrigued me was the way it’s characterized as a conversation. An opportunity to potentially facilitate a conversation with great inputs and people – that’s a great reason to go.
Also, Karen [Solomon, the co-founder of Opportunity Green] can be pretty persuasive.
How did the survey come about?
The project started a year ago, as part of the magazine. The survey had three parts: first, interviews around MIT, not just the business school, but history and philosophy departments, too, to get the bigger picture. Then brought some of our ideas to executives and thought leaders worldwide. Their feedback informed the survey, which was put in the field in the late spring of this year.
The survey is available on the website of the Sloan review (in the interests of sustainability, it is not being printed), and in the fall issue of the Review, where there will be a 40 page section that takes off from the report. This special section will include addition case studies and interviews not in the report, as well as timelines from companies on their sustainability transition process.
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It’s Over: Five Reasons the Electric Car Wins
Posted on 23. Sep, 2009 by Ben Upham.
It could take ten years or more to become apparent, but I’ll call it now: the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine.
A caveat: I am not an automotive industry expert. Which is why I’m right. I’m not mired in the details, the past failures, the what-ifs or the buts. All I see are the big, obvious things. When it comes to sea change in human behavior, though, obvious matters.
So, since no prediction is worth its salt without an accompanying list, the following are five overlapping reasons why our children will all be driving electric cars. By the way, these all assume that business as usual; that is, running cars on gasoline derived from (imported, finite, polluting) oil is unsustainable. If you disagree, you’re at the wrong website.
1. Momentum, aka, Forget Tesla.
“Automotive start-up” may be an oxymoron, but it doesn’t matter. Even if electric car company Tesla and its cohort don’t succeed, the fact is the big car companies are all developing EVs, or hybrid plug-ins, where the emphasis will increasingly be on the electric part, not the gasoline part.
Meanwhile, a zillion companies, plus many national governments, are furiously developing batteries that are powerful, quick to charge, and inexpensive. It’s practically a new arms race.
And then there’s the burgeoning smart-grid industry, which will make charging those cars even cheaper. “Smartness” will also make managing when and where to charge your car much easier.
2. People Get It.
I read an interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that predicted the healthcare bill would fail because, unlike Social Security or Medicare, it’s too complicated. People just don’t get it. And while I personally believe in universal healthcare (I’m a freelance writer), I understand the point.
People get electric cars. People get where the fuel comes from: the wall socket – the same place you plug in your toaster or your TV (cars are increasingly appliance-like anyway). People get how electric cars move, too. Most people are at least familiar with the concept of an electric motor, and they’ve seen a Prius in action, if they don’t already own one.
What people already get, people are more willing to a) fund development of, b) support through government, and c) buy.
3. Biofuel is Foreign Oil. And so is Natural Gas.
Not literally, of course; but to an economy dangerously dependent on imported fossil fuels, they might as well be. And that’s bad news for these primary competitors to electric powered cars.
Without going into the details, it would take a long time for biofuel to replace foreign oil as a source of our automobile fuel. Meanwhile, the price of oil will continue to climb, pushing the price of biofuel up with it. The public, seeing no relief from gas prices, will turn to non-oil alternatives, e.g., EVs.
So the chief selling point of biofuel, that it is a cheap domestic source of gasoline for our cars, is wrong in the short term and moot in the long term. Sure, we might be using biofuel in our hybrids, but those hybrids will be getting 200+ miles to the gallon, and eventually infinity/mpg.
As for natural gas, recent discoveries have pegged domestic reserves at 2000 trillion cubic feet, enough to last us 100 years at current rates of consumption. If we use natural gas to power all our cars, however, we will run out a lot quicker. And it’s still a dirty fossil fuel with a limited supply and a wildly fluctuating price related to – you guessed it – oil.
Oh, and by the way: fuel cells are dead.
4. It’s Electricity, Stupid.
Critics of EVs point out that anyone who lives in an apartment building or parks on the street, or ever wants to drive more than 100 miles at a time, can’t have an electric car, because without a recharge it will die.
Good point. But let’s put it another way:
Which would you rather pay for? New infrastructure to develop, extract and/or grow and then pump and/or truck the heavy, expensive “carbon fuel of the future” to gas stations…
…or longer extension cords?
Providing public places for electric cars to charge will not happen overnight, or for free, but the technology is here, it’s simple and it’s easily scalable. The problem of range will be solved either through quick charging batteries, battery-swapping, or an extended reliance on hybrids, until people feel confident they will always find a place to charge.
5. Dawning Obsolescence.
Using gasoline to power your car is the 21st century equivalent of heating your home with firewood. I love gathering and chopping wood for a nice cozy fire on a winter night, but if I had to do it all winter, every winter, I would be eager to find a replacement technology.
In the future, people will look back on our once or twice weekly ritual of driving to a gas station and pouring a noxious, flammable and very expensive liquid into our loud, dirty vehicle and wonder what “life back then” must have been like.
By the way, by “dirty” I don’t just mean polluting, I mean actually dirty, the dirt that accompanies any vehicle that moves by means of burning things: rocket ships, steam locomotives, Corollas, whatever.
Next time you’re at a gas station, think about it. Is it really so hard to imagine the rubber pumps and hoses, the smell of gasoline and oil as just so…19th century?
Resistance is Futile.
The EV revolution will not happen overnight. Stakeholders in various competing technologies will not allow their ventures to die without a fight. While problems of range and charging persist, consumers will be hesitant to switch, even as they are squeezed by gas prices. And of course, the shift from gasoline to electric can only happen one car at a time.
But my guess is that the shift to electric cars will happen sooner than we think. Change happens very slowly, and then, all of a sudden, very fast. Think of VHS to DVD, or the road from vinyl records to iTunes – four different technologies in less than 30 years (five, if you count eight-tracks).
The automotive industry is a whole lot bigger than the record business, but that means there’s more incentive to make the switch to the leading technology. It also means once that technology is in place, there’s more incentive to support it. That technology is electric.
photo: Nissan
