In May, I sat down with Tom Friedman of NY Times and flat world fame. It wasn't our first time to huddle together. We go back to a number of interesting touch points all of which share the same pattern - I have some thought which bugs me and Tom puts it in perspective to clarify my own thoughts even to me.
Tom and I first interacted meaningfully at the Saban Forum in 2005. Haim Saban invited me to take part in a panel where Tom was undoubtedly the marquee performance and I came in to put an Israeli-American perspective after his flat world. Tom gave everyone a taste of his usual flat-world performance and I was thrown in for the lions - in other words - no one wanted to speak after Tom so they let the young guy from SAP take the fall.
The next year at Saban '06, I was thrown in after Daniel Yergin, author of "The Prize". That year I detailed my very crude plan for ending Israel's oil addiction and President Peres picked up on it to push me onto this journey. Tom was sitting to my left and asked for the microphone for 5 minutes - which is unusual because you only get 3 minutes for comments. He gave a fantastic summary and perspective on how Israel, if it did what I proposed, will serve as a trial state for the US. He added a few more words of broader perspective, which I will keep private to protect the forum rules.
Since then, Tom and I keep meeting in every possible forum on energy, climate and geo-politics (I suspect that he is in more of them than I go to...). He has been tracking our path, and I finally got him to sit in our proto-1 car and take it for a spin. The result you can read in today's NY Times column titled "From Texas to Tel-Aviv".
I was called various different things regarding my sales skills. I must admit, some of them were not as nice as "selling Camels to Saudi-Arabia". The more I thought of that metaphor the more I like it. Camels are a mode of transportation that is extremely efficient in using a scarce resource. We will make sure our car though will not be designed by committee.
As to T Boone Pickens - well, I never met him, but I am now very intrigued by thethought of seeing what happens when the two of us get together and think. I suspect one day you will find someone who writes the story of that meeting. Tom will get the bragging rights for being the matchmaker.
I just read about your work in Tom Friedman's column and in wikipedia. I congratulate you for picking a smart project in which I predict you will make lots of money. If you are successful, you will make lots of money because you will fill a necessary need -- and provide a great exchange of dollars for product. But, here's the problem: You need to provide vehicles and services at a rational cost to an intelligent marketplace. Vectrix is flagging because they haven't figured out that Americans will not pay $ 11,000 for a motorcycle:
http://www.vectrix.com/corporate/US/tech-specs.php
Americans might pay $ 11,000 for an electric car, but it must be able to get on the highway and not kill people if in an accident:
http://electric-carcompany.com/services
So, what you need to do is to navigate the marketplace. I don't know how you will do it, but I wish you good luck.
Posted by: scienceguy | July 27, 2008 at 07:13 AM
I am very encouraged by Shai's and others' efforts in making volume scale electric vehicles a reality.
As for T. Boone Pickens, he want to convert to natural gas, perhaps because he is an oilman and would never work to put the oil industry out of business.
That is the real problem, that the entrenched market forces will never collaborate to make themselves obsolete, but will resist this with all their resources.
But there can be no other solution than electric vehicles. All we need are improvements in battery technology. The imepdiments here are all man-made, the largest being the segmentation of knowledge in battery materials and their engineering to scale.
What we should be focused on is combining a mixture of energy generating sources to drive an electric drivetrain. The Chevy Volt is an excellent example of this design paradigm, although it is 10 years behind GM's own learning curve. New, flexible solar cells will also play a major role on the skin of the electric car. Finally, we need better, lighter solutions for cooling and heating the passenger compartment.
After that, the market will respond very quickly and oil will be a greasy thing of the past.
Posted by: AgentG | July 27, 2008 at 12:42 PM