Thursday 24 June 2010

Electric Vehicle Consumer Adoption Summit, Day One

Today was the first day, and as conference chair, I’ve had a hand in every session and been able to meet an interesting mix of thought leaders who really understand the electric vehicle space.
But even after devoting two full days to this event, the summit only breached the surface of what EVs are all about.
This is a great, deep dive for me – at our next summit we’re doing one session on EVs. And after what I saw this week, I can tell you there’s a whole lot more to explore. This article is a brief recap of the highlights, and I’ll do the same for day two in my next write-up.
The summit started strongly with a presentation from Marc Tarpenning, one of the co-founders of Tesla Motors. For those who don’t know Tesla, their Roadster really embodies the sex appeal of electric vehicles; it’s really sharp looking, has all the power you crave and of course, is very eco-friendly. However, there’s a six figure pricetag (News - Alert) with that, so it’s not going to recalibrate the balance of power any time soon, but it’s setting the bar high for what electric cars can strive for.
Marc gave us a lot to think about, and I could build this whole article around his comments. The key topics included why the time is right now for electric vehicles and why earlier entries like the EV-1 failed. Not being very technical, I really enjoyed Marc’s practical insights, especially as they concerned the global market opportunity for electric cars (including how important behavior change and attitude shifts will be to the success of this market.) I also enjoyed how he identified home-charging as a great opportunity for utilities to deploy smart grid/smart home solutions and make themselves a more active part of the electric car equation.

1 comment:

dancilhoney said...

Electric car technology seem to be getting better and better. Keep it up !! vehicle testing