Andrew Grove, a co-founder of Intel and the man who coined one of my favorite concepts, the strategic inflection point (SIP), is rallying corporate and government support for electric cars in the US. He realizes that Americans are reluctant to buy an all-electric vehicle, however:
While car makers have been developing plug-ins, Grove says the nation should consider ways of retrofitting the 80 million low-mileage pickups, sport utility vehicles and vans on the road to make them capable of running on both gasoline and electric power.
Giving these vehicles “dual fuel” functions would be similar to changes made in other technologies. DVD players, for example, were often combined with VCR tape players when they were first introduced to help consumers make the transition.
See this Associated Press article titled Ex-Intel head pushes electric cars for more details.
Related articles and pages on billso.com
- Strategic inflection point
- 12 November 2007: I want a better television - but it’s not ready yet
- 7 March 2007: Microsoft vs. Google
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Daniel Peters // Tuesday, 1 July 2008, 13:31 HST @896
The embracing of electric cars is only a matter of time, or so I hope. Some people are already trying to work out some good concepts:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/30/tesla-motors-elon-musk-promises-sub-30k-all-electric-car-in-le/
Car’s gonna be cool with a name like Tesla. I can only assume that it won’t be allowed to shoot out death rays, but still… good word association/recognition there for the brand name.
Fully electric vehicles seem to be to be the best bet in going green because it offers the large energy corporations a chance to switch over to better methods of creating electricity. Asking every citizen to switch to CFC bulbs is a good idea, but it’s not enforceable. The largest possible changes in ecologically sound life practices are those that can be done by corporations. If the government were to ban polluting methods of creating energy the playing field would be level across the board, making it feasible for all energy utilities to embrace cleaner ways of creating electricity.
Or… that’s how the dream plays out anyway.
2 billso
// Tuesday, 1 July 2008, 15:13 HST @967
The Tesla Roadster is a sweet looking vehicle! The HTSA would probably nix the death rays, though.
Australia is going to ban incandescent bulbs by 2010, according to the BBC.
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