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What’s Really Significant: Chevy Volt vs. Marshall Goldman
Yesterday two idea clusters rose above the myriad others that floated in, out, and around my mind. One started my day, the other came near the end. They stood in juxtaposition like The Future and The Past. Together I think they point to an important feature of our Rapid Transition from the Hydrocarbon Age toward the Electron Age.
The first idea cluster came at a breakfast presentation by Marshall Goldman, the urbane, erudite former Wellesley professor and Russian expert who recently wrote Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. Goldman’s delightful lecture at New York’s Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, painted a picture of the enormous rise in wealth and status of Russian business people and the Russian state which shows every indication of expanding continuously over the next decades. There is no doubt that high oil and gas prices have dealt Russia a hand with four aces. Goldman is a good observer and reporter; his narrative seemed compelling and full of significance.
The Chevy Volt idea cluster came toward the end of my day as I read this report about G.M.’s soon-to-be-marketed plug-in electric hybrid car. It will be able to go 400 miles at over 100 mpg on a small tank of gas that simply helps to recharge the electric motor. The report says the car will be produced in volume - over 100,000 a year - after 2010, that the first models will be on the street “soon”, and that the car will be made in one of G.M.’s most visible plants located close to G.M. HQ. In other words, the Volt is to be a signature car for what G.M. hopes its future will look like, and it wants the world to know that. The Volt is a piece of industrial drama and it’s significance, like that of the rise of Russia, has broad implications for human affairs.
When you think about Russia and their great international infrastructure for natural gas distribution that their giant state gas monopoly Gazprom operates, the images you get are of huge, dirty, expensive pipelines - 6″ or 12″ or 18″ - buried under ground and even under seas collecting gas from distant, cold, inhuman fields and bringing it to all the people of Europe. And in the process making nearly everyone from London to St. Petersburg dependent on the continued good will of one man, Vladimir Putin, for the reliability of their heating and cooking systems.
When you think about the Volt, you see a sleek, nearly silent machine powered by invisible electrons that are generated relatively close to where they are consumed and distributed through small cables that are easily and rapidly laid - at least in comparison with a gas pipeline. The electrons may soon be generated directly from the energy of sunlight falling silently to earth at no cost converted to energy by concentrating solar thermal or wind or wave generators with no greenhouse gases. Or maybe the electrons come from falling water or from geothermal heat, also free inputs. No one man can hold anyone hostage for this energy source. The Age of Electrons will be the apotheosis of democracy translated to commerce.
These two important stories - the Volt and the Russians - are, like nearly all energy-related information clusters that come along during an average day, easily classified into one of these two categories - either “How the End of the Hydrocarbon Age is Unfolding” or “How the Age of the Electron Will Look and Will Impact Us.”
Probably 95% of these information clusters are of the former variety and maybe 5% are the latter. Both are useful. It’s important for us to understand how the Hydrocarbon Age will end because we will be living through that period for the next ten to twenty years and if we are to get through this period with the least damage and the most wealth left intact, we must do our best to understand it. So the experience and insights of Dr. Goldman are useful.
But let’s bear in mind, as we decide whether oil will next go down to $100 or up to $150 and more importantly whether we are at all prepared for the turmoil of the times when oil costs $500 in a few years, that as important as such questions are, they only deal with the dying days of a life style we will soon put behind us. The rarer information clusters like the Volt, the 5% coming our way that deal with the coming Age of Electrons, are what will matter more to our grandchildren, thank goodness. So let’s pay attention to them too. And let’s organize to get there. It will be a lot cleaner, cheaper…and more democratic.
Tags: peak oil energy investments
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Simon // Jun 5, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I made a comment in another blog (Sudden Dept) that once the infrastructure for an electrical age has been built and paid for growth limitations may be lower not higher than with hydrocarbons. Leading eventually to new problems.
I remember a few years ago sitting in my car wondering about the world, reflecting on the huge increase in the value of my house and the fact that I would not be able to afford it now since my income had not risen, noticing the increase in traffic and delays and feeling like I was living in a mirage.
I finally decided to Google “world oil reserves”. What an amazing journey came from that. It has eventually led me to sites like this and to becoming hugely more sophisticated about the world at large and business, investing and economics. Thank god for google and the internet. It may be saving the world.
2 KV // Jun 6, 2008 at 4:40 am
It will be able to go 400 miles at over 100 mpg on a small tank of gas that simply helps to recharge the electric motor.
Electric hybrids were supposed to recover the braking energy similar to gas hybrids. For accuracy, electrical motors do not charge, batteries do. Small gas engine was a “limp mode” when batteries were ran down.
For electric to be successful, batteries and fast-recharging (less than an hour, 15 minutes) is needed. Electric and chemical safety (especially during fast recharging) issues will dominate. We shouldnot forget that nearly 2/3 of energy is thermally wasted in producing 1/3 as electricity.
3 Jim Kingsdale // Jun 6, 2008 at 6:47 am
KV, thanks for the correction - of course you are right - the battery is recharged, not the motor.
But on the other question of efficiency and just how the electric vehicle will become a success - no doubt there will be some trial and error based evolution of both the business and the technical model for the hybrid electric and/or fully electric vehicles to come. But it seems clear, at least to me, that in some form or other and for the most part we will be propelled by electrons, not hydrocarbons twenty years from now.
4 KV // Jun 6, 2008 at 8:14 am
I agree that electric is the future. GM wanted electric with fuel cell as limp mode, but fuel cell seems a long way off. So, gasoline engine will suffice.
GM (Ford, Chrysler, MB etc.) is addicted in pushing steel and plastic at $10+ per pound. It is probably impossible for GM culture to change by making a lighter, fuel efficeint car. There is just not enough mark up to keep those executives researching what is sexy to sell a car. This is the real problem, and it permeates accross all products from toothpaste to aircraft. May be this time it is different, but I doubt it.
Regarding efficiency: I intended to state that powerplants waste nearly 2/3 of energy as waste heat. This is equally unforgivable, as we know how to cascade the thermo dynamic ramp. There is no motivation to change for them either, just like car companies.
All we are looking for is a massive oil/gas find to collapse the price of the oil so that we can go back to our SUVs, and GM, Ford et al can compete to build the most inefficient vehicle.
5 Isaac // Jun 6, 2008 at 8:54 am
If I read you right Jim, you are saying lets try to spend more time looking forward towards solutions than back to problems. If that was your gist- I really agree. Its time to stop thinking “who killed the electric car”, and “three mile island”, and Karen Silkwood, and instead its time to spend more time brainstorming innovations and rapid transition. I am curious what your thoughts are on Nuclear energy. I was an anti-nuclear protestor as a young man, but now am open to the discussing the option with open eyes. Do you think it is a viable piece of the pie? I’m thinking that we may need it, but it will take far too long to ramp up to make a meaningful impact in the next decade, and that it will be very expensive to do safely. I think a massive geothermal build-out would be a better use of our capital for baseload electricity.
6 paultaut // Jun 7, 2008 at 1:04 pm
nuclear is a viable long term solution only if a mandate is issued by Congress. No more not”in my backyard craipie”, no more testing on the effect on the “snail darter”. This kind of garbage has to stop or we will be back to horses as a means of powering local electricity.
7 Sean // Jun 9, 2008 at 3:11 pm
An electric economy/paradigm shift is clearly inevitable. We all seem to agree, the questions remain: what will be the storage, and what will be the primary generation. Hydrogen is too far in the future so in the meantime, li-ion batteries are here to stay. Solar thermal is ramping up and PV is having groundbreaking research http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=49483
As for nuclear, the Pebble Bed Reactors offer the best promise in my opinion.
I think the best we can all hope for is that no new oil/gas fields are discovered, driving faster towards our goals and inevitable future.
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