Team EV World

Throughout my career, I’ve been a vocal proponent of market research. “We need to develop a profound understanding of these market segments,” I’d tell my clients. “Research will enable us to keep our fingers on the pulse of the market, and let us know what keeps these people up at night.” Indeed, I like to think I was a fairly compelling spokesperson for market research in my day—and on balance, I believe I gave good advice most of the time.

But I’m rethinking the validity of research when I contemplate the most probable trajectory for EV adoption over the coming years. In particular, I had a grim realization at the Plug-In conference in San Jose the other day, where I sat in on a presentation rooted in such research. In a flash, I saw that the entire discussion, in which three esteemed panelists walked through their PowerPoint, had completely missed the point. But why? How? How is it possible that analyzing consumers’ response to questions about trade-offs in range vs. charge-time vs. cost vs. MPG in charge-sustaining mode could yield essentially no information of any real value?

Perhaps it’s this. What if I had asked you 20 years ago if you thought it was a legitimate idea to rid of your home telephone landline because you had a cell phone? What if I had told you that you’d have 5000 of your favorite songs on a piece of equipment half the size of a deck of cards, and asked you if you thought you might not need your car radio because this device could plug directly into your speakers?

You see where I’m going with this. Our culture takes on certain modes as technology offers us radical new ways of life, and, to a great extent, consumers can only respond to these modes when they actually arrive. Asking a mainstream audience about its interest in the features and benefits of EVs simply does not engage them in any meaningful way with the realities that will lie before them when EVs start taking to the streets en masse in a few years.

Here’s another, maybe even more fundamental reason the researchers seem to have missed the point: Purchasing motivations—especially regarding cars—have virtually nothing to do with the features of the product itself. We knew that—or should have known that—years before EV starting to come onto the scene. Cars may be about passion, or sex, or showing off, or the wish to appear affluent—but they are most certainly not about the features of the product itself. A few people in the meeting seemed to have some level of understanding of this, but the point was quickly glossed over, and we soon got back to our bar charts and standard deviations.

Look at it this way: Suppose that a car with the characteristics of the Chevy Volt were available today. Suppose there were a few people in Joe Mainstream’s local community who were zipping around town, commuting to work, chauffeuring their kids around, and doing the rest of their basic driving—almost all of which can be done within the 40 mile pure-electric range, providing them with near-infinite MPG. Here are people who will probably have plunked down a few extra up-front bucks, but:

1) Almost never need to buy gasoline
2) Have made a visible contribution to preserving the health of the environment and stemming global climate change
3) Are doing what they can to free our country of its dependence on foreign oil

How long do you think it will take for that to be noticed? Emulated?

I’ve got bad news for the Ph.D.s in sociology and statistics. There is no way that asking people about design issues and trade-offs in functionality will get you anywhere close to understanding the power that is about to be unleashed. When word of mouth and other forms of viral marketing start to take hold, we’ll see a cultural transformation that will smash our traditional car-buying paradigm to bits in a very short period of time.

Craig Shields
Cshields@evworld.com
www.teamevworld.com
www.evworld.com

EV Ecosystem Blog

Hi. I’m Gene Glaudell and I have initiated the EV Ecosystem Blog on the TeamEVWorld site to jumpstart the dialogue and generate actionable knowledge on the current state of the entire EV ecosystem and ideas on how to get as many electric miles on the road as quickly as possible. I spent most of 2007 as the CIO of Tesla Motors, a baptism of fire in the EV industry. Before Tesla, I spent the last 15 years as an IT professional. I am trained as a physicist (Harvard, University of Ilinois, University of Chicago, Fermilab, LBL), so I bring a high level of rigor to my interest in alternative fuel vehicles, including EV’s.

My initial definition of the EV Ecosystem is all of the elements and processes required to replace the current ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) transportation ecosystem with an EV/REEV/PHEV ecosystem.

The EV ecosystem includes everything from raw materials (Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, etc.), core technologies (e.g., Li-ion, NIMH, Lead-Acid battery chemistries), product design through component assemblies (batteries, control systems, electric motors) and finished products (power trains, automobiles), as well as the delivery, sales, support, energy generation and storage infrastructure and end of life processes to support this ecosystem.

This ecosystem is currently throttled by the ability to develop viable mass market EV/REEV/PHEV cars.

Tesla Motors has proven that it is possible to make highly desirable high performance, high efficiency EV’s. However, there is still much work to be done to create EV’s that are affordable and acceptable to the average automobile owner.

Since the BLM (federal Bureau of Land Management) had very recently announced that they rescinded the moratorium against further solar development applications, I think the tone of the meeting was different than it would have been if they had not done so. Perhaps they got an earful in Phoenix and elsewhere, and on the web, and that helped them change their minds?

So, at this meeting in Tucson, Arizona, public comment did not focus on getting them to rescind the moratorium, which had already been accomplished, but generally focused more on giving general feedback to BLM and DOE on the importance of solar energy, the importance of balancing out our other environmental concerns such as come up with building transmission for the solar energy to the end-user, and so-on.

The meeting was conducted in a professional way. It started at something like 6:30, a half hour after the listed time, but that may have been stated somewhere on the agenda, as to general convening for the first half hour or something.

There was a general moderator type person who introduced three or four presenters from BLM, DOE and I think NREL. There were also one or more Argonne lab people present (hence the ANL in some of the links). After about an hour of this we had Q&A for maybe 20 minutes or so, and then formal public comments, 3 minutes each person. After about an hour (or so… I didn’t pay that close attention to the clock) of pre-arranged public comments, those of us sitting in the audience who also decided to comment for 3 minutes were allowed to do so, and then a few followups and then we were done.

The meeting time said 6:00 PM on the web, but it was nearly 8:00 PM before we got to hear from the public. While it is likely that it would not be possible to have to-the-point public comment without some prior framing of the discussion, and the presentations were informative, I think the timing was not sufficiently respectful of the scheduling of members of the public who chose to attend primarily to comment and not to listen. Perhaps the “post-time” for public comment could have been published so that members of the public who wished to skip listening to BLM presentations could have done so?

The meeting was seemingly well-attended. I don’t know how many people normally would attend, but I think there were maybe one or two comments that the turnout seemed on the robust side. I’ll estimate off the cuff (without having done a formal count) that there were three or four dozen local citizens there.

An NFL stadium would not be enough room to hold what I don’t know about government regulations and PEIS work and how best to petition the government for change in most types of cases. I don’t have the patience for legal and bureaucratic type meetings. I noticed in discussing the PEIS and other issues, such as why the moratorium was listed, that clearly the effectiveness of our publicly spoken comments (or web form comments) would be affected by how much homework we did really to understand what was, and was not, at stake, and the best methods for presenting our comments.

Of course, this is still the Bush-Cheney Administration, so it is arguable that one might have no reasonable expectation, at all, of making a statement that will have impact. I suppose one might as well attend an EPA hearing and confuse the professionalism of the EPA representatives with the fact that, no matter whether they really take your public comments to heart, their own views will be over-ruled by a Bush-Cheney Administration appointee if the Administration wants it that way. Still, just to note the matter properly, those BLM and other representatives who were at the meeting did seem to present and listen professionally and attentively.

I’ll list ad hoc, from memory, some points that were made that left an impression on me during the presentations, Q&A, and then during the public comment period, but I’ll emphasize that if we can find the link to the transcript of the meeting, then anyone should be able to look through the entire meeting.

The rescinding of the moratorium, for some reason I never fully understood, was done in a way that involved rescinding the “third alternative” that was part of the PEIS. The first alternative (by law) is apparently “do nothing”. The second alternative is something like “go very far with development of solar on BLM lands”. The third, that was recently rescinded, was some sort of limited or mitigated BLM solar development alternative. It sounded as though it was not entirely a good thing for the PEIS to be left without a credible third alternative. One person suggested that local PV rooftop installations be viewed as a third alternative. I thought this was a terrible idea if it is treated as either-or, but maybe with some modification (less BLM solar thermal installation, more local PV installation) it could serve the PEIS process as a proper third alternative.

I think during the Q&A period, just before public comment, someone pointed out that we hadn’t heard much in the presentations as to what specific environmental concerns we were talking about. Water? Plants? Certain types of animal life? The omission of discussion of specific environmental concerns was kind of striking to me, but was eventually filled in, a tiny bit, by several from the public. This was kind of a general meeting, and much of what we heard was some general pro-solar public sentiment mitigated by a few with other environmental or other concerns.

The first public comment came from a representative of Congresswoman Giffords’ office. I’m not going to summarize, but she and a few other parties made interesting points regarding the fact that arguably a large solar installation can have a positive environmental impact in some cases (providing shade in a desert setting for some plant growth for example?). Also, the impact of not installing solar is arguably negative, if we take into account global climate change and other consequences of failure to up our intake from renewables.

At least one person commented on the importance of understanding the environmental impact of transmission, and I thought this was a point well-made. Isn’t transmission through California’s San Diego and Imperial Counties part of the environmental holdup to the planned 100-200+ MW solar thermal installation in that area?

I may be mistaken, but I think the Sierra club representative was the only person to oppose rescinding the moratorium on accepting further applications for solar development on BLM lands.

BLM I believe made clear that while new applications were to be accepted, the existing ones would be processed in parallel. They did and do have some criteria for evaluating existing solar development applications, from a 2007 document, I believe. The PEIS is (sort of?) an attempt to improve upon those criteria, but they seemed to be saying that they are not flying entirely blind in present-day evaluations. My worst fear (particularly given the renewable energy hostility of the Bush-Cheney administration) going into this meeting is that BLM would use the 22 or 24 month PEIS period as a pretext to hold up all application approvals (whether they were taking new applications or not). Apparently that worst fear was (I hope) not warranted.

It does seem to be the case that BLM has never before approved an application to develop solar on BLM land, and for the sort of project we’re talking about (large scale solar, such as above 10 MW). They have of course approved many for Natural Gas mining and such.

However, I got the impression (right or wrong) that BLM had not in previous years seen much interest or applications for development of solar. I did not get the impression that they had been holding up solar development applications for years or decades, but rather that they are saying these applications are a relatively recent phenomenon.

They gave a number for how many applications they have outstanding (a bit more than 100?). There seemed to be only one or two that were a bit “further along” in the process. My impression was that they were saying it was not so much them holding things up as the fact that it is only recently that they have started to get these applications.

While solar thermal and PV technology is far from new (the NREL guy, in his presentation, had mentioned the California solar thermal plan in operation since 1982), perhaps it is relatively new that the solar industry is making these applications to BLM.

BLM indicated that there is a person or department which handles the Natural Gas applications, and that this is the same person or department which handles the solar applications? One thing I expressed in my comments at the end is that if part of the issue here is a simple need for modestly increased funding to address simple manpower issues in processing the applications, then I would very much like BLM to express this, and then we can lobby our representatives for more taxpayer funding for this purpose at BLM. It can’t be that much money, and would seem to be a very effective use of taxpayer funds for solar energy development, if that is needed.

There are apparently 119 million acres of BLM land in the six southwestern states with all of this Insolation more suitable for solar harvesting than in other states.

So, in a way, the task is to create a way to narrow down that 119 million acres, discover which of those acres need to be ruled out as environmentally unsuitable, less suitable for solar development than other acres or for other reasons to be ruled out. I am summarizing from my own words.

To give an idea of scale, I believe the numbers given were something like 1200 or 1400 acres would be needed for a 250 MW installation.

Several parties, including the Congresswoman’s office, commented that we should prioritize developing solar installations on land that has already been damaged or used.

A sociologist made a presentation and estimated that $10bn flows out of Tucson every year in return for fossil fuels, and so development of locally harvested energy could help keep capital in Tucson. I loved this point and also personally commented in my own period (after disclaiming my indirect affiliation with some of the companies seeking leases) that one thing we are talking about here is development of local jobs in New Energy.

Another speaker made the point that BLM should be charging lease rates equal to what would be charged for use of private land. Regardless of the rate, I also pointed out that we had not heard anything from them about revenues to come to us taxpayers from leasing out these lands, and they should indeed get what they could, and why not? Maybe it needs to be tempered downward as part of overall energy policy to encourage solar development.

Two or three speakers emphasized their environmental concerns, while at the same time I think they each acknowledged their enthusiasm for solar. Some of them made points over my head, as they were clearly strongly involved, and from different organizations representing different specific environmental interests. There was not a great deal of discussion of specific wildlife impacts or chemical or water or other specific impacts, but a couple of the speakers did seem to represent. I think a part of the reason for the lack of specifics was the limited speaking time and the general nature of the “Programmatic” Environmental Impact Statement.

I think some of us were probably a bit uncomfortable listening to objections to solar that might come up when we hear other environmental concerns, but I came away glad that there were some present to champion this side of things. Perhaps we do not need to cover all acres, everywhere, with PV panels and solar thermal generators?

One speaker made a point about getting local agencies involved in the PEIS process.

I expected more fuss to be made about water, given that this is the arid desert area of Arizona, and given that I’ve heard that large-scale multi-megawatt solar thermal developments can be very water-intensive. A few people did touch on this, but not in a way that really left any big impression other than to mention it.

A couple of speakers raised the issue that there is some contrast or competition between considering the sort of large-scale multi-megawatt solar thermal installation we’re talking about for BLM lands and the sort of distributed generation rooftop PV installation we see here and there in Tucson. I think at least one thought that this should even be the third alternative for BLM. I disagreed so strongly with this that I didn’t even express myself on it. I think it is a false dichotomy to treat the solar questions in front of us as “either-or”.

Several speakers, including myself, just simply generally expressed one form or another of “solar is really really important”. One speaker summed it up along the lines of “I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation”. For my own part, I expressed that I see it as an “urgent” matter.

Before and after the meeting, I had the chance to meet and network with several concerned citizens and policy-involved people. I met a long-time local solar activist from my county (one county to the south of Pima County and Tucson) who had been around the merry-go-round with a somewhat-clueless-sounding previous local utility.

I also had the chance to meet a go-getter activist from Congresswoman Giffords’ office. From what little I have learned so far, her office has been good, in my view, about trying to work with and promote solar energy in Pima county.

By all accounts, the adoption of electric vehicles represents a paradigm shift from consumers’ automotive purchasing behavior as it has been established over the past 100 years. Yet I have to laugh when I read articles that suggest that American consumers will be slow to give up their internal combustion engines because of this entrenched behavior, as if it were rooted in some sort of subconscious attachment to gas stations, spark plus, and exhaust pipes.

In fact, several scholarly analyses assume that an enormous amount of effort will be required to push consumers over the hump associated with the transition from ICEs to EVs—or to any alternative-fueled vehicle. I watched a recently recorded hour-long lecture by a professor at the Sloan School of Economics at MIT, which provided a detailed treatment of the factors that would apply to engineering such a changeover. I recall that he used the metaphor of Sisyphus, showing how hard we would have to push our rock up the hill before it would go over the crest rather than to roll back down to us.

The lecture was fascinating, and it certainly packed all the academic rigor that one would expect from such an estimable source. His analysis was based mainly on the product features and benefits, and the marginal cost vs. marginal utility associated with each: gasoline savings, inconvenience of finding alternative fuel stations, and so forth. But it omitted one concept that I think is actually the most critical in the entire equation: Consumer purchase behavior is less rooted in the product in question than it is in our conception of who we are and how we perceive ourselves. Put another way:

We tend to buy branded products—even when they cost a great deal more—that are statements of our values—products that express to ourselves—and to our fellows—the kind of people we are now, and aspire to be in the future.

When I was a young boy growing up in the 60s, my mother and her friends wore mink coats when they went to their dinner parties. At a certain point, however, the spirit of who we were as a culture moved away from trapping and killing live, sentient animals for their fur. It moved away hard, and it moved away fast. After only a very short period of time, there remained only a very few women who, for whatever reason, didn’t get the message that people who wore real fur were deemed to be cold, sadistic killers. And these poor people were broadly regarded as pariahs—as so many Cruella D’Villes.

Isn’t it obvious that something similar is churning in our cultural bellies in 2008? Haven’t we all noticed that people are starting to regard Hummer owners in much the same way that people of the late 20th century regarded those few women who clung shamelessly to their minks? When you look around, you see that the world is starting to regard those who blatantly over-consume and over-pollute as selfish, degraded pigs.

I’ve made my life’s work out of helping my clients understand their target markets, position their products correctly, and address the unmet need of the markets they aspire to serve. But I really don’t think the world needs a marketing consultant to point out the dynamics as they apply to the adoption curve here. Given the availability of a modest, freeway-safe EV at a decent price with any reasonable range, they’ll sell like hotcakes.

Craig Shields
cshields@evworld.com
www.evworld.com

Admittedly, GM’s Volt program is a huge gamble for the struggling corporation that some are suggesting is on the verge of bankruptcy, including most recently Merrill Lynch.

So, it should not come as a surprise that someone would come along and question the wisdom of developing a plug-in electric car. One of those louder voices is Holman Jenkins, Jr. who wrote in the Wall Street Journal that pouring “hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.”

Jenkins thinks, “At best, the Volt will be an affluent family’s third car” largely because of its supposed sticker price of $45,000. He makes a number of other “interesting” claims such as thinking the car “will be lucky to get 15 mpg under gasoline power,” despite GMs not unreasonable projection of 50 mpg in engine-on mode.

In the end, he considers — not unlike a number of other skeptics — that the Volt is just a one big public relations gimmick intended to make an eventual government bailout of General Motors more “politically acceptable.”

His comments didn’t go unremarked by EV World readers — and elsewhere on the internet — most not all that kind to Mr. Jenkins or the once-respected-now-Rupert-Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. One commentator noting, “This ranting scribble is so poorly researched it wouldn’t make it into the NY Post.”

What Mr. Jenkins seems to want to ignore are two salient facts of life in the 21st century: oil is dear and becoming increasingly so, and cars will have to become increasingly electrified. GM, Mr. Jenkins, has no choice in the matter. They do this or they perish….which probably means getting bought up by Mahindra & Mahindra in India or SAIC in China. The Volt is a very big gamble, we all understand and recognize this. We live in a new era where gas guzzlers like big bore engines and tail fins are “so last century.”

GM realizes they made a serious miscalculation when they killed the EV1 program, now they are trying to rectify that mistake. The only real question is the Volt too little, too late? Let’s hope not.

Welcome to Team EV World. I am very pleased to introduce not only this new ‘blog’, but the founding members of the ‘team’ who have stepped up to help me advance the cause of lean, clean, green mobility that ultimately be powered by renewable energy sources from wind to solar to geothermal to ocean to hydropower.

For ten years, EV World.Com has endeavored to encourage the development and deployment of electric drive vehicle technology, most of the time single-handedly. Now I am pleased that others have joined me in this endeavor:

Sam Smith (Los Angeles, CA)
Craig Shields (Santa Ynez, CA)
Michael Brace (Cincinnati, OH)
Douglas Nelson, PhD (Blacksburg, VA)

As discussed in the ‘Meet Team EV World’ post above, the group’s purpose is to provide expert, independent technical and financial analysis of EV-relevant programs. Sam set up and ran the world’s first all-electric airport shuttle service at LAX during the California MOU period in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Craig ran his own highly respected public relations and market analysis company. Mike Brace is a highly qualified aerospace engineer who has designed a wide range of electric vehicles, as well as spacecraft. Doug is one of the leading academicians in our EV world with extensive experience in hybrid and fuel cell systems.

Together they represent a century of hands-on, real-world electric-drive vehicle experience from system design to battery manufacturing to operational logistics.

I am convinced that we are at the right place and right time to capitalize on not only the interest in, but growing hue and cry for petroleum-free forms of mobility around the planet. Converging forces of geology, geopolitics and the environment we all share necessitate we find new ways to move ourselves and our goods, ways that have a lower-carbon footprint.

It is my sincere hope that you will find this blog of value and that you contribute to the dialogue. And if you’re interested in becoming a regular ‘author’, please feel free to contact me at editor@evworld.com.

– Bill Moore