For those who predict a smooth, predictable adoption of renewable energy, electric transportation, or anything at all, I enter into evidence this graphic showing the importance of social media in our world today.

As this is the day of Facebook’s IPO, it seems fitting to write a few words on the subject and ask: Did anyone forecast that social media would come to this position of cultural and financial dominance a few years ago? Of course not. Nor did anyone suggest that, even a few years ago, that there would be five billion cell phones on Earth.

It’s reminiscent of the Black Swan theory of Nassim Talab, i.e., that we consistently underestimate the impact of unlikely, unforeseeable events in our lives. Put another way, we think we know more about what our future will look like than we actually do. “Epistemic arrogance,” as the intellectuals call it.

So what does that mean about the world of the future 30 years hence? Only that it’s unknowable.

I suppose the only thing we can say about the subject is that it depends a great deal upon you and me and what we do here and now. Yet once more, I’m reminded of the 20th Century anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

And as always, my thanks to you for being one of those thoughtful, committed citizens.

Here’s a press release (dressed as a news article) from Aerovironment, a company with a division that makes electric vehicle chargers. And here’s a line from it that reminds me of the adage: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”:

The consumer is just looking for something that works and allows them to charge fast.

Wrong.

The consumer is looking for a reasonable business proposition in terms of price and range. He won’t pay twice as much for a car, only to be limited, inconvenienced, and fearful that he’s investing in a dead-end technology.

Cameron Atwood writes:

I recall seeing figures indicating the $45k Volt pays off the difference in savings on gas over electric cost over its ICE (internal combustion engine) brethren in six years. That’s not especially dismal.

It depends on how far you drive, and, in the case of a plug-in hybrid like the Volt, how you drive, i.e., how seldom you exceed the battery-only range (about 35 miles) and start to use gasoline. The analysis is easier with a battery electric like the LEAF. Let’s say:

• You pay $30K for the LEAF after rebates
• This is $10K more than you would have paid for an equivalent ICE car
• The ICE car would have gotten 30 MPG
• Gas is $4 per gallon
• Electricity is the equivalent of $0.60

You’d break even at 85,000 miles. So you’re right, it’s not too dismal.

And I love the dialog my friend Paul Scott, who put his EV consulting career on hold to go sell the LEAF at Nissan’s downtown Los Angeles showroom, has with his prospects who are sitting on the fence on this issue. It begins with Paul’s asking, “Now, let’s put an extra price on gasoline. In addition to the $4 you’re paying at the pump, how much extra would you be willing to pay for fuel, which, when taken from renewable sources, doesn’t cause lung disease, global climate change, and dead soldiers?

This, of course, can go one of two ways. Fortunately, most prospects come up with a realistic figure, making the case for the LEAF very attractive. But occasionally a prospect says “zero.” Here’s where it gets ugly. Paul says, “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. You’re not a very good person, are you?”

As I told Paul when I heard this, “Ouch! I’m glad I’m not in the room when this happens.”

A quick note from the electric vehicle show in Los Angeles this week:

It’s true that most of the credible car-makers have EV products scheduled for delivery in the not-too-distant future.  But they’re obviously hedging their bets, delaying their market entrance as long as possible, so as to maximize the penetration of their pipeline of gasoline powered vehicles.

It’s pretty clear that their hearts are not in this.  And why should this be otherwise?  If you’re an auto OEM, you see nothing but an ocean of downside: billions of dollars of R&D, tons of a dozen different kinds of risk including exposure to tort attorneys from hell, diminution of sales revenues, huge costs of customer support and education (that will STILL wind them up with upset customers), the expense of supporting multiple platforms, shotgun weddings with charger suppliers and standards, etc.  No profitable industry really embraces change, regardless of its rhetoric — and that’s true in spades here.    

At conferences like these, I’m always amused by the hoopla that surrounds what is actually the routine, the clearest possible cases of business-as-usual.  The car companies tout their new vehicles as game-changers, yet anyone can see that they’re anything but.  Yesterday’s antics happened to feature the unveiling of the Toyota RAV-4 Electric SUV, with all the loud music, pretty girls, and bright flashing lights with which every new car or truck announced at an auto  show has been introduced over the past half century or so.  

But its MSRP is just a hair under $50K, almost exactly twice the sticker price of the gasoline version of the same vehicle.   How exciting is this, really?  The customer gets to pay twice the price for an inconvenient car?  Take a step back and ask yourself: Who really wants it at that rate?  A few wealthy environmentalists?  

So will this pre-ordained market failure bring disappointment or some sort of shock to Toyota?  Not in the least.  They win regardless of the success of the RAV-4 Electric.  With this product launch, Toyota did what it was finally forced to do.   After their unimaginable success in positioning themselves as the first eco-friendly auto company 12 years ago with the Prius, and having milked that cow far longer than anyone could have possibly expected, they’re finally back with a product in this space that they can promote.  Regardless of how dismal the sales figures, they’ll be making a few of these pure battery EVs — while beating the living bejeepers out of the public relations angle to ensure they regain their former stature in the public’s mind as an environmentally conscious company.  

Which they’re clearly not.  With one of the largest and best staffs of automotive engineers, if they had chosen, they could have led the world to green transportation.  Instead, they took more than a decade to introduce a $50,000 car that only a few people will buy.  Their sales revenues in this space will represent a minute fraction of one percent of the gas powered vehicles they’ll be selling around the world for at least a generation to come — at a handsome profit.  

The bigger picture: it looks like Big Oil and Big Auto will remain blood brothers for a long time to come.  God’s in his heaven/All’s right with the world.  – Robert Browning

Here’s an article that gets to a couple of important points that are illustrative of where we are and where we’re going in clean energy.

• Financing solar photovoltaics. There is no doubt that homeowners would be more likely to invest in solar if the PV on their roofs could be integrated in their mortgage, just like their plumbing, HVAC, or electrical system.

• Integrating electric vehicles. My friend Paul Scott has enough PV on his roof that his Nissan LEAF very rarely has to plug in to the grid; thus the carbon footprint of his transportation is limited to the manufacturing of the vehicle (and the PV) itself. Not bad! Obviously, he’s an early adopter, but this concept is likely to go mainstream over the coming years.

Here’s a “clean car calculator” in which users can plug in certain values and receive an instant assessment of the eco-impact of their vehicle. I’ll point out (before skeptics like reader Glenn Doty have the chance) that the methodology is subject to question; it uses the average cleanliness of the electric power in the user’s state, which differs from the overall impact of adding load anywhere on the grid in most of the US.

Germany has installed enough photovoltaics that, at this point, coal-fired power plants are beginning to become unprofitable. This is driven by a combination of factors, e.g., that coal isn’t asked to provide power at the peak of the day, when both the sun and the price of electricity are at their zenith. Of course, most of us cheer when coal runs into trouble, but issues like this raise some fantastically interesting questions about the future of power generation – and transportation – as we migrate from fossil fuels into more sustainable modalities.

Let’s look at the U.S., where coal accounts for over 40% of our electricity, and solar and wind are under 5%. As much as we’d like to turn off all our coal this afternoon, it’s not even a remotely practical idea. So what exactly is the plan whereby we scale coal back over a period of decades while building out renewables, energy storage, smart-grid, etc? Well, there isn’t one – at least not a written one.

One could ask an analogous question about transportation: What is the plan for providing an ever-decreasing amount of gasoline and diesel as an ever-greater segment of our transportation is electrified? Again, it doesn’t exist – at least not publicly.

But to think that Big Energy is sitting around watching as its empire melts away is folly of the first order. This industry, led by the world’s most powerful people, is working 24 hours a day to maintain its monopolistic positions, as shown from the glimpses we get into the truth via an occasional breach of secrecy. Google “ExxonMobil Global Warming Denial Machine” and read some of the 444,000 articles on the subject, in which you’ll learn how:

 ‘ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,” said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Director of Strategy & Policy. “A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.’

Or Google: “Oil Companies Proposition 23 Junk Science,” and take a peak at the 172,000 stories about the covert campaign to destroy California’s fight to clean up its skies.

As always, there’s good news and bad news. Here, the good news is that there actually IS a plan. The bad news is that it’s being written by the oil companies and by people like the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, hell-bent, as they are, on further enriching themselves at the expense of destroying the only planet we have.

I just had a great conversation with Allan Schurr, IBM’s Vice President of Energy and Utilities. I performed quite a few projects for IBM over the 30 years that I functioned as a marketing consultant for the tech sector, and thus they’ll always occupy a warm spot in my heart — even if they did achieve their dominance in the late 20th century with the borderline abusive business tactics for which they were well known at the time.

Nowadays, we have a kinder, gentler — and I would say smarter IBM, a company dedicated to adding true value with its level of innovation, business strategy, and industry expertise. I’m delighted to see that IBM embraces electric transportation, and focuses on integrating its many information-related pieces, e.g., smart-grid. IBM’s done a great deal of work in early-adopter Denmark, where, for instance, an EV comes home at the end of a workday, gets plugged in, and waits patiently for the wind speed to cross a certain threshold, at which its charger switches on, thus minimizing the use of fossil fuels and maximizing the penetration of wind into the Danish grid-mix.

Great stuff, guys. Keep up the good work.

I just arrived back from a trip to Maui, HI and it continues to amaze me that they have 7000 acres of sugar cane, producing two crops/year, 90% refined into alcohol on island, over half of the cars on the road are flex fuel and they are importing gasoline from off island. Am I the only person out there that thinks that it just might be better for the island to adopt the Brazilian model?

I’ve spent a fair amount of time on Maui, and if I were they, I’d investigate skipping the carbon model altogether. They have an enormous amount of run-of-river hydro, with their huge elevations and incredible rainfall, as well as ocean thermal at their disposal. I believe that a truly fair-minded look at their energy and transportation scene would yield an attractive return on these renewables and electric transportation.

In fact, one of the dozen or so clean energy investment opportunities that I happen to favor is just perfect for the high head conditions that occur when rain falls in the mountains and runs quickly to the sea.

Frequent commenter MarcoPolo writes:

Craig, EREVs (extended range electric vehicles), are not simply ‘Plug-in hybrids’. The GM Volt is an astonishing example of US engineering, and advanced technology.  All Americans should feel proud of the GM Volt.

I have to admit that it’s a cool idea, and I’m glad that GM appears to be onboard with a migration, albeit a slow one, away from oil.  But I do believe that the EREV (as they call it) will be a short-lived concept that will have little bearing on the future of transportation.

Btw, the difference between the terms “extended range electric vehicle” (EREV) and “plug-in hybrid” is semantics. In fact, I recall thinking when I saw that GM had coined the phrase EREV in an attempt to differentiate the Volt from the other plug-in hybrids, “Now that’s marketing at its finest.” All such vehicles have batteries that provide a given range, and internal combustion engines (ICEs) that extend that range. Yes, there are variations on the theme as to what precisely the ICE does (charge the battery? power the car? both?) But we’re really talking about a single concept.