Shai Agassi, the California-based software superstar who wanted to run SAP but left the company in March when he didn’t get the top job, has come back into the spotlight as the CEO of an electric car start-up. The new company is funded by $200m of venture capital and investment bank money. This makes it one of the best-funded start-ups in history.
Agassi does not intend to make electric cars. Wisely, he is leaving this to the auto industry. He is focusing on the batteries. He’ll lease them to anybody with an appropriate car and he’ll develop large networks of ‘filling stations’ where the driver can quickly take out a discharged battery and swap it for a fully charged version on long journeys. By 2010, he wants a hundred thousands electric cars on the roads of California and elsewhere.
The obstacles are huge. Although lithium-iron-phosphate battery technology is improving rapidly, and will continue to do so for decades, full-size car batteries now cost at least €7,000. Getting mainstream manufacturers to build large volumes of electric cars that will take his batteries is another formidable challenge. Third, he has to persuade retailers to install the equipment to swap batteries automatically.
But our weary European scepticism needs to be rested for a moment. The long-run economics favour this idea. My sums suggest that at current UK petrol prices it costs at least six times more to drive a mile on petrol than it does on electricity. Battery prices will fall and performance will improve. At some point it is going to be so much cheaper to power a car with electrons rather than octane that even the slothful auto industry will switch. When the market has tipped it won’t be long before passenger cars are all electric. Agassi may be too early, and his business model may require too much capital, but electric cars are coming soon.
The US presidential contenders are laying out their plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mrs Clinton’s proposals are noteworthy for their commitment to re-engage with the global negotiations over future emissions caps and for her ambitious acceptance of the need for an 80% reduction in US emissions by 2050. The 80% target is rapidly becoming the preferred option of world politicians, a more ambitious target than the UK’s 60% figure. (The UK’s Climate Change bill will allow the new Climate Change Committee to recommend an increase to 80% if appropriate.)
Two pieces of market research published in the last week give some more support for the view that opinion is moving towards accepting that climate change will require lifestyle changes. BBC World Service interviewed individuals across the globe. Power company E.ON produced its segmentation of British consumer attitudes.
Energy efficiency improvements often do not deliver reductions in energy use. For example, when a householder installs better insulation, the energy savings are sometimes much less than would have been predicted. Sometimes this is because the insulation was badly fitted, but it is often because the householder runs the heating at a higher temperature when the house is better insulated. This is called the ‘rebound’ effect: when it becomes cheaper or more effective to use energy, people use more of it.
Organic matter, such as agricultural waste, heated in the absence of oxygen splits into two types of material: a charcoal (biochar), and hydrocarbon gases and liquids. When added to soils, the charcoal can provide a powerful fertiliser. The hydrocarbons can be burnt, either to generate electricity or to power an internal combustion engine.
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