All Electric, All the Time
By Jamie Henn - Aug 20th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Wired has a great cover feature this month on Shai Agassi and his innovative plan to get electric cars on the road. First off, it’s good to see Wired covering innovative technological solutions again (it wasn’t so long ago they were telling us to keep our SUVs). What really struck me about the article, though, is Agassi’s ambition.
Rather than advocate for the construction of a few electric cars, Agassi works for a complete redesign of our transportation networks. You can read the article to get the details, but let’s just say for now that it involves electric cars, GPS, text messaging, battery swaps, and more.
Ambition is completely missing from the current debate on energy. The last couple of weeks saw Democrats cave to Republicans on offshore drilling, a complete hoax. Part of the problem is that neither party is presenting a visionary (and ambitious) plan for a clean energy economy. Instead of plans for energy independence, we get “drill here, drill now.” Instead of blueprints for an infrastructure to support electric cars, we get plans for more oil rigs.
Timid politicians on both sides of the aisle should be heeding the advice of the architect Daniel Burnham:
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans. Aim high in hope and work.
People will debate the possibility of Agassi’s plans, but you have to give him credit: they’re big.
[...] Original post by Jamie Henn [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 11:31 am[...] pushback » Blog Archive » All Electric, All the Time [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 5:47 pmExciting! I’m pretty sure that overturning the big oil-derived economy will require massive entrepreneurial efforts just like Agassi’s if conservation and fuel/transportation reform is ever going to look appealing…before it’s FORCED to be, that is.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:24 pm