How Execs at 30 Top Cleantech Firms Expect to Make Lots of $$ (Part 1 of 7) Electric Cars = the Next Mass Market Technology
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
Electrified transportation is the next mass market technology. The automotive industry will be turned completely upside down, with many of today’s small, unknown electric vehicle developers becoming the new global giants of car-making. Electric utilities are the oil companies of tomorrow. The new lithium-ion batteries that are the foundation of this new mass market technology likely will be leased separately from the vehicles, creating a vast new market for finance companies. OPEC member nations can see the future and are already investing in a world where oil’s role will be greatly diminished.
These are just some of the insights into the car world of tomorrow recently expressed by the CEOs of three of the world’s top electric vehicle developers – Albert Lam of Santa Rosa, CA-based Detroit Electric, Henrik Fisker of Irvine, CA-based Fisker Automotive, and Dan Elliott of Ontario, CA-based Phoenix Motorcars. While they disagreed on whether electrified transportation will be dominated by all-electric or plug-in electric vehicles (the latter capable of also running on gasoline), they agreed that most people will risk buying a green car, and that if their firms move quickly, they will seize the market from the likes of General Motors and Toyota, which they see as being years behind them in developing the new technology.
“I’ve never been part of something like this,” Fisker told an audience of fund managers and other investors. “If we move quickly enough, there’s an open market” just waiting for Fisker and other newcomers.
“We’re going to put pressure on the big boys,” Lam said, referring to oil marketing companies that have billions tied up in distribution networks for liquid transportation fuel. He added that he is already talking to two U.S. utilities, one of which has begun conducting trials on fueling electric vehicles.
While Big Oil could come under enormous pressure, Middle East oil-producing countries appear to be plugging in to the electric vehicle future. Lam said he’s got a “number of very interested investors” from Kuwait who are at a “mature stage” in their interest in Detroit Electric. Fisker said he was flying to Dubai after the conference because, “They want to be part of the future.”
Each CEO made it clear that it’s going to take five to seven years for the ultimate winner or winners to be crowned in the race to develop the best lithium-ion car battery. Elliott of Phoenix said his vehicles are getting a 130-mile range on a 10-minute charge, but that batteries offering greater range between “fill-ups” are coming.
Coming too, Lam said, will be batteries that can be fed a steady “trickle” charge from, for example, solar panels mounted on bus roofs. Fisker noted that while the world today is gaga over non-plug-in hybrid vehicles, they are only 10% to 15% more efficient than standard vehicles. “They’re not really doing a lot,” he said, explaining why the next big thing is going to be electric vehicles, and that they’ll be arriving shortly.
