Director: Switch to the Fast Lane
December 2008
A memorable passage in Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, recalls when he visited MIT and was invited to peel off from the session he was meant to attend. A bunch of students showed him what their vehicle design summit group was devising. The summit had brought together 25 college teams from around the world, including India and China, to design and build a plug-in electric hybrid.
"Their aim," Friedman explains, "was to demonstrate that they could build a car with a 95 per cent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to grave and provide the energy equivalency of 200 miles per gallon." As a different Tom-Peters-would have said: "Wow!"
Interestingly, the team were analyzing turning points such as the race to the Moon, trying to work out how to capture the same "energy, passion, focus and urgency". But what really hooked me was their project tagline: "We are the people we have been waiting for." There are moments in history when a new order needs to be built. And Friedman concludes that this is exactly where we now find ourselves.
If the business of business is business, as a different Friedman argued, it is also to build future markets. One area attracting growing interest is low-carbon cars, despite the hiccups that electric car pioneer Tesla have experienced recently. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a four-year, €400m research plan to drive the development of low-emission vehicles. And French energy utility EDF has announced agreements with Renault and Citröen to develop the recharging infrastructures.
A make-or-break piece of the puzzle will be to develop the technologies, standards and business models—the so-called "soft infrastructure"—that these changes demands.
Compared to the French initiatives, the UK's late-October announcement of £100m for low-carbon vehicles is a good start, but hardly enough to move us into the fast lane. With so many business students facing a bleak future, the time has come to put our foot to the floor.
