Building A Future Around Electricity

Energy is probably the number one crisis facing the country, and much of the world right now, and so, a few related news items have caught my attention recently.

First, former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove recently talked about the idea that the best way to gain a greater degree of energy independence is to switch from burning so much oil to burning electricity. His argument is that there are a lot more clean and renewable ways to make electricity than there are to make fuels.

The second thing that caught my eye was Monday’s announcement that Tesla Motors, the company making the $100,000 electric sports car, is going to be making a $60,000 electric sedan. The thing that caught my attention about this is apparently these Tesla cars get an effective “fuel” efficiency of 135mpg.

Finally, in researching Tesla, I discovered that Toyota has announced that the next Prius, their hybrid gas/electric car, is going to get mileage of 94mpg.

In thinking about all of this it became clear to me that we *are* going to switch from being a liquid fuel economy to being an electric one. This will happen. $4 or $5 or $6 or $10 per gallon gasoline will take us there. And it will happen quickly.

Cars like Tesla and Prius will have options for fueling *and* plugging in. We will plug in at home (98% of the time) and fuel for emergencies and long trips. But it is coming. As I see it, given where fuel is at and seems to be going, in four or five years, electric/hybrid cars will be the only ones sold. Who will be able to afford an all gas car? It just won’t make sense.

In short, in the future, even as it gets more expensive, which it will, electricity is going to be king.

For those of us in the tech field, this, I think, does provide enormous opportunities. Devices will need to get smarter about how they burn electricity. Homes will need batteries, and will need to capture electricity when it is cheap, like late at night, for use when it is more expensive. Devices may be able to borrow electricity from each other in the home. We are going to want to know exactly how much power given devices are burning. I know right now I leave my computer on all the time and I have no idea how much it is actually burning. If I did I would probably cry.

Gaining control of all of this will take lots of software and silicon. I haven’t thought all of this through entirely, but it just seems to me there are lots of business opportunities in this incredibly disruptive transition. Yes I know there is already a “cleantech” investment focus, but in my mind that’s not what this is. This is not about being clean, it’s about saving money. Clean is an altruistic thing. We are in a crisis now and we need technology to save our collective, oil soaked butts. I’d call this “practical-tech”, or “cheap-tech” or even “electric-tech”. Most people, like it or not, are less concerned with “clean” than they are with “bankrupt”.

But in any case with all this talk of no high tech IPOs, I can’t help but wonder if focusing on some of these issues, issues that really will make a difference in peoples lives, could help. (Insert default polemic about the useless focus on yet another social network).