Tag: tesla

A conductor's baton orchestrating musical notes that morph into symbols for technology, policy, and commerce, emphasizing the symphonic nature of their interplay.
Climate Change, Climate Confident, Internet of Things (IoT)

The Triad of Change: Technology, Policy, and Commerce in Crafting a Sustainable Future

In today’s evolving landscape, the race towards a sustainable future is more than just a goal—it’s an imperative. But how do we ensure that our journey is not only swift but also steady? If there’s one thing I’ve gleaned from my numerous conversations with thought leaders on the Climate Confident podcast, it’s that meaningful transformation arises from a symphony, not a solo. And in the most recent episode with Jeremy Bentham, Co-Chair of the World Energy Council the symphony was clear: the harmonious interplay between technology, policy, and commerce.

The Pivotal Role of Technology

We’re on the cusp of a technological renaissance. From renewable energy solutions to advanced data analytics, technology is a significant driving force for sustainability. But it’s essential to recognize that technology isn’t just about the gadgets and systems—it’s about the transformations they enable. It creates pathways for innovative solutions, offering more efficient and sustainable alternatives to our current practices. It opens doors to opportunities that were once considered unfathomable.

Policy: Setting the Right Stage

However, technology alone isn’t the answer. It needs an environment to thrive and policies to guide its use for the greater good. As Bentham eloquently put it, policy provides the framework. It offers the rules and directions, ensuring that innovations align with our global sustainability goals. In essence, policy is the compass that ensures we use technology to travel in the right direction.

Commerce: Fuelling the Journey

Lastly, but by no means least, is commerce. The commercial world holds the power to turn visions into realities. It’s where the rubber meets the road. With the right commercial incentives and structures in place, businesses can speed up the adoption of sustainable technologies and practices. Remember, commerce isn’t just about profitability—it’s about value creation for all stakeholders, from shareholders to Mother Earth herself.

The Power of a Scenario Mindset

One of the profound insights Bentham shared was the importance of adopting a “scenario mindset.” Instead of a singular, linear view, this mindset encourages us to explore multiple potential futures. It allows us to anticipate challenges, prepare for various outcomes, and, crucially, to be agile and adaptive in our approach. In a world rife with uncertainties, a scenario mindset isn’t just a tool—it’s a survival kit.

In conclusion, our path to a sustainable future isn’t a straight line—it’s a tapestry woven with threads of technology, policy, and commerce. Each element plays a pivotal role, and their synchronized dance is what will drive us forward. As we venture into this era of sustainability, let us embrace the symphony, championing the collaborative spirit and always keeping an open mind to the myriad possibilities the future holds.

To delve deeper into this fascinating discussion and gain more insights from Jeremy Bentham, I invite you to listen to the full episode of our Climate Confident podcast. Let’s journey together towards a world where sustainability isn’t an aspiration, but our lived reality.

What do you think will be the next game-changer in our quest for a sustainable future?

Tesla Roadster
Automotive

The iPhonification of the Automotive Industry

The world of automotive is changing, changing utterly. And many of the big name brands we are familiar with today will go the way of Nokia, Kodak, and Blockbusters, if they don’t change completely as well.

In 2011 Marc Andreessen penned his now famous essay Why Software Is Eating The World in which he pointed out how software is taking over everything from book sales (Amazon), to direct marketing (Google), to everything from financial services, oil and gas, health and education, on and on, you get the idea.

Automotive is no exception to this phenomenon (as Andreesen himself pointed out in his piece), but the extent of that change has gone beyond what he even imagined.

Software

Most of us are familiar with how Tesla provides over-the-air updates for its vehicles, in much the same way as Apple does for iPhones. The updates can be bug fixes (Tesla offers a bug bounty for anyone who finds a bug in its code), they can be feature adds, or they can be efficiency gains. However, what you may be less aware of is how Tesla has also recently started to offer paid over-the-air updates to do things like shave half a second off the 0-100km (0-60mph) time of its vehicles, to activate rear seat heating in cars that shipped without that feature turned on, and they are about to offer their Full Self Driving on a subscription basis.

This is huge. I’m not aware of any other automotive manufacturer who is doing this, or even has the capability to do this. Tesla, similar to Apple, has realised that their hardware device can be a platform for software sales. Whether Tesla further follow Apple and opens an App Store for 3rd party developers to develop apps for their cars remains to be seen, but there is nothing technologically stopping them from doing so. On the other hand, the incumbent car companies have all sorts of technological, logistical, and regulatory hoops they will have to jump through before they can follow Tesla and embrace this new business model turning their cars into software sales platforms. 

To their credit Volkswagen have seen this change, and appear to be leaning into it. In a post on LinkedIn last year, Herbert Diess, Chairman of the Board of Management of the Volkswagen Group said

The car will become the most complex internet device we have known so far, the car will become a software product 

This is the most blatant acknowledgement of this trend I have seen by any traditional auto maker, but on the other hand, Volkswagen do have some *ahem* repetitional issues to live down, so if anyone needs to embrace change, it is them.

Waymo

 

And of course the tech companies are jumping in – Apple has its secretive Project Titan, which we know very little about still. Then there is Google who have multiple plays in this space. The three most prominent are Android Auto, Android Automotive, and Waymo. What is the difference between them? Android Auto runs on Android phones and can display on a car’s infotainment system when connected to the vehicle via USB. Android Automotive is a customisable operating system and platform for running a car’s infotainment systems, while Waymo is an operating system for the complete operation of autonomous vehicles. Waymo (the company’s) ambition in this space is breathtaking. In April 2019 Waymo CEO John Krafcik said that 

Anything that has wheels and moves along the surface of the earth is something that we, in the future, could imagine being driven by Waymo

So, not just passenger vehicles then? Nope. *Anything* that has wheels.

Think back to 2008. That is when Google released Android, and see what that did to the mobile phone ecosystem (Blackberry, anyone? Nokia?). Now imagine a similar, or even greater disruption happening in the transportation sector over the next 10-20 years and you’ll start to get some idea of what Google/Waymo are thinking.

Transportation as a Service

Similar to Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program where you pay a set amount every month, and you get to swap your 12 month old iPhone for a brand new iPhone every year, car makers are now starting to embrace the car subscription model (ofter referred to as either Mobility as a Service or Transportation as a Service). Several car companies now offer the ability to do a long term rental of their vehicles (typically anything from 4 months to 4 years) which includes an agreed upper limit of mileage, full insurance, maintenance, tax and registration fees, and management of tolls and fines.

Why are they doing this? 

There are a number of reasons. 

  1. Data – modern cars now ship with hundreds of built-in sensors, and a SIM card for connectivity. This is hugely valuable information, and who does this data belong to? Well, if the manufacturer maintains ownership of the vehicle, then written into the rental contract of the vehicle will be a clause, or clauses making absolutely sure there is no doubt who owns the data. I had two guests on my podcast recently talking about a software solution to capture and store all that data for vehicle manufacturers
  2. Consumers want it – the ownership model is going away. Gen Z, millenials, and even old fogies like me are increasingly eschewing buying big ticket items like cars. Especially as cars increasingly have more and more technology built into them, they become out-of-date quicker, so having an option to drive a new vehicle every 3 years say, can be very attractive (that and having insurance, maintenance, etc. all looked after for you is the icing on top)
  3. Existential threat – the current model of selling cars is dying. A car manufacturer who sold a car 10 years ago could reasonably expect to make $30,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle in maintenance, spare parts, and repairs. Now however, that $30,000 is decreasing because of the shift to electric vehicles which cost at least 50% less to maintain, because of the increasing number of sensors in cars (parking assistance, lane keeping, situational awareness, etc.) which means fewer repairs are needed, and because of the fall in the numbers of people buying cars

Sustainability?

Can it be sustainable to swap your car for a new one every 3-4 years?

Like so many of these things, the answer is “it depends”.

At this point batteries in electric vehicles typically last over 500,000km, and a recent paper from well known battery researcher Jeff Dahn, one of the pioneering developers of the lithium ion battery, showed that Tesla batteries can last up to 10,000 discharge cycles or 3.6 million km (2m miles). Considering car bodies average 322,000km this means a battery of this type could power over 10 vehicles in its working life, before being retired to live out the rest of its considerable life as stationary storage on an electricity grid somewhere! 

Could this be the next new business model for automotive manufacturers? Rent out their vehicles for 3-4 years, take them back, replace some of the body parts, update the electronics, and rent it out again?Cars are already the most recycled consumer product in the world today, so there is precedent for this, and only some of the parts would need to be replaced when the vehicle came back.

Of course, using Industry 4.0 technologies which are increasingly being adopted by automotive companies, these vehicles can be designed from the ground up to be recycled, can be manufactured with take-apart in mind, and can report their status back to their manufacturer throughout their life, to help decide which parts need to be replaced.

In this way, far fewer “new cars” would need to be manufactured, and vehicles would get closer to 95-99% recycled parts, which would be a huge sustainability win.

If you’d like to know more about the use of Industry 4.0 in the automotive industry check out the recent “Industry 4.0 and The Next Generation of Mobility for Riders – NOT Drivers!” episode on VoiceAmerica.com

This post was posted originally on my Forbes blog

Internet of Things (IoT)

Connected Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Part 2 of 3 on the Future of Transportation and the Internet of Things

In my last blog, I talked about the simplicity of the electric engine compared to the internal combustion engine – and how this changes everything. From climate to the structure of the auto industry to the way we store, manage, and distribute energy – electric cars are having tremendous impact.

But what I left out of that discussion was the Internet of Things.

Predictive

The fact is, most electric cars are connected cars – connected through the Internet of Things. This means that sensors in the car constantly communicate with mission control (the manufacturer), sending data on the status of components in real time.

By analysing this data, especially in context of historical data, mission control can predict component failure before it happens. For electric vehicles – with engines that already need far less repair than traditional internal combustion engines – this only increases reliability further.

But what’s more, IoT-connected cars also increase convenience. For example, after realising component failure is imminent, your car could also trigger a work order at the dealership to resolve the issue – while ensuring the needed replacement part is in stock when you roll in. And if the car is autonomous, it could drive itself to be repaired while you are at work, and return ready to drive you home once the repair is completed. Speaking of autonomous…. 

Autonomous and safe

Connectedness is also what makes autonomous vehicles possible. And while some people may distrust driverless cars; the data shows that they’re safer than the self-driven sort – at least according to a report of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Back in May 2016, a Tesla Model S sedan in Autopilot collided with a semi-truck in Florida, killing the driver (or passenger in this case?) – 40-year-old Joshua Brown. The car, apparently, crashed into the truck, passed under the trailer, and kept driving for some distance – only coming to a stop after crashing through two fences and into a pole.

As a result of this incident, the NHTSA conducted an investigation resulting in a report that largely exonerated Tesla. In fact, the report says that after the introduction of Autosteer – a component of the Autopilot system – Tesla’s crash rate dropped by 40%.

Self-learning

The accident in question happened when the semi-truck took a left-hand turn into oncoming traffic. The reason the Tesla did not detect such a large object in its path is because it could not distinguish the white color of the trailer from the bright white Florida sky in background.

Reportedly, Tesla has since analyzed the crash data from this accident, identified the problem, and made fixes to the operating system on which its fleet operates. Perhaps it’s premature to declare the problem solved – but the idea at play here is an interesting one indeed when considering the potential for connected cars and the IoT.

What this scenario shows is a learning platform in action. Because all of its cars are connected on a single platform, Tesla has access to a tremendous amount of driver data that it can analyze to continuously improve product safety. I don’t know exactly how the analysis proceeded in this particular case, but one can certainly envision the use of machine learning technology to continuously analyze patterns and introduce safety improvements on the fly – making the self-learning driving platform a reality.

Disruptive

A future in which autonomous vehicles are not only viable but safer than self-driven cars will result in disruptions beyond those I’ve indicated for electric engines.

Take the insurance industry, for example. With fewer accidents comes lower risk – leading to lower insurance premiums. And in a future where most cars on the road are autonomous – connected and controlled via IoT – the insurable entity itself will likely shift from the driver (who is now a passenger) to the operator of the network (presumably the manufacturer). Certainly, if you decide you wish to drive your car yourself, your insurance will be significantly more expensive than the insurance for an autonomous vehicle.

Of course, if autonomous cars can get where they’re going without a driver, why even bother owning a car? Why not just call up the ride when you need it – Uber style?

One result would be optimal asset utilization – where cars that are far less likely to breakdown can be used on an almost 24×7 basis by spreading usage across individuals. This would mean we’d need far less cars on the road – which would alleviate congestion. It would also hit the auto industry with dramatically lower sales volume.

And with fewer cars on the road – cars that are in use almost all the time – we’d have less use for parking. This would have tremendous impact on the global parking industry. An industry which generates approximately $20 billion annually.

Beyond industry disruption, less need for parking would open up tremendous urban space in the form of unused lots and garages. Maybe this would mean more populous cities with room to build for more people to live more comfortably without traffic congestion or pollution. Or how about using some of the space for indoor vertical farming using hydroponics technology and LED lights to grow more food and feed more people? Of course, this is already happening. But that’s a blog for another time.

 

Photo credit Nicole Galpern

Tesla Model 3 on the road
Transportation

Elon Musk has two more Secret Master Plans

In August 2006 Elon Musk first published his Secret Master Plan for Tesla:

Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options

And with the launch (for pre-order) of the Tesla Model 3 last month, the Secret Master Plan is now well under way (if a little behind schedule!).

However, I’ve long suspected that Elon Musk has even greater ambitions than moving the world to electric transportation. I think he has two more Secret Master Plans, and I’m going to lay them out below. See if you agree with me.

The first is the more obvious of the two – to disrupt Uber, public transportation, and other ride sharing operators, by allowing owners of fully autonomous Tesla vehicles to participate in a Tesla operated ride sharing scheme.

How would it work – well, when I drive to work in the morning in my Tesla. I park the my car, and engage the Ride Share mode. The car then broadcasts its location and availability to the network, which assigns it rides as and when they are needed. At the end of my work day, my car knows to meet me back at my place of work to take me home, and I can choose once more to set it to Ride Share mode, or have it charge (or both if I have the Tesla robotic charging arm).

DrivingATeslaThe trips would be undertaken on a revenue sharing basis, so money made could well be put towards the car loan/lease costs. In this way, the car could go a long way towards paying for itself, while also reducing traffic congestion, reducing global emissions, and making the roads safer.

And in case you think this is just the voices in my head (!), Elon Musk himself strongly hinted that he was planning something along these very lines last week.

The second Secret Master Plan is less obvious – it involves disrupting the utility industry. How?

By using the batteries in the electric vehicles to buy and sell energy. I know this may sound totally outlandish, but bear with me.

Most home energy storage systems store somewhere between 4-8kWh of electricity (with Tesla’s PowerWall coming in at 6.4kWh). But if you own a Tesla car, your battery is 70-90kWh (for the Model S, it may be as low as 50kWh for the Model 3). That’s still a lot more than a home energy system.

Now consider, Elon Musk’s stated aim is to sell 500,000 cars a year by 2020. That may sound very ambitious given Tesla are currently selling a little over 50,000 cars per annum. However, Elon Musk is nothing, if not ambitious, and orders for the new Model 3 are approaching 400,000 according to Tesla Vice-President of Business Development, Diarmuid O’Connell.

But let’s be conservative and say that Tesla manages to deliver 200,000 cars in 2020 with an average battery of 60kWh. A quick bit of maths tells us

60KWh x 200,000 = 12,000,000KWh

12,000,000kWh = 12,000MWh

12,000MWh = 12GWh

12GWh is a lot of storage. For context, that’s the ability to store an hour’s output from 12 typical modern nuclear reactors.

Indian Point nuclear power plant
Indian Point nuclear power plant – Photo Tony Fischer

Now, add to this the fact that every Tesla sold has an always-on data connection.

Suddenly you realise Tesla has the ability to control dozens of virtual nuclear power plants worth of storage, and Tesla will be selling at least 12 more nuclear power plants worth of storage, every year. Conservatively.

So the business case – Tesla can sell usage of this distributed storage to utility companies to use as backup, or for frequency regulation, to help smooth the demand curve on the grid, and remove the instability introduced by the addition of variable generators (wind and solar). If utilities can buy energy from Tesla at times of peak demand, it can mean they avoid having to build a power plant (or 12), which is a huge cost saving for them, and also reduces their emissions because peaker plants are invariably powered by burning fossil fuels.

For Tesla car owners, they get paid on a revenue share basis for use of the battery in their car, and the increased grid stability allows for more variable generators (wind and solar) to be added to the grid, making the world a better place for everyone. And that sounds just like something Elon Musk would want.

After all, Musk is the guy who said, when he published his Master Plan back in 2006:

the overarching purpose of Tesla Motors (and the reason I am funding the company) is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution

So what do you think, will Tesla be the next ride-sharing platform, while also becoming the Uber of electricity?