Today was the second and final day of the EV Summit. I had the pleasure of working on this together with the team from the Energy OBN. The conversation started yesterday with the case of the hundred year old saga of the Electric Vehicle, and ended today with a vision of as faster more effective system of mobility.
I come from the suburbs, and growing up there my main frustration was the car. It divides the streets, it isolates passers by, it takes up space, and it makes it tough to take a nice walk. But the EV Summit wasn’t about cars for me, it was about systems. We learned that the EV won’t do what a combustion engine can do. We learned that this new technology is different, not better, not worse. We also got a sense that these changes are slow, and will likely end up creating some big problems.
David Kirsch gave a sense of the promise of the electric vehicle, but also that such a promise has been resurfacing every 10 years. From the Panel of Johannes Tulusan, Jimin Zhao, and Malcolm McCulloch, we heard about the challenges in building infrastructure. The next day this notion was followed up and answered by Hugo Spowers and the wonderful holistic that is riversimple. I then learned all about fuel cells, batteries, rare earth materials, and the next 10 years of technology from Peter Dobson. Finally, we had a session looking at the latest technology in electric racing cars, as well as helping with some practical brainstorming to get started with this stuff in Oxford. Marc Ventresca wrapped it all up as he does with his charm and precision of language.
At the end, with history behind us, and knowing the physics of the future, its clear choices will be made. My hope is that we will choose mobility over cars. If we can think about how we want to be rather than what we want to own I’m sure there’s a prosperous future ahead.