projectevie
Jon Azrielant
Jeff Bladt
Matt Vance
andreafjeldFiled under: Uncategorized
Could you ever imagine a US car company having the name ‘Build Your Dreams’? Probably not. It sounds like the slogan for a mattress company. How about the Chinese though – those lovers of proverbs, and of all things kitsch, terse, and cute?
But what if an American wants to drive round a Build Your Dreams car? Wouldn’t it be cool to boast to your friends, “Hey, I drive round a Build Your Dreams car.”? Doesn’t this just make the Big 3′s names – Ford, Chrysler, General Motors – seem so boring, so passé? Maybe that’s why no one’s buying them anymore…
Well, good news. This week Chinese automaker Build Your Dreams (BYD for short, and yes, it is real) announced that it would make its foray into the US market beginning early 2010 – over a year ahead of its original schedule! It’s introductory car? None other than the all-electric, 5 passenger e6!
The $40,000 expected price tag is a relative bargain (considering the gas $$ savings), and its 400km range means it’ll outstrip most upcoming US all-electric models. If you don’t already know about the e6, I urge you to check it out at byd.com (where you can also repeatedly witness the Chinese misspell the word “brochure”).
Wang Chuanfu, Build Your Dreams founder
And if you’re wondering whether I’m the only one impressed with this vehicle, think again. About a year ago, none other than the Oracle, the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffet himself, decided to invest $230 million in BYD for a %10 share.
Which presents quite a puzzling scenario: at a time when US car companies are all on the brink of failure, we have America’s star investor putting his money into a Chinese competitor. And so who knows, if Buffet keeps up the act, we might well soon have a Chinese/American car company brandishing the name Build Your Dreams. Which would seem just a tad ironic… since when do Americans want the Chinese to build their dreams for them?
Filed under: EV news, Grassroots EV | Tags: electric vehicles, EV community, google search, hybrid vehicles, public opinion
Google search electic vehicle...
The above image was captured this morning. There is nothing earth shattering about the suggested searches that Google currently recommends. Almost all of them are technical in nature, with “electric vehicle … tax credit” showing up as the 5th one. Compare this with what Google generates when a user starts typing “hybrid vehicle…”
Google search "hybrid vehicle..."
The notable difference is the inclusion of “hybrid vehicle … sales” to the list, as well as the top billing for searches related to the tax credit. A comparison between the two searches seems to support what most public opinions polls have discovered: hybrid vehicles have entered the mainstream market; whereas EVs are still shrouded in a cloud of technical inquires, with limited interest in actual purchases.
Both searches also highlight the prominent role that hobbyists play in the hybrid and EV communities, an indication of the grassroots, bottom-up push that has continued to advocate for the technologies.
Also of curiosity is the propensity of people searching for “hybrid vehicle…training.” Are they really that different from “normal” vehicles?!?
This past week has seen some exciting new developments for the project. First, we finally have a logo:
And, we finally have a website in private beta. Hopefully we will be able to launch it next Monday, barring any major problems. Okay, that’s it. I’m off to go enjoy this weekend.
Cheers!
Filed under: Grassroots EV, starting up | Tags: EV community, public discourse, the electric spirit
Sometime during this last week or so I read an article describing how McDonald’s venture into the upscale coffee market has actually helped chief competitor Starbucks by further popularizing chi-chi morning beverages. Initially, Starbucks feared that McDonald’s would be able to undercut their prices, and steal their customers. So far though, the trend seems to be that swaths of people that previously had never tried a fancy coffee or stepped foot in a Starbucks, have now developed a taste for lattes.
I imagine the popularization of electric vehicles will follow a similar course, with gains made by any one manufacturer helping everyone in the field, the competition not between EVs, but rather between EVs and non-EVs; the bottle-necks remaining being public opinion and infrastructure growth. Moreover, shows of support from corporations, such as McDonald’s installing a lone charging station, will likely go a long way in spreading EVs away from their traditional bastions of support, even if the actual on the ground impact is minimal.
Personally, as I have continued to meeting and talking with people in the EV community, I have found that beyond loyalty to any one product/company is an overarching collegial desire to support the technology. Going forward, I hope that this sense of broader community and spirit continues!
Filed under: EVs of the World | Tags: BYD, BYD e6, electric vehicles, video
As I walked out the door this morning I picked up my dust-gathered copy of Herman Hesse’s The Journey to the East. Sitting on the subway, the following passage struck me: “Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, the became blind again.”
At the risk of sounding starry-eyed and callow, Hesse rather succinctly sums up the secondary challenge that Project-EVIE is up against: keeping spirits high as we slog through the bureaucratic and administrative hell that comes with founding and setting up a non-profit corporation in the state of New York.
So, what other books should we be reading as we work towards our goal? What buoys your spirits and inspires your minds? What books should we be packing for the trip it self? Let us know.
Here are some more options, integrating #1, #3 and Jeff’s original power logo. Thoughts?
Filed under: starting up | Tags: electric vehicles, misconceptions, public discourse
I was talking Project-EVIE at a midtown bar earlier today with a tourist from the Midwest who was rather floored at the supposition that an electric vehicle could make it across the US, let alone around the world. It was another eye opening experience to the major obstacles that still lay ahead for EVs. The man I was talking with was a self-professed environmentalist that had already groused about gas prices during the course of the conversation. If the EV message is still having difficulty reaching this man, then I worry who, outside big-city coastal types, is going to buoy the technology as it is reintroduced to the US market; the gulf between actual capabilities of EVs, and the public misconceptions still seemingly entrenched.
