Alef Arendsen

According to DVice, electric vehicles solely powered by coal-generated power would still reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 60%.

Too many times I’ve heard the argument that introducing electric vehicles would not reduce CO2 emissions. Even last Friday on the radio in a discussion between Charlie Aptroot and a guy from Milieudefentie (whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten), this same argument came to the table.

There are plenty of people saying EVs, even if powered by coal-generated power are greener than traditional cars with an ICE (internal combustion engine) running on gasoline and this report confirms that once again.

60% mentioned above is even based on the US status quo where cars generally use up more gallons on the mile than European cars (due to their size, engines, et cetera), so in Europe, switching to EVs would be even more beneficial to the environment (when looking at CO2 that is).

Obviously, when we’re making a transition to electric vehicles, it makes even more sense to switch to renewable energy as well, based on solar, wind and tidal sources. More demand for renewable energy should drive up supply, so the argument that not enough clean energy is available is not a valid one IMO. Sometimes I get the idea however that this seems to be one step to far for the anti-EV crowd.

Ingrediënten:

• Gerookte paling
• Kleine krieltjes
• Prei
• Paar sneetjes witbrood
• Bieslook
• Mosterd
• Bouillonblokje
• Kookroom

Bereidingswijze:

Kook het grootste gedeelte van de krieltjes gaar in een beetje water met een bouillonblokje. De rest bak je bruin in een koekenpan. Doe aan het eind de gesneden prei erbij. Giet de aardappels bijna helemaal af, zodat je een beetje kookvocht overhoud om de soep te verdunnen. Maak met een staafmixer de aardappels tot soep. Doe er een anerhalve eetlepel mosterd en wat flink veel kookroom bij, om de soep romig te maken.

De de prei en de gebakken aardappels er ook doorheen. Maak croutons van blokjes witbrood onder de gril. Snij de paling in stukjes en verspreid deze zodra je de soep op borden doet, over de soep, net als de croutons. Doe een beetje bieslook over de soep en klaar!

Serveer met een paar sneetjes witbrood.

Friday night we had G.’s birthday. LAst night I had a BBQ with my neighbors. Today was relaxation day. I only left my house to get some food. As far as the rest goes, I read some magazines, listened to some music and slept in the sun…

Music

• Max Richter – contemporary classical, violins and piano
• Ólafur Arnalds – Sigur Ros-like Icelandic ambient… Great!
• Telefon Tel Aviv

Pictures

Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Intelligent Life features an article with photographs of scenes, in 1989 compared to 2009. The most moving picture to my mind was that of a boy jumping from one pillar to another in the Holocaust monument.

Peter Eisenman (the architect of the monument) said when it opened: “People will dance on top of the pillars”.

In a different category, OMA recently showed their progress on the MahaNakhon project in Bangkok. I thought it was stunning (through Dezeen).

I had a pretty interesting day today. Starting at 5.30am (it was one of those days again where I wanted to be productive and somehow, I can only be productive late in the night or early in the morning, or at least, so it seems), I first worked at home for about 4 hours. That was the productive, but also quite boring part of the day.

At 10.30 however I had an appointment at one of the power grid companies in Holland. I’m not sure how this is arranged in the rest of the world, but the electricity providers and the grid providers are separate companies here (to allow for decent market mechanisms) and we were visiting a grid company. The goal was to see how this particular grid company could join our effort to promote electric vehicles and to find out more how they are preparing the grid (or at least thinking about prepping the grid) for the massive demand they’re going to expect when electric vehicles are introduced on a large scale.

The guy we met with came up with the following graphs, which gives some decent insight into what the consequences of introducing electric vehicles in Holland potentially could be. Nothing I didn’t know already, but I finally found the time to write it up in a blog entry now.

Peak loads in the Netherlands generally are seen at 6pm and are around 16GW currently. The best-case scenario we discussed was where the peak loads would to 18GW from now to 2025. This increase basically is only slight more than the expansion the grid companies do on a yearly basis, so there’s nothing troubling here. The worst-case scenario however would be a peak load of 36GW in 2025. First of all, this is all based on the fact that the government in the Netherlands has set a goal for 1.3mln electric vehicles to be on the road by 2025. If all of these vehicles would start charging by 6pm, the peak load would basically more than double (compared to what it is now).

The grid providers are very eager to start pilot projects to experiment with charging. The main question basically is: when do people start charging. If they all charge at 6pm, we’ve got a problem. If they charge during the night, it’s not such a big deal. The chart above shows the three different scenarios, with the worst case being a peak load of 22.5 GW (which is not even as worse as indicated above).

We also talked a bit about the standard plug for electric vehicles that has been decided upon some 2 months ago. This is definitely good news. We have make sure we don’t end up with the adapter hell we used to have with LPG cars in The Netherlands. I think my dad carried 4 adapters when he traveled through Europe with his car to be able to adapt to all standards in Europe.

Next, I drove to ECE (Electric Cars Europe) in Lochem, to talk to Hjalmar Engel a bit. I had never been at their site yet, so it was good to see some of the guys at work. After having talked through a lot of details, we took a 100% electric Lotus Elise for a ride. The torque of these things is simply awesome. I had been in electric vehicles before, but this is definitely impressive. 0 – 100 is less than 5 seconds and the same torque across the entire speed range! Good stuff.

What Jeff Bezos knows in this video where he also talks about why Amazon acquired Zappos.

• Obsess over Customers: “if you’re truly obsessed over customers, it’ll cover a lot of errors”
• Invent: “you can invent your way out of any box if you believe that you can”
• Think Long Term: “huge competitive advantage to be able to think long term”
• It’s Always Day 1: “there’s always new ways to obsess over customers, there’s always future inventions”

Nice quote: “I get all week-kneed when I see a customer-obsessed company”.

For the initiative in the electric vehicle business I’m starting up at the moment, I wanted to do some market research. I’m actually not a big fan of large-scale quantative market research, especially for relatively new ideas.

A friend of mine once said: if you have two types of yoghurt, a very creamy yoghurt and a yoghurt that’s not creamy at all, it might make sense to do quantative market research. People are known to yoghurt, and with relatively little effort, you should be able to find out if there’s enough people that think the less creamy yoghurt is not creamy enough and the more creamy yoghurt is too creamy. If so, there’s room for a yoghurt with a creaminess that’s right in the middle.

My question was, when embarking on this little project of gathering some market data: if, 10 years ago, Apple would have done large-scale quantative market research about whether or not there would have been room for an iPod, would they have gotten the results they wanted? Would people have seen the opportunities an iPod brings; it being such a revolutionary toy.

The same holds for electric vehicles. Electric cars are such a new product that will impact the way we transport ourselves greatly. In the end I decided that for me, large-scale quantative market research wasn’t the way to go for this particular product. It’s simply too new for people to have an objective opinion on.

Still I wanted to gather data, so I quicky developed a short survey and spread it using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a few other social media. About 500 people responded, enough to get a decent idea what people thought about the idea. In now way, this is objective and useful to base any large-scale decision on. But then again, we’re a startup and can afford ourselves a little stubborness…

What are your ideas about market research. If Apple would have done large-scale quantative market research before introducing the iPod, what would the results have been like? Where’s the balance between blindly going for something and on the other hand first testing the water to see if you’re ideas make sense?

Yesterday, the current administration in the Netherlands announced a new fiscal package to stimulate the use and development of electric cars and the industry needed to support it. In addition to a fiscal benefit for people owning a leased car (taxation on the electric lease cars was dropped to 10% a few weeks ago) electric cars purchased by companies will now render an extra €8000 benefit. In addition, there will be no road taxes anymore and also the luxury tax that in effect for cars in the Netherlands will no longer hold for electric vehicles.

Last but not least, the government is going to set an example by converting her fleet to electric vehicles where possible.

I think this is a good move. Holland is a small country. Distances for a single trip almost never exceed the range of current electric cars available on the market and the power grid in Holland is reliable and well set up.

All these measures basically mean that quite quickly, electric cars will be within reach for the public in Holland.

Now, you might think: why is this guy who used to be working for one of the leaders in the Enterprise Java space rambling on about electric vehicles.

Well, the thing is, after I decided to take some off, I pretty quickly ran into a few guys that were thinking about setting up a new initiative in the Dutch market related to electric vehicles. After having talked with them for quite a while I decided to team up with them and start working on getting this off the ground.

There’s nothing much to tell at the moment (or at least, nothing that would interest you much), but there will definitely be a few EV-related posts on this blog from now on I think.

And, we’re doing a small bit of market research starting next week or so. Unfortunately only for Dutchies. Keep an eye out for more news.

p.s. this doesn’t mean I’m not involved with JTeam anymore by the way. For now, I’m spending time on both JTeam and on the market for electric cars.