When big corporations use money, political influence and the patent system to stifle innovation, new business models are required to move society into a more positive direction. I recommend watching the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” (2006). You can read a summary on Wikipedia.
Malcolm Bricklin has one such idea. See “Detroit 2008: AutoblogGreen Q&A: Malcolm Bricklin talks about building a PHEV supply base”.
Malcolm Bricklin: Actually, we are using the vehicle only as a way to sign up the dealers. But to truth of the matter is what we are really doing is trying to set up the infrastructure for electric vehicles and electric hybrid plug-ins. What we are doing is we are designing a vehicle as you can see right over there, which is going to be the size of a Mercedes S about the width of a Lamborghini that will get 100 miles to the gallon and sell for 40 grand. That, we think, will dispel everybody’s thoughts that you can’t build a big car and use electricity and get great gas miles and still sell at a decent price.
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So that was our purpose, but the real purpose is to be able go to the dealers and say look; Here is what we have to sell to begin with and we are going to give a new product every year on that platform. But more important than that, we are going to do two things that we believe the industry needs or there is not going to be an industry. That is outside of the Big Three, if you are going to build electric or electric hybrid, you have got to find a way to distribute it and you have got to find a way to bring the component prices down. In order to bring the component prices down, if you are the Big Three you subsidize it. But if you are a little guy you can’t subsidize it, which means that a lot of cars are going to come in to market for $100,000 and although they may be a nice value at $100,000 there is not a big market for $100,000 cars. We think the market is under $50,000, under $40,000 and of course if we get down to $30,000 then we really think that the market is going to open up.
Read the full article for more information on Mr. Bricklin’s idea. Then watch the videos at his Visionary Vehicles website.
Watched “Who Killed the Electric Car” recently (great documentary), then i heard that GM and Tesla are making another run at the electric car (yay for progress!) hopefully development of this technology can go on unhindered by the corporations that depend on oil consumption.