Clip from EV World, written by editor Bill Moore, who attended.
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Meeting of the Minds
The 2008 Meeting of the Minds conference wrapped up today here in Portland, Oregon with a sobering assessment of the road head by Toyota's self-proclaimed "grumpy old man," Bill Reinert.
Bill and his colleagues at Toyota -- and their contracted consultants -- have been crunching the numbers on oil depletion, unconventional liquid fuels and water availability and reached a consensus that the planet is going to hit "liquid peak" by around 2018.
What is "liquid peak," you ask?
That's when every conceivable form of liquid fuel -- from petroleum to coal-to-liquid to biofuels -- when produced flat-out without any concern or regard for their environmental impact simply can't keep up with growing global demand. In effect, the planet will have run into an energy wall where current technology and policy simply won't cut it any longer. We either turn to other energy sources or we stop growing.
Reinert's graph-laden, lunch-time talk -- "warming" might be a more appropriate term -- put in starker terms what other expert panelists and presenters were saying during the two-day conclave at the Portland Art Museum: that time is of the essence, dramatic changes are needed, requiring enormous political courage, and the world ahead is going to be radically different from the one in which we presently find ourselves.
For example, <http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=876>Tim Barnett from the Scripts Institute forecast during the opening day's luncheon keynote speech a 50% chance that Lake Mead will be dry by as early as 2021. As a consequence, much of the American Southwest is going to see a migration towards water, meaning north -- or vast projects to move water from the north. Life in cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix could well be untenable, certainly growth will be brought to a standstill. Without the water behind Lake Mead, there will be no electric power generation, effecting millions of homes and businesses in the Southwest.
Attendees heard numerous references to "peak oil", as well as climate change and the impact these and population growth are having our communities. Increasingly, policy makers, architects, planners and developers are starting to awaken to reality of what has been for many of them just so much theory.
This year, the question of logistics began to be raised. While most of us tend to think in terms of the challenge of switching over to better, cleaner, more efficient cars, they will, in fact, be moot points if there is no sustainable system in place to move the goods that feed the people, much less build the cars. If we can't quickly evolve a more energy efficient logistics system, cities themselves will become unsustainable.
The upside of this is that the people who can make a difference at the grassroots level are starting to recognize the challenges ahead -- hopefully in time. While the federal government seems hopelessly mired in a past that no longer can be maintained, local, county and state/provincial governments are starting to openly discuss these critical issues. Granted, not all of them are and at times, it seems most still haven't a clue there's a tsunami headed our way.
Planning and tax policy are calcified and risk averse at a time when what we need is unparalleled agility and nimbleness that can take risks, quickly learn from mistakes, and adapt.
If there is a model city for that approach, it is Portland. It's far from perfect and nowhere near sustainable, but it's the best model we have, and I am glad my wife and I got to spend a few days exploring it before, during and after the conference.
Watch for future MP3 and video from the Meeting of the Minds conference, especially Bill Reinert's remarkably candid talk.
Volt Death Watch
Anyone who knows Bill, realizes he's not shy about expressing his opinion, be it good or ill. Apparently, his mother never taught him the axion, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."
But I like that quality in Bill. We need guys like him to keep us all honest.
So, here are four of his juicer, off-the-cuff remarks to me during the conference.
* Forget trying to get people to charge their cars only during night-time off-peak hours. It isn't going to work; not being able to charge during the day limits the usefulness of the vehicle. In Reinert's pragmatic -- law of thermodynamics world -- utilities are going to have to realize this and adapt, which in my mind means solar and lots of it.
* Even more controversially, he told me there's a "death watch" taking place within Toyota on the Telsa Whitestar, Fisker Karma and... here it comes... Chevy Volt. He -- and apparently his colleagues -- don't think any of them will be built in any significant numbers. The batteries are just too costly. The Whitestar is particularly vulnerable, he explained to me, because Tesla is seeking to double the duty demands on the battery while halving the price of the car. That's a "company killer" in his view.
* He informed me that "you're on the right track" on the lithium supply question, adding that Toyota is working air battery chemistries, including zinc-air -- which William Tahil has been touting for sometime now.
* Finally, he smiled when I talked about the alleged spy photos of the new Prius that are emerging. He said they look a lot like the current Prius because they are the current Prius. They are test mules for the new Prius, nothing more.
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