cts | Volt a Day | Five Years of Plug In America November 09, 2010

This is a great graphic (click on it). It shows the first computer that Steve Jobs introduced when he returned to Apple, compared to the iPhone, that latest device that he introduced. It doesn’t really show the big picture because the iPhone has two built in cameras, radios to connect to a cellular network, and software that really knocks the OS9 iMac on its nicely rounded rear.

There was a similar comparison at the party my wife and I attended on October 23rd for Plug In America. It is five years since they started. They had a party at the same location only two years back and they had a concept Volt there, along with other cars that were not for sale yet. This year they had a Volt, a Leaf, a Tesla, a Coda, some neighborhood cars, and a bunch of guests arrived in Rav4 Electrics.

One guy received an award for the most EV miles driven (267,000 miles in his Rav4 Electric). My wife already has 66,000 in hers. We bumped into her friend Korby Siamis who’s husband Bruce commutes in their Rav4 Electric and I think they said he had over 70,000 miles in it. They are great cars. I hope the replacement is as good as the original.

The event was at Marakeesh House, a sustainable residence created by Chris Paine, the director of Who Killed the Electric Car and his follow-up film, Revenge of the Electric Car. There was wonderful food, interesting people, a silent auction (we didn’t win anything), and a sublime location.

There’s a nice recap of the entire event over at Autoweek.

The important thing for me is that we are at the beginning of the trend. Looking at the old iMac it’s really hard to imagine the iPhone that’s in my pocket now. Maybe beyond hard. Impossible. But you start somewhere and you keep working on the things that are toughest about the problem. It looks like nanotechnology and graphene will be critically important in changing battery technology. They are talking about batteries that will be six times as efficient at storing energy. That means the Nissan Leaf could double the range and the battery would still be a third of the weight. So the car could get more substantial and still go 200 miles on a charge. That start to become a very interesting vehicle for any market.

I remember a friend returning home with his girlfriend, a Ford model. She was stunning. My friend went through a lot of girlfriends, most who didn’t make it back home to meet his parents. His dad was introduced to Carol and turned to his son and said, “Your girlfriends keep getting prettier, and prettier. Keep going.”

So, you know, keep going with the electric cars. From where I sit I don’t think we’re all going to have a Ford model, but you never know.