Fired: Analogue Algae to Digital Lithium Crystals

In response to
Separating the Vaporous from the Real in Electric Cars
at http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/09/separating-the-.html
By Marty Jerome


I left the following comment...

According to Forbes, 9 of the Top 10 Global 500 were oil or car companies last year. None of the oil companies are in the electricity business and only one of the car companies had ever put an EV in a showroom. Each of these companies ALONE brings in more money than half the world's countries.

Now imagine that you ran an operation that was 100,000,000 times larger than your paycheck. Would you shut the whole thing down and give away your paychecks for life for a new technology that displaces everything from the multi billion dollar oil businessES to the many auto and transportation industrieS?

Do you have any idea how many jobs, houses and bank account you're talking about?

An estimated 2 in 10 households rely on oil to survive and 5 of 6 people on the planet have never bought a car.

Do you think 9 of the 10 biggest companies in the world and 5 billion first time car buyers can afford anything on this list?

Posted by: John Acheson | Sep 29, 2007 2:41:50 AM

...received the following feedback...

John Acheson: the loss of jobs is no reason not to change what kinds of cars one makes. That's called disruption... that's what happened when car makers started building their cars with robots, and the factories did not even need lighting because robots don't need to see, the car companies didn't have to spend as much on labor, lighting, insurance and other stuff... people lost their jobs, but they did not stay unemployed for the rest of their lives. They got new jobs, they moved on, and society was better for it.

Wherever there is a cheaper way to make something, or to use less material, or use fewer laborers, that's the smart thing to do, that reduces the overall cost of living, and society is better for it.

Posted by: Bill Dale | Oct 2, 2007 2:39:17 PM


...and closed with:



RE: Bill Dale
Have you visited an auto factory? Have you seen the robots? The ones I saw at the NUMMI tour of the only plant in the West were hidden in one small area on the line. We're talking about the joint venture between Toyota and GM, the two largest and innovative companies. Robots only do a small part of the work.

I agree that thousands of auto industry jobs will be lost to the analogue (ICE, oil, gas, diesel, hybrid) to digital (EV) conversion.

BUT, you can't ignore a pool of first-time buyers coming online that is 3 TIMES LARGER than all the people in the world that currently have cars.

So let's say we need 3 TIMES MORE oil or 3 TIMES MORE electricity AND we'll (all the drivers in the world) produce 3 TIMES MORE SMOG (three million people each year get injured or die early because of cars and trucks), what main technologies (such as the LP dying for the CD dying for the iPod) can answer this crisis?

I'm thinking analogue algae diesel in recycling loops powering ICEs on the low end and perpetual Lithium crystal energy storage devices on the high end...

How about you?

Posted by: John Acheson | Jan 23, 2008 2:10:17 AM
A