Electric cars are the next growth engine

Thomas L Friedman is one of the op-ed columnist of the New York Times. I really liked the vision he is offering in his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. I have to admit I feel the same about his latest column, Their Moon Shot and Ours.

There, Mr. Friedman shows how China is going full speed ahead on electric cars and vehicles, a technology he calls ” the next industrial growth engine “. Indeed, they could revolutionize tomorrow’s world.

Cars produced locally powered by electricity also produced locally may indeed bring a complete paradigm shift with peak oil, the worst economic crisis in decades and climate change.

This has the ability to bring a lot of economic growth to the United States (and Europe as well). However, the governments of both the US and the EU fail to understand the game-changing implications of electric cars.

I personally believe that electric vehicles (EV) are like other cleantech and renewables determinant to solve what I refer to as the triple crisis.

Here is an extract of the article :

The backbone of the modern U.S. economy was locally made cars powered by locally produced oil. It started us on a huge growth spurt.

In recent decades, though, that industry was supplanted by foreign-made cars run on foreign oil, so “now every time we buy a car we’re exporting $15,000 of capital, paying for it with borrowed money and running it on foreign energy sources,” says Czinger.

“We’ve gone from autos being a middle-class-making-machine to a middle-class-destroying-machine.” A U.S. electric car/battery industry would reverse that.

(…) If we both now create the market incentives for consumers to buy electric cars, and the plug-in infrastructure for people to drive them everywhere, it will be a win-win moon shot for both countries.

The electric car industry will flourish in the U.S. and China, and together we’ll tackle the next challenge: using auto battery innovations to build big storage batteries for wind and solar.

Please take some time to read Friedman’s article. I look forward to reading your comments.

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