[Much of this column was originally published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune that is part of a series on the “loss of paradise” and the need to be preemptive in planning for the future. This planning must no longer be the propagation of what was, what might have worked in the past, or as […]
100 years ago, the automobile industry was rapidly expanding in America. The internal combustion engine [ICE] autos were rolling out of factories in ever greater numbers. The prices had just come down, installment payment plans were created to fuel the sales of the auto companies and the automobile started to become part of the American […]
[This golden oldie is the first of two columns on Elon Musk that I wrote four years ago in 2015. To put it simply, Musk is truly on a level with all the great robber barons and scientists of 100-125 years, ago combined. Each one of the names listed in the title represents a specific […]
It was about 10 years ago that I started to write about electric cars in this space with this and this column. It was clear to me then that, ultimately, they would become mainstream and become a significant percentage of cars driven in the developed countries of the world. In early 2008, I forecast that 2010-2015 would be the dawn of the age of the electric car and of course it was.
There will be more change in the next 20 years than any 20-50 year period in history. In fact, future historians may well look back on this time as a historical transit as significant as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance. It is hard to imagine any area of life that will […]
In the last two columns about 2017 I took a look at the big picture and at the global economic, energy and geopolitical landscape. Much disruption ahead! Please notice that the title of this column is NOT Technology Trends for 2017. Trends do not happen within a year. Any such titled column is really about […]
[Note: This column was originally published in the Shift Age Newsletter earlier this month] We are at the very beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. The use of fossil fuels will continue for decades but 2015-2017 will be looked back upon as the beginning of the transition from growth to long slow […]
We are now about 130 years into the automobile era. Starting with Karl Benz’s patent in the 1880s the automobile quickly became widespread with Henry Ford’s model of mass production scaling up the market 100 years ago. Since then there have been waves of significant changes. The first stage was about mechanics and engines and […]
[Note: Much of this column was first published in issue #37 of the Shift Age Newsletter] 2015 will turn out to be the peak year of fossil fuel use. By 2020 it will be clear that the decline in consumption of fossil fuels began this year. It therefore will be the first year of flat […]
In the last column here, I looked at the transformations Elon Musk is bringing to the automotive, battery and energy businesses. In this column we look at the breakthroughs he is working on in solar energy, space exploration and Internet connectivity. One of the issues with or counter arguments about electric cars was that even […]
