To end the slew of tech announcements coming out this week (read prior post), Samsung is hosting on Thursday, its second annual GREENovation event.
Company executives will discuss current green initiatives to bring more environmentally-friendly products to market and showcase Samsung’s latest green products.
At the event, Samsung executives will discuss about:
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The U.S. has only itself to blame - and the U.S. military - for its dependency on foreign oil
What a shocker!
According to the GrowthPoint Technology Partners‘ managing director Robert Horstmeyer, the U.S. military helps subsidising the price of the country’s foreign oil imports to a staggering $50 per barrel of crude; today the barrel of crude rose a bit over $70.
All energies are subsidised, not just the clean, renewable ones
So if Horstmeyer’s calculation is right, the “real” price of gasoline in the U.S. should be closer to $5-$6 a gallon than the average price of $3 in California today, for example.
“It’s very difficult to figure out, when you’re looking at different energy supply, what the real cost of energy is. Everything is subsidised and some of it is dramatically subsidised,” explains Horstmeyer, speaking at an event on solar energy hosted by the SDForum.
The investment banker claims – citing military sources – that the Pentagon is spending about a third of its defense budget – which represents $518.3 billion in fiscal year 2009 – to protect the oil fields in the Middle East, “plus 2 wars!”
“So we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars a year to import maybe 10 million barrels a day. So if we want to cost that oil properly, we should add $50 a barrel to those imported barrels coming from the Middle East,” explains the investment banker.
Follows are 2 video excerpts. The first related to Horstmeyer’s comments on oil subsidies and the second is his introduction remarks.
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Oracle chief wants to impose tariffs on goods originating from China and India
The Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison has a dismal view on the future of the U.S. economy and sees no recovery in sight.
“Somebody said it’s going to be an L-shaped recovery: down, not coming back. I believe that,” said the software executive.
Ellison argues that the U.S. consumer is so deeply in debt that the economy will not come back at least before 5-years; during which the U.S. economy will not be the world’s engine of growth as used to be, while U.S. consumers start saving to pay off their debts.
The Oracle CEO also expects a higher tax regime to pay for some of the Obama’s administration initiatives.
“I’m surprised that there are so many huge spending programmes, like the stimulus package ($800 billion), the health-care bill ($1 trillion), cap and trade ($1 billion)… There are a lot of things that is going on right now that make me believe that we’re not going to have a rapid recovery,” adds Ellison.
Follows, is the video excerpt of Larry Ellison on the state of the economy:
Oracle CEO favours tariffs on imported goods from India and China
Ellison also explained that the U.S. should impose tariffs on imported goods along with its decision to adopt the cap and trade programme.
“Because you can’t suddenly say that energy is going to be very expensive in the U.S. which would send manufacturing overseas and without having tariffs on things coming back to the U.S. for countries like India and China who said very clearly that they have no interest in monitoring their CO2 output until they have the same per capita CO2 output as the U.S… As a results, China will be able to increase their CO2 output by a factor of 4,” adds Ellison.
Follows another video excerpt where the Oracle CEO talks about imposing tariffs on goods coming from India and China:
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Tesla CEO recently said he would love to take over NUMMI
A few months ago, I remember Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk warming at the idea of taking over NUMMI, the sole auto assembly plant on the West Coast.
Musk comments did make a lot of people laugh. Back in April, when the prolific entrepreneur spoke at a Churchill Club event, GM and Toyota were still committed to keep the 20-year old joint-venture running and Tesla was still waiting for government loans to help it jumpstart its future sedan “model S” vehicle project.
But after a tumultuous 4-months that saw GM file for bankruptcy, sever its partnership at NUMMI, Tesla raising nearly a $1 billion from both the government and private investors and finally, Toyota announcing today it will not keep operating alone the Fremont, Calif., car plant, Musk’s “pipe dream” of taking over NUMMI could very well happen!
“Maybe at some point there’ll be an opportunity to acquire NUMMI. That’d be great. I’ll take that in a second. But that isn’t available right now,” added Musk.
A golden opportunity for Tesla indeed, that is required – by receiving the government loans – to find a 20+ year old plant to produce its upcoming all-electric “S” vehicle. And NUMMI just celebrated it’s 20 years anniversary… this year!
“But we can’t afford it right now, unless they give it to us. Which maybe they will,” said Musk 4 months ago!
And “they” (including the state, local and even perhaps the federal governments) might indeed make it so attractive that Tesla could actually find it hard not to move to NUMMI. Wait and see!
Follows the video excerpt where Tesla CEO Elon Musk eluded at the idea of taking over NUMMI:
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GM's staff researcher John Suh doesn't believe the market is ready for an all-electric vehicle, citing range anxiety and lack of a recharge infrastructure
Until recently it was hard to define what the Chevy Volt really is – a hybrid a-la Toyota Prius, a plug-in hybrid, an electric car… - , since it’s not even built yet!
To help potential customers like myself – I’m currently shopping for a Prius! – understand what the Volt is, GM’s staff researcher John Suh suggested a new acronym: it’s an ERBEV, which stands for an Extended Range Battery Electric Vehicle!
“The Volt is a battery electric vehicle. The engine will turn on to generate electricity and to assist the battery,” said Suh, in a presentation last week at Xerox’s PARC in Palo Alto, Calif.
Why the Chevy is better than a plug-in hybrid
“In an EREV [like the Volt], the components (battery, drivetrain) are sized to run that car for full performance. A plug-in hybrid vehicle is not practically speaking. You could but then you will run the case, where you have 2 fully redundant powertrains which is not practical,” added Suh who’s located at GM’s Advanced Technology Group in Silicon Valley.
Range anxiety is biggest hurdle for an all-electric car
“Each of us experience this [range anxiety] on a daily basis when we’re on a laptop or a cell phone, doing lots of different things, and far away from a power plug… Now you have a vehicle that has 100 miles range, you’re going to feel it [range anxiety].
A gas engine provides that bit of security. It’s just like a spare tire in your car. Most of us will never touch that thing, but you’re so happy to have it when you get a flat because you can get moving.
Once we get the charging infrastructure that’s ubiquitous, we’ll put the engine right out.”
Follows a video excerpt of Suh’s presentation at PARC:
More of Suh’s comments on the importance of cellulosic ethanol versus corn ethanol:
And on how GM plans to cool the Volt’s lithium battery pack:
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Speaking yesterday at the Silicom Ventures Summit 2009, serial entrepreneur and “greentech” venture capitalist Vinod Khosla did his presentation on “Maintech” vs. Cleantech; about the same for the last 6 to 9 months!
For Khosla, Maintech refers to mainstream technologies like engines, lighting, appliances, cement, water, glass and buildings – which are huge markets – and can therefore impact significantly the carbon emission problem; as opposed to Cleantech which is more about huge and complex infrastructure projects like nuclear, solar, wind, etc.
I think this is more about semantic than anything else, but it does allow Khosla to rise above the rest of the “Cleantech” investors.
Don’t believe forecasts, invent your future
Khosla started his keynote by discrediting forecasters and analysts, by proving how wrong they were in several occasions; predicting oil and coal prices or the future of the mobile industry.
You just can’t predict the future with yesterday’s technologies or extrapolate the past. And the best way to predict the future is to invent it! So typical Silicon Valley.
Black Swan solutions needed, not Greenwashing
Khosla then went on at looking for some “black swan solutions” that are responsible for market shifts and ultimately energy innovation. Some of these disruptive solutions could be:
To succeed, these “black swan” solutions must return investment in 3 to 5 years, be relevant in cost, scale and not rely in any long term government subsidies and above all survive the Chindia test: it must work in countries like China and India.
Beware of charlatans
Despite being disruptive ideas, investors and the public must be wary of irrational ideas or “silly stuff,” like Sheryl Crow’s one man, one toilet paper idea! There are no “lazy” green solutions, Khosla contends.
The pragmatics survive!
Finally, for Khosla, pragmatism should prevail and that means focusing on mainstream green technologies as well as the large infrastructure projects.
And here’s a copy of an earlier version of Khosla slides:
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This year's top tech trends include the millennium generation, cleantech, mobile applications and the web.
It was a full crowd tonight for the Churchill Club’s 11th annual Top 10 Tech Trends event; maybe because there were actually 12 trends!
This year’s high-powered panel included:
The event was moderated by Silicon Valley celebrity Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn and Jason Pontin now editor in chief and publisher at the MIT Technology Review magazine. Both were at the helm of the Red Herring magazine during the go-go days!
New this year was the inclusion of 5 trends picked from “crowd sourcing”, scouring the Web and the media for the most discussed and popular trends.
Perkins and Pontin also had the opportunity to pick their favorite trend.
Here’s the list of all the trends discussed.
More in later posts with videos and additional commentaries. Meanwhile here’s the video excerpt introducing tonight’s event:
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