{"id":2271,"date":"2010-11-11T11:20:05","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T16:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=2271"},"modified":"2018-08-17T09:08:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T13:08:29","slug":"putting-the-electric-in-general-electric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2010\/11\/11\/putting-the-electric-in-general-electric\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting the electric in General Electric"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Hello and good morning!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">General Electric this morning announced that it is going to buy 25,000 electric vehicles for its fleet by 2015.\u00a0 Because General Electric provides much of the componentry and services much of the value chain of the electric car markets it is effectively jump-starting one of its major strategic areas of interest: the environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">CEO Jeffrey Immelt has had my attention since he took over from Jack Welch because of his massive investments in two\u00a0strategic areas:\u00a0clean energy and clean water.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Immelt says that the electric car market could generate $500 million in revenue for GE over the next three years.\u00a0 Clearly the conversion of much of their fleet will help the adoption rate of electric vehicles and drive scale.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The vehicles are to be the Chevy Volt.\u00a0 So a nice pick up for General Motors to say the least.\u00a0 Meanwhile, in the wrong-headed category of business leadership, Daimler-Chrysler&#8217;s CEO was quoted on this very same day saying that electric cars are over-hyped.\u00a0 Could greater evidence of Daimler&#8217;s horrible record of timing be provided?\u00a0 Perhaps if General Electric had purchased 25,000 vehicles from Daimler the story would have been different.\u00a0 Just saying.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Why is the electric car not overhyped, in my opinion?\u00a0 One of the legitimate criticisms of the electric car is that it still has an environmental footprint.\u00a0 While emissions may be lower, to generate electricity at the frontend\u00a0requires the burning of coal, the fissure of atoms, the churning of hydroelectric dams, the capturing of thermal heat, etc.\u00a0 So there is still environmental degradation.\u00a0 However, what is often not talked about is that electricity can be generated by very clean sources of energy, such as wind and solar energy.\u00a0 In fact, electricity can be generated by rubbing your hands back and forth over your sweater.\u00a0 So let&#8217;s put this on a scale:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">On one hand of the scale we have oil &#8211; a monolithically same source of energy that is ever more scarce and requires ever greater risks to extract (think: Deep Water Horizon).\u00a0 And the emissions are poisonous to the environment.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">On the other hand we have electricity that can be generated from at least half a dozen viable sources providing tremendous flexibility in terms of providing the lowest price to the consumer at the moment of consumption and that can be produced with a minimal environmental footprint.\u00a0 And the primary emission from an electric car is&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;heat.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Thanks for putting the electric in General Electric Mr. Immelt!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello and good morning! General Electric this morning announced that it is going to buy 25,000 electric vehicles for its fleet by 2015.\u00a0 Because General Electric provides much of the componentry and services much of the value chain of the electric car markets it is effectively jump-starting one of its major strategic areas of interest: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}