Electric
Electric
Meet Your Host, Alan Weiss
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
Get to know AlanShow Notes
We’re going to need tens of millions of electric charging stations to satisfy goals for electric cars in six years set by the government. It looks like we might have 500,000.
Electric cars might represent zero carbon footprint improvement. The mining of lithium is dirty and expensive and requires a lot of energy. Disposal of the batteries presents similar problems. Fires are a danger and are harder to extinguish.
Hertz is returning or cancelling orders for a thousand electric vehicles because they are not in demand for rentals and are hard to maintain. Ford has pulled back investment in battery plants. Toyota has committed solely to hybrids.
I’ve driven in them and driven them myself. Meh. Not a big deal, and still limited ranges.
We’re going to have to overcome our own hubris and realize that climate change isn’t going to be reversed and maybe not even halted. We can’t build (and insure) housing on the water’s edge or in forests. We can’t expect to ban internal combustion engines, gas stoves, and gas leaf-blowers (which is ludicrous).
What we DO need in the US is energy independence (which we once had and can easily have again with our huge reserves), control of the southern border to permit legal immigration for white and blue-collar jobs, and a vast improvement in educational equal opportunity.
Otherwise it may be “lights out” for reasons other than insufficient electrical power.
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
