Shai Agassi linked this September 2009 paper from UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (CET). The paper is a “Global Venture Lab Technical Brief”.
In recent years, reductions of environmental impacts and fossil fuel consumption by the transportation sector have increasingly been recognized as essential policy goals. The San Francisco Bay Area, which has been at the forefront of environmental sustainability issues in the U.S. for many decades, is currently initiating bold steps towards this end. In particular, multiple stakeholders in the Bay Area are investigating means to encourage and support the use of electric vehicles (EVs).
The focus of this brief is to provide an overview of the EV benefits and concerns for target companies, industries and governments, as well as to offer strategies and timelines for general infrastructure deployment. Specifically, the document analyzes the potential for electric vehicle implementation for four types of road transportation; proposes a plan to deploy the accompanying electricity provision infrastructure; and provides recommendations for Bay Area local governments to induce electric vehicle usage.
This is a big report (47 pages) written by seven UCB principals. I’ve a fair bit of experience with business plans — this is a weighty business plan to raise $1 billion. There is lots of good information and good thinking. I do hope they can find the investors (most of which will be debt).
I’ll close with just this bit on challenges to the plan:
This rollout plan faces the following three main challenges:
1. The main concern: The plan cannot start without customers.
2. Impact depends on commuters, not commercial customers. Since the logistics companies can implement the plan as a low-risk project, convincing commuters is essential to achieve high impacts.
3. Big investment (total ~$1 billion) with low profitability during the first five years.
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