During his State of the Union Address, for one second, I thought that Barack Obama was going to have a Churchill moment. As he lauded his rescue of the US auto industry and touted the importance of electric car technology to the future of the American economy, he turned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the most powerful men in the room, and indicated that he was going to issue them a challenge. In my gut, I was hoping he would declare that the time had come for America to create an all-electric military, but instead he said something lame like “I challenge the American military to go green.”
When Winston Churchill pushed the Royal Navy to convert from coal to diesel power before the First World War, he probably saved Britain from defeat. Since the Germans had better guns, and equally clever tactics, it was only the superior speed of the English warships powered by diesel engines that secured its primacy on the seas. Without control of seas, Britain would have lost its material advantage in that war of attrition and Germany might have triumphed in the West after the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the Eastern Front.
Taking a very long view of history, civilization is at the beginning of the Age of Electricity and the end of the Age of Fire. The Age of Fire lasted about 790,000 years. The Age of Electricity started with an American, Benjamin Franklin, discovering that lightning was a form of static electricity in 1752; he was lucky to survive the experiment. The next few scientists to try it were electrocuted. As we all know, from that moment on, society started to change more and more rapidly as this new form of energy transformed work, entertainment and war.
In many ways, the petroleum economy that swept the world after WW1 and the current basis of the world economy is the creation of electric power and controls as much as improvements in mechanical engineering and petro-carbon extraction. When Alfred P Sloan consolidated the Dayton Engineering Laboratory, now known as ACDelco, into General Motors, he signaled that the automobile was an electro-mechanical machine. Starting motors, spark plugs, fuel injector, anti-lock brakes, air conditioners, windshield wipers, headlights, oxygen sensors, radios, and GPS navigation systems are now integral parts of the ‘most complex consumer product ever manufctured’.
More and more, electricity drives the factories that make every item in our everyday life and the health care sector that keeps us alive. Without electricity there would have been no consumer revolution and the malling of America. Today, our most vibrant companies, the ones that inspire the greatest awe, are those in computer technology and the Internet. These technologies which are totally based on electricity have completely transformed our lives – for better or worse.
History also shows that the best way to drive technological advances is via the military. Since the military is immune to real price pressures and can justify its initiatives based on military ‘value’, it is the best place to incubate new industries during their high cost ‘early adaptor’ phase. The computer industry would not have taken off based solely on the commercial sector, nor digital imagery, nor the Internet, nor GPS devices, nor solar panels, to name a few.
Now the US military needs to take the decisive step and set an ambitious goal: an all-electric military by 2025. That means replacing gas-guzzling Humvees with fuel efficient, simpler and more durable electric or hybrid electric jeeps [apparently they already have one at the Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), located in Warren, Michigan, which has a range of 6 miles — pathetic but a start]. Converting every logistics vehicle to electric or hybrid electric. Developing ‘Dyson’ fan jets or electric airplanes like the Taurus G4 which can fly 200 miles in less than 2 hours using the electricity equivalent of ½ gallon of fuel per passenger. And perhaps a new class of small electric ‘swarm’ vessels that can submerge if attacked.
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