SI's Take on Semicon West

Waiting in the SFO airport to return to Chicago, I saw a news story on electric cars. The electric car shown on the screen had a prominent slogan -- not on the back bumper but across the front chassis saying “Look Ma, No Gas!” The little white vehicle was similar to the Volkswagen Beetle. I was thinking it looked a little more like the old VW Bug because it was quite a bit smaller than the Beetle.

It’s so fun to see the electric car come to fruition and mass marketing. For those of you who haven’t seen it I recommend a movie called “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It tells the story of General Motor’s ambitious experiment in electric cars in the mid-1990s that ended with the cars being taken away – in most cases, from very pleased owners.

GM’s EV (electric vehicle) that was tested by hundreds of users in 
California, beginning in 1996.

That was the end of GM’s program at that time, for a number of reasons – the electric cars were too cheap to maintain, there was plenty of oil in the ground still, and the distance the cars could travel on one charge was pretty limited. This situation is changing, however, as we all know. In fact, the director of the movie is now working on a sequel “Who Saved the Electric Car?” In an interview with David Letterman, Tom Hanks said the most exciting thing about owning an electric car is that you never have to visit a gas station again – unless you want a big gulp and some beef jerky.

Recently, I was telling my eight year old nephew about how engineers had invented a car that you just plug into the wall to power it. I said it has a big battery and it doesn’t use any gas. He said “that’s pretty cool. What we need now are plug-in planes!”