Yet2com Blog

For the past few years, I’ve co-hosted an interesting dinner with Jeff Rollins, where I ask each guest to speak briefly on a way they think the world will change in the next 5 years – that is not obvious.

In November I hosted 55 leaders in a wide variety of disciplines – from horticulture to economics.  The guest list included; 2 Governors, a Senator, 5 CEO’s of companies of more than $3 billion in revenue, Chief Investment Officers of more than $38 billion, 11 venture capitalists, etc….so you get the idea.

(nice thing about Wilmington is that it’s halfway between Washington DC and New York, and we get Baltimore and Philadelphia even closer)

The 55 ideas were then voted on by each table, and below is the first of the 6 finalists – on ways the world will change that are not obvious.  The only rule was no attribution without permission – but the ideas were free. Please share your ideas on other non-obvious predictions and your thoughts about this one.  My next dinner is on December 8th in Wilmington – and I’m always looking for really interesting and provocative people to invite.

Best Idea from Table I: Look before You Leap

This is a story about the emergence of the new mass hysteria, that recognizes that hybrid vehicles — are the solution to all of our moral, ethical, political and environmental problems, and will also reduce oil import dependence.

What happens if you get what you wish for?

If you look at the implications of a successful program for accelerating the commercialization of these hybrid levels, particularly to the level where by 2020 one third of all light duty vehicles, and assume that the ones which are currently closest to commercialization and about to enter the market are typical of what will mature into this new market niche, what will you find?

You would find a dramatic increase in the demand for lithium ion batteries with cobalt oxide cathodes. If five million vehicles per year sold in the United States by 2020 – you would increase the US imports of refined cobalt by about twenty-five thousand metric tons, or by forty percent of current world production.

The only places that could increase their production at this rate are the northeast Shava region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Tibetan plateau, and eastern Siberia — not all of whom are dedicated to the economic and environmental success of the United States.

In addition, the electric drive train of these vehicles depends upon a class of elegant engineered alloys: hard magnets, neodymiun-boron magnets that are currently used both in the existing generation of Prius, Honda Civic, Ford Escape, and all of the other hybrids. These magnets for the electric motors, regenerative braking systems, and the power-assisted steering systems rely on the production of rare earth oxides…ninety percent of which are produced in two mines, one on the Tibetan plateau and one in northwest China.

Last year, for the first time, the Chinese government shut down exports of rare earth oxides because domestic production exceeded demand. As a result, the production of these magnets for use in hybrid vehicles was suspended. Toyota and Honda were able to impel the Japanese government to release minerals from their national strategic stockpile. Ford, GM and Chrysler do not have quite the same relationship with their government as Toyota and Honda, and faced a little greater difficulty.

There are alternatives that give us advanced vehicles that we hope for: plug-in hybrids, all-electric vehicles, advanced conventional hybrids, but they dont use the designs that are closest to commercialization today or the cheapest.

If we rush the market subsidizing what is currently available, we may find ourselves in the pathway of an unexpected surprise; shifting dependence on fragile and unstable areas for oil imports to a new dependence on the heirs of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo and HU Jintao and his allies in China.

This was the idea that ‘won’ table #1.

Thoughts on this idea?  What is your non-obvious idea?

Ben in Maine

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 15th, 2009 at 8:01 pm and is filed under commentary, open innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.