Your Transformation Station - 116. Bridging the Gap: From Fossil Fuels to Electric Mobility

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Ready to unravel the complexities of the monumental shift from fossil fuels to electric vehicles? Prepare to be enlightened as we sit down with our distinguished guest Mats Larsson. A seasoned business consultant with over three decades of experience, to dissect this Green transition. EPISODE LINKS: Mats Larsson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matslarsson-author/ How Building The Future Really Works: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Future-Really-Works-Electromobility-What/dp/B0CFXDQ69G OUTLINE: The episode's timestamps are shown here. You should be able to jump to that time by clicking the timestamp on certain podcast players. (00:00) - Transitioning to Electric Vehicles (15:48) - Electric Mobility Transition and Competency Building (27:28) - Green Transition Challenges and Energy Infrastructure (41:39) - Electric Vehicle Revolution and Technology Transitions PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com⁠⁠⁠ Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/apple⁠⁠⁠ Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/spotify⁠⁠⁠ RSS: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/rss⁠⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/youtube⁠⁠⁠ SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/facebook⁠⁠⁠ - Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/instagram⁠⁠⁠ - TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/tiktok⁠⁠⁠ - Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/x⁠⁠⁠ - Pinterest: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/pinterest⁠⁠⁠ - Linkedin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/linkedin⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I kind of look at the government as like some ADHD kid just waiting to the very last minute to do his assignments. And like because we feel like we work better under pressure. But then that's how we fuck shit up and create long-term problems that we're still paying for to this day. This happened years back then. You're listening to a podcast that encourages you to embrace your vulnerabilities and authentic self. This is your transformation station, and this is your host, Greg Favaza. Hi. Hey there, Matt.

Just one second, getting everything all situated. How's it going over there? I'm fine, thanks. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. Now, do you guys have snow happening over there out in Sweden? We had a little.

We still have very little. It's disappeared in the, past few days. It's, I'm in the south of Sweden. They have a lot more in the north. Okay. And with the, with, how do I say this, understand? During like this time, does the water freeze up to the point where it closes out the ports?

Not in the south normally. It did when I was, sometimes when I was a kid, but nowadays, it's usually not. not a problem in the north it does. In the Baltic Sea, they have icebreakers and, well, icebreakers to keep shipping running, but here in the south, we usually don't have a problem. Usually down here, we have a couple of degrees plus Celsius, even throughout the winter. sometimes we get down to maybe minus 10 or something like that, then we get some snow.

But when I was a kid, we used to have snow all the time from end of November until early April. But those days are gone. Well, I do appreciate you sharing that with me and for our audience. Could you provide everybody with a snapshot of your specialty, and what you're trying to achieve? Yes. I'm a business consultant since 33 years,

and for the past 18 years, I've studied the amount of resources that will be needed to change transport systems to electric vehicles. And I've realized that a lot more resources in terms of electricity and investments will be needed to do this. than decision makers have done.

And as you probably know, air regulators in California have decided to ban the sales of new gasoline cars from 2035. And the same decision has been made by the EU and the UK government. And in fact, that won't be possible because so large investors, will be needed to achieve this so that they can't be managed until 2035 or the years following 235. Just as an example, to change all the transportation systems, cars, buses, trucks in the U.S. to electric vehicles, you would have to have, you would have to double.

power generation. And currently in the US, you have power generation amounting to 4,000 terawatt hours, and that's the annual generation of 350 nuclear reactors

or 1.2 million wind turbines. So even to change your car fleets to electric cars would require really large amount of electricity amounts that are not available in any country. And there won't be enough time to build up those resources rapidly enough to be, to change

to electric vehicles by 2035 or 2014. Okay. That's really specific. I want to just summarize this for our audience can understand. So we're looking at the transition of fossil fuels to green energy. and now taking that into account from a climate change from a geopolitical perspective. Now, we're trying to essentially get a strategy involved on approaching this issue that's about to, I mean, there's a lot of issues within this issue. One, I mean, the fact of trying to go down this rabbit hole to create these electric vehicles,

is transition to green essentially. That's going to emit a lot more burning of fossil fuels to actually create the batteries needed, to create the infrastructure needed. And the most important thing we've got to understand is we all have to be on the same page. Is that it so far, that I have a grasp on that? Yes, and definitely.

So governments and sustainable, Abolately experts have advocated a change to electric vehicles, and so far a few people in the world have explored the amount of resources that would be needed to do this. And I'm one of the few people who have done it, and I've recently published a book called How Building the Future Really Works that's available on Amazon.com, for example, and where I go in, look into this in some detail. Yes, you published that back in September, and I would love to go deeper into that, but we'll save that for later around the end of the show. So if we're trying to understand this from a micro level,

we need to get everybody on all levels understanding the issue. How would we get that to happen? What would we tell people? for this to happen. I often take the Apollo program as an example. To send a man to the moon and bring him safely back to Earth again as John F. Kennedy challenged the nation in 1961. It wasn't enough to just build a few rockets that could perform the missions.

You had to. NASA also had to build a space center. They also had to build a launch ramp, a huge building for building the rockets that you needed moon landers, you needed lots of new technology, miniaturization, et cetera, et cetera. And computing power to control this mission. And it's the same with electric, the change to electric vehicles. It's not only about getting people to buy more electric cars or getting companies,

transport companies to buy more electric trucks. You also need the entire systems for power production, for power grids, you need charging infrastructure, and you need to build these things in unison so that they, in an orchestrated manner, like they did in the Apollo program, to make sure that all the components of these systems will be ready when they are needed. So we're looking at this on a commercial level. Now, if we're building these batteries, are we looking at the ability to remake the batteries that's already built? because when we're talking about disposal,

disposing of these batteries, I know it's not good for the environment, and that's where we have to look at going green, but, I mean, mining for the necessary things that we need to create lithium ion cells. What exactly, like, let's just look at that part

and keep climbing the ladder as we go. Yes, absolutely. And lithium ion is an essential component of this. And at the moment, there is no system in place for the recycling of lithium ion batteries, at least not for a large scale recycling. But for the moment, there are not either too many lithium ion car batteries available that needs to be recycled because, and most of the cars that are in use today have not been used for more than 10, 12 years.

So they're not used up. But when a large number of cars get to the end of their lifetime, the lithium ion batteries will need to be recycled. And there are technologies and there are companies that are prepared to build. recycling plants for lithium ion batteries. So I don't think that will be a big problem, the recycling of lithium ion batteries. There is mechanical recycling,

there is chemical recycling and so on. It may be a problem actually to get enough lithium to make batteries for all the cars that will be needed if everyone will need to buy an electric car from, say, 2035 or 2040 and something like that. Because current reserves of lithium are, I don't know exactly, but they are estimated not to be large enough to make this possible. So there may be also a need for other battery technologies like sodium batteries, like sodium batteries or other technologies.

But of course, also the capacity of batteries, the amount of lithium needed to store a certain amount of electricity will go down as well as the battery technology improves. That's really interesting. Now, I'm looking at it from a change management perspective. I mean, right now, one would be we got to secure executive sponsorship for this change efforts. Then we have to build critical competencies at all levels and then a common language for the change. Now, how would we relate that from a business perspective to a global scale, essentially to get the whole world to realize, hey, this is what has to happen for our children's children?

Yes, I'm really happy that you mention the term change management, because that's what it is about to a large extent. And we do need a shared language to talk about this. And for the moment, there are ideas swirling around saying that we can do this transformation in, a few years time, a little more than a decade, and that no problems will arise and so on. But we do need to develop a language that we can all relate to, that also involves the various components of this change.

Like I said before, we need to be able to talk about the expansion of power production. We need to be able to be able to, to discuss the expansion of grids. And it's not only local grids. There are national grids, the high-voltage ones, that bring power from power plants to users. There are regional grids that serve the region,

and there are local low-voltage grids that basically are the ones that people plug into on a daily basis when they use their facilities at home. And we need to be able to talk about that. We also need to be able to talk about the charging infrastructure. And there are different ways we can solve the charging. At present, we have stationary charging. We have fast chargers and we have normal speed charges at home.

But there is also an opportunity, or perhaps a need to build electric road systems. And people would need to become aware of that. And decision makers need to become aware of those opportunities. And we also need a lot of people with the right competencies to build these systems and optimize these systems so that they become both cost-effective and also user-friendly. Because people won't need,

want to stand for hours in line waiting for their cars to be charged and having five, six, seven cars ahead of them. When we need to charge, we want a charger to be ready for us, and we need to know that we can go there, charge and go back and continue our journey. So a lot of things need to be in place and we need to build a language by which we can discuss this and come up with different solutions and projects, basically, that we can start to develop these resources. This is beautiful because there's a lot we can unpack here. Now, we're covering electric mobility. This represents the concept of using electric. electric power train technology in vehicle information and communication technologies,

connected infrastructures to enable electric propulsion of vehicles and fleets. Now, we used to work at, myself, I used to work at Amazon. They were just transitioning from gasoline to an all electric fleet. And now I'm seeing that happen in real time in the local warehouse that's near me out in St. Peter's, Missouri. So we have companies that are starting to make the change. However, there's still people that are lagging. I think they call them like laggards when you're trying to get the entire society to make this jump on a technological advancement.

Now, for this, there's so much more that we need to unpack. I mean, is electricity cheaper than gas? I mean, is the efficiency of the vehicle better than gasoline? And then to make, like, then we've got to look at the debt that's going to be caused from making this change. And then the type of leadership, like, who's going to be able to handle this giant transformation in a new way of living? Absolutely. I agree. Well, there are differences.

between countries. And I'm not sure whether in the US, whether charging, going with electric vehicles will be less expensive than going using gasoline, because you have low gasoline prices in the US, which we don't have here in Europe. So in Europe, definitely if you can charge at home, it's cheaper to charge using electricity compared to filling your car with gasoline or diesel.

But it's really, there will really be a big change because electric cars and electric trucks and buses are much more expensive at present than gasoline or gasoline or cars or diesel trucks and buses. So it's not only about the cost of the fuel, it's also a matter of whether people will be able to afford the higher cost of vehicles.

We can't be certain that the price of vehicles will go down very rapidly so that everyone will be able to afford an electric car in 10 years. or 15 years. So I have an idea, as far as looking at it from a top-down approach, I think if we are able

to elect the right government officials that are focused on this change, now they start applying this change to what actually needs, the biggest things first. I would say we have public transportation, we have airlines. flights and airlines. We have ships. If we can address those first and then as we start to delegate it down to the micro level, I would suggest stimulus checks be sent out to everybody that is specifically for the purchase of an electric vehicle. And then also a bigger return when you trade in your vehicle for this. And I feel like that's a good way to get things moving.

Yes, it would be a way to get things moving, absolutely. And here in Europe, many governments have offered subsidies for purchases of electric vehicles. Most governments actually in, well, maybe not most but the more the wealthier countries I'd say it's

offer subsidies or have offered subsidies for electric vehicle purchases what I'd say is that we need to build competence about this in the way that NASA did

in the Apollo program it's not enough for different experts or political parties, university professors and research teams to come up with ideas and launch them into the media and so on. There needs to be a body of knowledge that's going to be built around this issue that covers the different aspects. like I mentioned NASA, and they built knowledge about the entire range of the technologies needed in the Apollo program. So we need agencies, government agencies that build competence in the different areas

and to understand charging power generation in relation to electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and how these systems will have to be built in order to become cost-effective. And that's something that's been done in the United States over and over again in technology development processes for computers. I mean, the government or various branches of the government, developed computers for the military forces to calculate artillery trajectories and other other things that they use the early generations of computers for. The ARPA developed the ARPA net and government agencies have also developed aviation technologies.

on. And they've built competence in areas like what are the key development steps that need to be taken? What are the key technologies we need? And what are the bottlenecks currently that we need to remove in order to facilitate taking another step along this process? So the same type of thinking needs to be applied in the development here of electromobility. there needs to be a government agency or a couple of government agencies perhaps to take responsibility for different or get responsibility from the president or from the government for different areas of this development. Because changing, in those examples, that was, except for the Apollo program, there wasn't a time pressure. There wasn't a time pressure to develop computers by a certain time or by a certain year or the ARPA net by a certain time or a certain year or aviation technologies at a certain speed.

But in this case, there is an ambition to drive the development of electromability forward so that large systems can be implemented within the next couple of next few decades. to one or two decades. So we need to build that competence and understand how can we do that? And we couldn't do that without collecting competencies that are necessary in the same room, basically, or in the same building, and get them to get together and solve these critical issues. So I love that you utilize the military. And that helped me a lot grasp this on a much deeper scale.

Now, we're looking at building these critical competencies at all levels. Now, all levels are federal and state level governments. Now, electing these officials in charge to be accountable to disseminate that information. That's going to be one challenge already. But then it comes to establishing another. organization or government infrastructure that holds not only the elected officials, but the companies that are trying to pioneer this technological advancement in line as we continue to grow and make this change so we can meet at the finish line to have this beautiful transformation

of what we're going after, which will be electric mobility. Yes. I agree. There is a need to build teams with competencies and build entire agencies, government agencies, consisting of people with complementary competencies that make up the entire body of knowledge that will be needed to achieve this. I mean, if we try to understand the common language for change, like, if you ask some random person, what is, what's the difference between global warming and climate change? I mean, would they know the difference? Well, I'm not sure. No, global warming, I think, is an example of climate change. It's global climate change is the broader concept could involve different types of,

changes, but global warming is the type of change that is going on right now when we experience an increasing temperature on the planet. Yes, yeah. I have the

global warming's one aspect is the rise of due to increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Now climate change first to the increased changes in moisture of climate over a long period of time, including participation, temperature, and wind patterns. Now, if we were to ask people, like this is a random survey, would they know the difference?

And that's the problem is that we don't have the common language understood. I agree, yes. I find that very little of this has been discussed in the media. And we're finding here in Sweden now in the past two, two, three weeks that it has suddenly dawned on business people in various industries, industry organizations that we don't have enough power to charge our electric vehicles and that we don't have enough power to run the other. other types of programs that are part of the green transition here. We have two projects in the north involving the hydrogen-based production of steel up there. And they estimate that 50 terawatt hours of power will be needed to fuel those two steel plants in the future. when they're up and running.

And that's the power generated by five nuclear reactors. So it's a huge amount and it's actually one third of Sweden's current power generation. So and we had an industry organization that went public last week saying that the government needs to take responsibility for the expansion of power generation into the future. because there is a risk that 800,000 people will get unemployed if we don't manage this green transition. And 800,000 wouldn't be a lot in, it would be a lot actually in the US as well. But with a population of only 10 million in Sweden, 800,000 is mind blowing. Yes.

And that's 800,000 families that are going to be going hungry. And now what is the government going to do about that? when they could have already have started to made the transition. If we're looking at this, it feels like it's almost impossible to incorporate this change from a ready, developed country that has met their limits to have to make this drastic change. I can see it. It's a lot more easier and simple to grasp if we were to look at developing countries and push this change onto them, which we can see in real time what the effects are

and how it's going to impact us in the future and go from there. Yes. It's difficult enough, I'd say, for developed countries to afford to do this change over a short period of time, but for developing countries, it will not be possible to invest, make the necessary investment. We have here in Europe, we don't have developing countries in that sense, but we have countries that are not as affluent as Germany and Sweden and France. We have Poland, Romania, Lithuania and other countries from. the former Soviet bloc in our neighborhood. And these countries will find it very difficult to invest in the expansion of power production

and so on to afford to implement electro mobility on a large scale. And even though they, to a relatively large extent, import used cars from other countries in Europe, they will still, there is still a market for electric cars. And Poland, for example, in Poland, utilities estimate that only 10% of all cars could be charged based on the existing power grid capacity. So huge investments will be needed in. in these countries as well that have even

less developed infrastructure than the countries of the western parts of Europe have Yeah, that's really interesting and it just came to me as far as with all the

gasoline engine vehicles that we're trying to get rid of essentially, like that would create a lot of jobs as far as stripping them down and mining for the parts that's needed to create electric vehicles and the inputs, inputs required to make this possible. And then what do you do with the scrap?

I mean, recycling would have to be key. Definitely, yes. I'd say there will be a lot of jobs created in mining and lithium ion production and so on. But there will also be a huge number of jobs created in infrastructure areas to expand power grids, charging infrastructure, and power generation, basically. Because just think of it. If everyone in New York or Chicago, L.A. or wherever, you can take your own town. where you live, if everyone is going to have a charger at home,

where they can charge their electric car, I mean, you'll need 285 million charges in the US to charge your 285 million cars. Maybe some households can do with one, and they have two or three cars. But you need a huge amount of charges, maybe 150 million or something like that. And you would also need a large number of public charges

out in cities along motorways and so on. You'd maybe need a few million public charges to be able to charge when you're on the go or when you run out of electricity in unexpected places. So there will be a huge need for installation activities. But in order to get all the electricity that will be needed out to motorways or to industrial areas in cities or to parking houses where not so much electricity is used at present, you would also need to expand power grids in many places.

And in order to reduce the need to expand power grids, you'd also need to install much more solar power and so on. So Elon Musk, actually, he said in an interview at a conference called CodeConn, 2021, he said that the United States will have to double power generation. And they also need, he also said that investments will be needed in all parts of power grids and especially also investments in solar generation. because to reduce the need to expand the capacity of grids. That's really fascinating. It's like a cascading effect to make this happen. Everything is going to have to change. And then we're going to have to hire additional people to incorporate this change.

And what happens if we don't pursue this change? Well, we've been talking about climate change, and that's one of the reasons why we need to reduce our carbon emissions. But there is also the fact that oil is not an infinite resource. It's a finite resource. And the sources of conventional oil are not growing. Oil companies are not doing huge new findings of oil and discoveries of oil. They are, in fact, only 5% of the oil that's used every year is discovered in new wells. So the amount of new oil discoveries has been declining over the past decades,

and we're now at a really low level, despite the fact that we have a much higher oil price now than we had in the 1960s when oil discoveries were at the top. So we need to develop new transportation systems that can replace the way. ones we have. We do have, we have seen an increase in the production of unconventional oil like shale oil and these types of oil. But we, it's unlikely that these volumes will increase so that they can take over the entire oil production.

We use 100 million barrels. of oil per day in the world. And the United States produces more than 10% of that. So you have a huge resources of oil, as we all know, but they won't last forever. And we don't know exactly when we'll reach the peak and when the volumes will start to decline. but they will, and it will, as we have discussed, it will take decades to build new systems. So we need to start to build those systems now to have them ready in a decade or two decades

when oil production may start to decline. So I kind of look at the government as like some ADHD kid just waiting to the very last minute to do his assignments. and like because we feel like we work better under pressure, but then that's how we fuck shit up and create long-term problems that we're still paying for to this day. This happened years back then. Now, you mentioned the 5% Zet from like globally

ingress and import and export. Do you refer into that? No, it's the 5% is the new discoveries. So if we use 100 million barrels a day, that's 34 billion barrels a year. And so we use 34 billion barrels a year and new discoveries amount to approximately 5% of that amount every year. So that's about 7 million barrels a 7 billion barrels a year. No, sorry. I'm, it's just 0.7 billion barrels a year in new discoveries.

So if you were to walk up to the Exxon Mobil CEO, I don't remember what his name is, and just say, hey, what you're doing right now is not going to help. our company or help our livelihood in the future if we're going towards green. Like what would you what would you tell them to try to change his bind or to change his approach to help us get on the same page? Well, I think everyone, as we're all of this small planet and we're in it together, and as we may may say, it's we all need to join forces. to find out what the future will be like.

And the oil companies have a huge and very important piece of this puzzle in that they know more about oil production than anyone else. And they should, they know how far they or they have an idea at least about how far we can drive the expansion of oil production and how when it's likely that oil production will reach its peak and so on. So I'd say that oil companies need to contribute to our understanding of that. But also, we find here that we don't have oil production in Sweden. We have oil distribution and oil refineries. and these companies are investing now heavily in electric vehicle charging systems and other types of technologies to support the transition to electric vehicles and that's also an indicator I think

that they understand that this needs to be done and that they need to take apart and if they don't contribute, they will lose their market and they need to grow a new market and compete in the electric vehicle charging environment. Well, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, with investors, they have to have a diverse portfolio in case mobile one. Oh, it's Darren Woods, by the way, is the DCI had to look that up there. If that goes south, then they aren't completely. out and they have electric technologies to fall back on.

But I'm trying to look at it as if are we trying to view oil as the money? Because if you were trying to follow the money that would lead us to the goal that we're trying to accomplish. And not only this, but we're also trying to switch over to a digital currency simultaneously. like that on top of going from everything will be digital. I mean, digital and then electric. That is going to set us apart. I'm just curious how many generations is it going to take for this to occur

and not experience any setbacks? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. the ambition to change very fast is perhaps not really realistic. We know that computer development took off, or it started after the Second World War in 1946. But it also built on knowledge that had been developed previously with the punch card machines and so on. and resources, not to mention, for the development and production of punch card machines at IBM and other companies. There was already some type of basic knowledge about this, and it has had been incubating in various ways. But the development of computers started in 1946 or thereabouts, and then it continued, and it continued.

It wasn't until the early 21st century that computers started to contribute to economic growth. As the Nobel Prize winner, Robert Solo said in the 1990s, I think, that computers can be seen everywhere in society, except in the economic growth projections. So we need to realize that in the past, these changes and these large-scale implementations of new technologies have taken 50 years or more to go from the start to the full fruition of technologies. And it would be naive, I think, to assume that we could implement electric vehicles and electric vehicle systems and digitize our currencies and everything in only two decades or something like that. We would need to have expectations that resonate with the experience that we have made. over the past 50, 100 or 150 years of technology development. That's fascinating.

I want to play devil's advocate and look at why, like, we have already gone through technological change with the internet, massive information. Now, we have already figured out ways to understand the big metadata, big data, big data issues and how to handle that. Now, I'm trying to look at the world as a large entity, as an organization. What the organization needs is a transformation strategy. Now, this strategy is looking at the new technological advances and that we need to adapt in order to keep up with our competitors. However, there's no competitors, metaphorically. unless we don't know about it,

but alien population here. But that's essentially what we got to have, the mindset in order to grasp all of these problems and put it simply. Like, what do you think about that? Yes. We do have, I mean, we don't have competitors in the sense

that we have another, another species that would invade our planet or something like that. But we could see that within, of course, within the human species, we have different fractions of interest groups. And they are located in different places, as you have noticed in the past as well. So in some parts of the United States, you have the incumbent auto companies like in Michigan.

Yes. For example, you have General Motors and Ford, et cetera. And you have the invaders in the form of Tesla and others in California, Arizona. you have Nicola, the new truck company, etc. Yes, the global leaders of the current industry trends. Yes, and we have a lot of electric vehicle companies in China as well. But the incumbents in this industry have lagged behind in the early phases of this development. And we must be aware that these new companies may take over large shares of the market for cars, trucks, buses.

And that would not, it wouldn't mean that we get an invasion from aliens, but it would mean that the, that the geography of these things, of these industries change from Michigan to California and other places where you have the new electric electric vehicle companies from in Europe, from Munich, Stuttgart, etc., where we have the BMWs and Mercedes to China and to, to China. California and to Arizona where we have the invaders. So there is an element of this type of invasion and invasiveness in this development. And we need to be aware that there will be big upheaval in places like Michigan and in Munich and Stuttgart and other places. is if these new companies take over large shares of the auto markets. Yes, no, that's beautiful that you pointed that out. So with current industry leaders have to face the competition of new industries,

pioneering today's technological advances, and looking at it from an outside lens, that current industry leaders haven't taken the moment to see because what they know it works, is what's what got them there in the first place. And the potential that I see is two things. One, new industry leaders can overtake these current global leaders, or they can fail and get bought out by current industry leaders, and that's kind of how everybody will be combined. And that's where we would come to a common theme of the current industries, regardless of who.

Yes. And we have the same in the fuels. Like you mentioned Exxon, mobile oil. In the future with electric vehicles, we'll see that General Electric. will be more important than Exxon and mobile all in terms of generating the electricity that's needed to power the vehicle fleets. Can you give us a little snapshot of how your book,

how building the future really works? You give us a little snapshot of that? Yes. Thank you. I've tried to start with the technology developments of the past like the Apollo program and the experiences from computer development. Many of these have been run in the United States. And you are the country with the most impressive technology development programs of the past.

And so we need to learn from those and we need to take the experiences from them, saying that in these developments, the government has played government investment for many decades has played an important role in the development. And it's not until a bit into a number of decades into this developments that these, technologies have been able to stand on their own and become competitive and been able to finance their own pay their way forward so to speak. And I'm trying to learn, in the book, I've tried to learn from these experiences and apply these lessons on the development. of electric vehicles and the electric vehicle systems that we have been discussing, the development of autonomous vehicles and the systems to run those to see how do we need to approach these

new technology developments and others to succeed with the transformation to a sustainable society. or just succeed with developing the transport systems that we need for the future. That's beautiful. I like that. Now, if you could leave our audience with anything, what would you let them know before I let you go? I'd like to say that a lot of people need to learn about this. and we need there are not so many books

available that that bring up this change from a large scale perspective in the Apollo program 400,000 Americans were evolved from the start in 1961 to the end in

1970 or something like that after the moon landing and so on so So that's an indication of the number of people that have been involved in these types of projects in the past. And in order to build the systems for electromability with the investments in power grids, power generation, charging infrastructure and vehicles, etc., more than 400,000 Americans will be needed. will have to participate. So I believe it's about time for more people to start to take in this information and start

to discuss these different aspects and opportunities that we see and the different technologies. Will we need electric road systems charge on the go? Or can we rely on stationary? charging in fast charges or normal speed chargers entirely. Will we need technologies for, what type of technologies will we need for reinforcing power grids? Will we need to digitize power grids or can we leave them analog to large extent as they are now? And so on. There are so many different, um, all.

alternatives and these issues will not solve themselves. People are needed that work with them and that outline the different development path and to help us select the most cost effective, the most user-friendly systems that we can develop into the future. No, you said something that really stuck with me and took me on another realm. Like when we're trying to implement this large of a change, now I got a really deep understanding from being in the military at the very lowest of the low at the bottom of the ranks as a rifleman and then climbing up in the top next to the commander at a brigade level, assisting or delegating authority to 4,500 different troops. Now, having to illustrate the commander's intent towards the mission, and then if the mission changes within moments, you have to give everybody that information to reassess and go towards

the new objective. I believe we have to really ask ourselves, who are we communicating to. to get this change to happen effectively. I would say looking at military commanders at that high level, their job is to be able to orchestrate this change and under pressure and effectively, but then also to incorporate outside units from an even higher level within the echelons and attachments

and get them to move in, uniformity to accomplish this scheme maneuver. I believe that's a really important assessment. And to kind of take that mental model of what I explained and apply it towards electric mobility. And I think we could really get something going. Absolutely. I totally agree.

We need to compare and approach this change based on references that we already know about. And we can see similarities between how we need to leave this change to how the military operates and how the military refocuses or realignance forces in battle. or we can see similarities to how companies organize and how build strategies for the future. We can learn from Klausovitz, the military strategist from Prussia in the 19th century, etc. We need to learn take all these different perspectives with us into this change to electromobility and help people with different backgrounds relate to this and use our

references from the military, from the Apollo program, from the development of computers, from aviation development, from airlines, from, et cetera, et cetera, from different areas, and apply this knowledge in this new field. It's fascinating. We could go all day and I'm just, I'm glad to have you on the show, so I really do appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I really appreciated your invitation and I enjoyed very much the conversation we've had. Thanks for joining us on this adventure of growth and discovery. If you're ready to achieve a sustainable transformation, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

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