T. Boone Pickens appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewart on November 12th to share his new book “The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future” and ended up sharing some of his thoughts on renewable energy, natural gas and electric cars. Check out the full episode here.
Pickens is known for his work chairing a hedge fund called BP Capital Management as well as his philanthropic nature, having given away over $700M to charities. He has long invested in and worked for the oil industry but also come out as saying “drilling for more oil is not the answer” which carries a lot of weight considering his position. During this interview he stressed the importance of creating an energy plan using American resources such as wind and solar. He also described the yo-yo cost trends that foreign oil has historically followed and predicted that oil would once again hit $100 per barrel within a year. Pickens, now 80 years old and ranked by Forbes as the 117th-richest person in America, has had plenty of time to watch these trends and gain a unique and high level perspective on the topic.
For the future of transportation T Boone Pickens recommends using electric cars for individual transportation and diesel (from our allies: Canada and the UK) as well as domestic natural gas for big rig trucks and 18-wheelers because they require so much power. While Pickens insinuates that electricity and EV’s might not be optimal for larger vehicle transport we here at EV Authority have seen several examples of larger EV vehicles abroad, such as this electric bus being used for public transportation in China unveiled at the 2008 Beijing Olypic Games. These busses were developed by Beijing BIT Clean EV Co., Ltd., which was commissioned by the government to develop environment-friendly electric vehicles for the Summer Olympic Games and while they may be lacking in terms of range and fueling efficiency (batteries are simply swapped in and out) they do prove that massively heavy vehicles can be moved by electric motors. The battery swapping idea isn’t a completely new concept, the company know as “A Better Place” is following a similar method with it’s EV infrastructure in Israel and parts of the US.
