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Well, actually, I represent the Department of Energy. I work for one of the National
Labs in the National Laboratories: DOE’s National Laboratory System. It is the Department
of Energy’s role to develop; support the technology development for an electric hybrid
vehicles, as well as Smart Grid. So, we do a couple of things, and I have a role of integrating
the automobile industry and utilities in this regard; what’s called a “vehicle grid
interface,” in a technical team called a grid integration tech team. That may be a
little odd for this interview but, in fact, our job is to try to remove the barriers for
vehicles plugging into the grid. And the other role I have is international cooperation,
specifically targeting cooperation on standards within the vehicle grid interface.
Yes, well, you asked; it’s a very serious initiative to shift our transportation energy
from petroleum to electricity. And basically what you have to do to get to that that point
is you have to have a supply chain that can supply batteries, motors, power electronics,
and so forth. And you have to have an infrastructure that can handle those vehicles without greatly
disrupting the grid. And, the third issue is that you have to have standards. And that
is a very important point, at the moment. So, the program in the States decided to put
their money where their mouth is, as we say. And we’ve invested about 7 billion dollars
in electric vehicle components and smart grid. And that money has been matched by industry.
So you’re looking at a 15 billion dollar investment over the past two years to improve
electric vehicles and manufacturing to the point of being able to sell them and allow
the grid to handle them in an effective manner.
Well in our case, we have, we came into, you know, this administration, with a very aggressive
target of getting one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. We in fact invested in
the battery manufacturing industry, to the point that we will have a one million unit
capacity by 2015. And we have commitments from vehicle manufacturers to actually exceed
that one million vehicle mark by that time.
Well, Germany is very important to us, obviously. We share vehicle manufacturers. We share suppliers.
And the third element in making this all work between the manufacturing infrastructure,
the electric infrastructure. The third is co-operation on standards. We have to have
co-operation on standards. We have to have standards that are globally accepted, that
we, that our manufacturers and suppliers can live with. And so, Germany is a key element
in making this all work because they sell vehicles globally, their suppliers are global,
in this area, and their employers span from the automotive industry to the electric industry.
So this is a perfect match for us, to work these issues together.
The Trans-Atlantic Economic Council was initiated by Germany and the US over a decade ago, targeting
trans-Atlantic economic co-operation for the multi-national; they work on both sides. So
this is actually a perfect chance: we have, we share an automobile industry and we share
a supplier industry, so this situation is targeting standardizing componentry between
the US and Europe to allow a multi-national company like Mercedes or Siemens or General
Electric to build components here that will be definitely be applicable there. And it’s
the interesting thing about this is it’s more than just a vehicle. We now plug into
the wall and behind the wall, we don’t think of that very often, but there’s a whole
business environment there that has to be established to deal with electric vehicles,
and be able to handle the supply of electricity and the billing, and the so forth. We like
to say that the green automotive industry will not work unless there is green at each
of those nodes in the system.