Helping Get Unstuck & Strike a Value Chord

A platform to share and reflect on my journey across the worlds of management, innovation, and social impact. Here, you'll find a collection of my management thoughts, highlights from my books, research contributions, and presentations, all rooted in years of academic and practical experience. Whether you're a student, practitioner, policymaker, or fellow thinker, this space is designed to provoke thought, encourage dialogue, and contribute meaningfully to both academic and applied conversations in business and beyond.

Options for Low Emission Fuels

  1. Today, approximately
    390,000 Americans own Prius. Although hugely successful by means of hybrid
    technology, it is not clear how much potential there is in the hybrid
    market.
  2. In 2005, Ford had announced
    that it will be building 250,000 hybrids by 2010, but doesn’t seem to have
    the same goal anymore.
  3. The problem with the logic
    of hybrids as a solution to global warming is that their fuel efficiency
    can soon be offset by the increase in global car ownership.
  4. Ethanol, presents one
    option for petroleum replacement. It currently accounts for 3.5% of
    American fuel consumption, but is growing by 25% a year owing to heavy
    subsidies. When the oil prices peak, the payback from an ethanol plant is
    as low as 11 months. However, there are four problems with corn ethanol:

    1. The market is limited
      because although any car can take E10 fuel (10% ethanol), only 6m out of
      America’s 237m cars and trucks are “flex-fuel” vehicles that can take E85
      (85% ethanol). Converting a car costs only $200 but invalidates the
      guarantee. American car manufacturers are aiming for half of its output
      to be “flex-fuel” by 2012.
    2. Although at the pump corn
      ethanol is competitive with gasoline, America’s subsidies cost taxpayers
      somewhere between $5.5 billion and $7.3 billion a year. High tariffs are
      restricting the import of cheap Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane.
    3. Corn ethanol is not very
      green and some people think that the energy used in growing corn result
      in more emissions than it saves. It is argued that a better bet may be
      cellulosic ethanol – ethanol that can be made out of straw, switchgrass,
      wood chips – pretty much anything with cellulose in it.
    4. It is less energy
      intensive than petrol, so you get fewer miles per gallon. Due to this
      reason, BP is putting its money (along with Du Pont) into a different
      fuel, biobutanol, which is more energy-intensive than ethanol.
  5. Although there was
    excitement around hydrogen fuel cells in the late 1990s but the hopes that
    the technology will be in the market early in this decade were
    disappointed. Shell, which is taking hydrogen seriously, is about to open
    its first filling station in California. It has one already in Washington
    D.C. to service ten cars, and another in Iceland, for three buses. According
    to Shell’s Duncan Macleod, hydrogen cars cost around $1million dollars
    each to build. At the pump, hydrogen costs $5 a kilo – about the same, in
    terms of mileage, as current petrol prices.
  6. GM is working on battery
    technology. It unveiled Chevrolet Volt in 2007, which has both a battery
    and combustion engine. The technology got good reviews although it is
    uncertain when commercial production will begin.
  7. In 2006, Elon Musk, the
    South African born entrepreneur who started Paypal, unveiled the Tesla, an
    electric sports car, which plugs into the wall and stores the energy in a
    lithium-ion battery. The car is however very expensive and the plans for
    work on the budget version will begin in 2008.  The maximum driving range is 250 miles.

Source: The Economist, June 2nd 2007. (“The drive for low
emissions” pp. 26-28)