Seven Months into the Future of 2009

As a spin off of Hiemstra's "Seven Weeks into the Future", I felt I needed to blog about his very favorite energy-related company - Rapid EVS.

Futurist Glen Hiemstra has been asked about the business of Futuring a lot this past year, so he says. I would venture to say that current economic conditions probably have many wondering if anybody who’s anybody would pay for futuring programs. I was never a seeker of fortune tellers so this comes as a no brainer question to me. But, Glen says that the pace has indeed picked up in the last quarter of 2009. Isn’t that special? I thought. So I kept on reading.

In this article he discusses the many different conferences and meetings he has attended since the middle of September, either as keynote, guest or plain old attendee. One linked section in the article caught my eye in particular because it brushes on some of the TED talks and forum posts we’ve had on CTU’s IAS. I can’t help but smile at the “Bold plan for electric cars” comment posted by one of my peers.

See the blog he referred to here: Electric Cars a revolutionary idea for certain. This TED talk was presented in April of this year. Already, seven months later, Hiemstra bumped into the very same idea in a real life application, for fleet owners, complete with cool props for the 2009 meeting.

At a regular session of the Northwest Energy Angels in Bellevue, Washington, he saw four start-up companies who presented their energy-related projects. In his view, the most impressive one was out of Vancouver, Canada. Their proposal? Rapid Electric Vehicle (REV) the inexpensive way, AND to extend longevity of fleets. I'm not sure if junk yards and auto makers will be happy. We'll have to stay tuned on that front.

However, because Glen’s article described this company as the most impressive to him, and, because it is out of my native country, I quickly clicked on the Rapid Electric Vehicle link. There, I saw how the future as suggested in an April 2009 TED talk was rapidly unfolding before our eyes in mere months. The recharging infrastructure proposed by Shai Agassi in his TED talk is in the making already.

Please click the image below and visit their web site. Vancouver, Canada is going green! Mind you, this has been true of Vancouver for as long as I can remember.

Here is an interview with founder and CEO Jay Giraud:
Rapid EVS - Interview with Jay Giraud

Don't blink, you might miss it!