Musk, us and the grid

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal,
former ambassador and a security and political analyst.

Ever heard of Tesla? It is an electric car that uses no fuel and is in commercial production. It is styled beautifully as a Sedan or an SUV and is in normal operational use all over America and the rest of the developed world. Currently it is priced a bit steep but there is every effort to bring the price down to affordable levels. Anyway around $60,000 in America is very affordable, given the various instruments of financing. And it is far less than what its compatible cars in Pakistan cost.

Mind you, this is not a promotional piece for the car, even though it might seem one as you read. This is more about the inventor, who the people of the world need to be familiar with.

That comes a little later, though. A little more on the Tesla. I came across this ‘revolutionary’ product while visiting California one summer where at a Tesla showroom they ‘educated’ visitors on a dissected model that explained the layout. Till then they were still in the process of developing longer lasting batteries. They have since then broken records of one car freak claiming 700 kilometres on a full charge; it is usual to expect around 500 kms though if you have a fully charged battery. A longer lasting battery is the next frontier which will give longer legs to this vehicle as well as change the way we light this world.

The US and countries in Europe are already invested in the concept and had installed facilities and provisions to enable charging the batteries along the roadside just like it happens at gas stations. Except that this emits no carbon. It makes no noise other than that of the wheels rolling on the tarmac and an artificial noise that is meant to keep the drivers from simply dosing away. It is not the kind of hybrid that you see being driven around; and it can operate at speeds over 240 kph on the German/Swiss Autobahns.

Ready to buy one? Let me introduce you to the young 40-something South African born Canadian-American Elon Musk, who is striving to keep Earth as natural as it can be without human intervention that is bent on destroying its ecology around the use of fossil fuel. Musk is a billionaire and a dreamer. Google him and listen to him. He dreams big. He is an inventor, an engineer and an investor. He brought to life PayPal, which has created a parallel source of payments away from the more vulnerable banking systems of credit cards and is now the chairman and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Hyperloop.

You will need to think and dream big to enter these domains as well as be able to understand the revolution that this man is after. He is not into creating new virtual worlds the way Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have done but improve the one that we already have and live in.

For example, he has this plan to take man to the moon or any other planet where in the future life may become a reality simply if our Earth either becomes over-populated or becomes unliveable because of adverse human intervention impacting the sustaining ecology. His simple route to such an objective is in eliminating the carbon emitting fuel that sources the modern world’s life. In addition, this is what else he is up to: he is onto a battery which once charged will have a life in years. In a recent assembly of a 1,000 people in a glittering hall, he unveiled to them the new generation batteries that had powered the entire event which had been off-grid for the entire duration of the event.

He has promised to the people of California that he will get every home in the state off the grid and instead have each powered by its own source of electric power. The fuel-guzzling power-plants that currently rule the roost will be history. His challenge is to create long serving batteries which are cheap and affordable. He wishes to mass produce Tesla to the point that it becomes affordable for every customer. So it is not only technology and innovation, it is also affordability that drives his ambition.

And yes, the Hyperloop is almost Don Quixotic. This is right out of Wikipedia: “The Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system .. incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. As of 2015, designs for test tracks and capsules are being developed, with construction of a full-scale prototype scheduled for 2016. Preliminary analysis indicate that journey between Los Angeles and San Francisco will entail an expected time of 35 minutes only...” (compared to the five hours or more by road, and 45 minutes by air). This too with no carbon emission.

Musk is investing his own money, just $6 billion, but will be heavily supported when the concept is proven. I don’t think the airplane industry and the oil and automobiles industries will let him succeed but he has been through all this before.

When Sushma Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz made that breathtaking announcement of ‘restarting the dialogue’ and of ‘war not being an option’, and then naming it the ‘Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue’, there should have been some dreamers in this land of poets and perpetual thinkers who should have begun interpreting it as a possible Musk moment for South Asia. After all what are the IIT in Delhi and the Bangalore Silicon Valley thinking if not this. Rather than be the sweatshop for the US and the back-office to most of the corporate world, entrepreneurs in these two nations should be taking a leaf out of the Elon Musk book to come up with solutions for the poverty-ridden masses of South Asia.

Maybe the ‘comprehensive’ in the new name suggests just that, that with the basket of old issues that are all contentious and confrontational and divisive, the new format will permit the more positive and cooperative inclusion of emergent issues which will need a common and shared approach to calling on the imagination and entrepreneurial intellect of the people of South Asia to deliver them an equal chance at living a life of greater promise, hope and stability.

Here’s one: the Mittals and the Manshas. Let’s enable the roughly 60 percent hapless in South Asia without reliable electric power for their homes and their businesses with greater opportunity of provisioning options that should give them hope and opportunity. These two business houses should invest in some South Asian dreamers to join hands with Elon Musk to seek and acquire his new revolutionary batteries that can keep the power from the sun stored for far longer. Get the Chinese to deliver the solar cells now declining in price with every passing day and build them into panels that may then be used in remote villages and habitations.

The electric supply companies monopolise the distribution system, tying their prospective buyers to a grid from which then there is no escape. Once in the dragnet the fleecing of the subscribers begins. The same sentiment triggers Musk to get people their freedom from corporatorised exploitation. And it is not only that none of his projects emits any carbon – preserving the atmosphere – he also aims at winning freedom from all exploitation. Once solar power is designed for a smaller community the state can create a very restricted grid for that community alone where power comes from nature. Within the combined resource, material and mental, such undertakings are possible.

With freer people, away from monopolistic exploitation, society gains stability and an assured future with a promise. There isn’t anything more strategic than that. Google Musk, learn about him, and dream on.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com