That’s Mark Duvall of the Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI.  He’s the program manager of Electric Transportation and he’s been working with plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles for 16 years since his days as a student at UC Davis.  There are few people who know more about Plug-In cars than Duvall and few who are more impressive when presenting or answering questions.

Tuesday’s session started with “The Potential and Challenges of PHEVs to Reduce Petroleum Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions” and I wasn’t nearly as impressed with Mark’s boss, Steve Specker who seemed cautious and short of vision to me.  His presentation was weak at best.

The same can’t be said of Peter Schwartz, the co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network.  He spoke about climate change and didn’t pull any punches. 

The one statement he made that will stay with me a long time is that you can already kiss Bangladesh goodbye.  “Bangladesh is over,” is the way Schwartz put it. 

Nothing Schwartz said gave me a single ounce of hope that climate change is being treated with the sense of urgency it needs to be reckoned with.  He might as well have said you can kiss your current way of life goodbye.  “The good time is over,” is what I heard.

Increasing climate change is what we are headed for...

One of the worst presentations I’ve ever seen by a corporate exec was given by the monotone and soul-free Jonathan Lackner, a GM VP. 

He was there to talk about the Volt and the Saturn plug-in hybrid SUV and after listening to his lackluster and detached read of his poorly prepared remarks I came away thinking that GM will never deliver on their promise. 

I was equally unimpressed with Nancy Gioia from Ford.  In fact, after hearing both these American car company employees talking about their plug-in offerings, I don’t give either one of them much of a chance in succeeding.  I don’t think Ford or GM get it and frankly I don’t believe their spokesman.  I believe both Ford and GM and Chrysler as well are the problem, not the solution.  I hope I’m wrong, but I would bet against both of them and put my money on the Japanese and the entrepreneurs.

Fortunately there were many speakers and presentations that hit home runs and gave me great hope for the plug-in future.  Ed Kjaer, the Director of Electric Transportation for So. Cal Edison was superb.  His expertise and enthusiasm for his work were inspiring.

Grove called for a World War II level effort to convert 10 million pickups, SUVs and minivans - the low hanging fruit of bad milage, big vehicles - to plug-in hybrids within four years. 

Grove wants to see an inter-industry task force made up of the utilities, vehicle manufacturers, high tech companies and academia to put together the plan to make it happen.  Grove said only disruptive action on this scale can curtail greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently and cut our use of gasoline in half.  While nay-sayers whine about how soon it can be done, Grove has been there before when an industry went from zero to sixty as fast as a Tesla.

I sat next to Professor Frank in the PHEV Conversions breakout session moderated by Felix Kramer of CalCars.org and I was pretty much spellbound by the panel that included Sanjeev Choudhary of A123Systems/Hymotion and Alec Proudfoot of the Google RechargeIT.

This session made it clear that plug-in hybrids are ready right now to deliver close to 100 mpg for American drivers.  It is only through the efforts of the people on this panel and those working with them that the auto companies are making plug-in hybrids at all.  These plug in pioneers pushed the car companies kicking and screaming all along the way to the brink of production they’re on today.  That’s not what any of them said, but that’s what the Creative Greenius is telling you is true fact.

The day ended with the public night in the exhibition hall and over 700 members of the public came to see the cars they’ll be driving next.  The enthusiasm and passion of the public was a welcome vibe by the exhibitors and plug-in supporters attending the conference and a big boost for all.

The evening wrapped up with a 90 minute panel session featuring a tremendous panel of well spoken, exceptionally smart plug-in experts.  UC Davis Director of their PHEV Research Center, Tom Turrentine moderated the panel featuring Mark Duvall, Dan Reicher, the director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives for Google.org and Chelesa Sexton, former GM EV1 Specialist. 

The session had to end at 9pm, but if the public had their way we’d still be there talking about Plug-ins and asking and answering more questions.

Two bits of good news came out of the conference.  GM is now working with 37 different states and their electric companies to speed bringing plug-in cars to market.

$2.75 million went to Aptera, the three wheel BEV and PHEV vehicle that looks like a flying car; and to ActaCell the lithium-ion battery maker.

I’d write more, but I have to get back to the conference.