As we all know, the future was supposed to be full of flying cars, and that simply didn’t happen.
Maybe they were too busy thinking “jet cars” to think “sail boats that fly”.
Industrial designer Damien Grossemydesigned a hypoththetical flying electric vehicle for Renault that is simply beautiful. The “Zep’lin” has a mostly vertical structure, a large part of which can be covered with solar panels, that resembles the offspring of a seed pod and a sail boat. Its actually possible to imagine that this is a genetically engineered type of maple until you see the elegant rudder / engine combination. True, I don’t see this doing a tight turning circle, and I’m not too sure how it would perform in a high wind take off to work, but it needs no dedicated infrastructure to land.
To park might be another matter.
And I wanna try it out.
It sails rather than powers from one location to another. The promotional video implies a potential around the world Zep’lin race for rich playboys. Which, if the design works, is not as infeasible as an around the world yacht race. So he has his early adopters identified, and can use their attention seeking antics to market the thing while their payments pay for the development of a commuter model.
And they look beautiful.
You may need to click through to see the embedded video.
Apparently the solar panels can tilt toward the sun, but looking at more of the designs I think its the solar equivalent of tacking, getting power in the sail from one angle, while traveling in another.
Renault spent 2 months designing a scale model, and we’ll see if it eventually becomes a working design.
I would love to tell you that I was invited to a cabal of secrets, but in fact I simply responded to a post on Mulley’s blog about a meeting, and then showed up.
What I discovered was, following the Collision Course, that Bord Gáis decided to talk to bloggers. I’m not too sure why (and I don’t think they do either).
You see, they are no longer a gas company. They are now an energy company.
The fact that they decided to talk to bloggers about, well, a deeply un-sexy product is interesting. This is also an internal initiative. Even their usual PR companies (I noticed the plural) told them not to. But think about it. Electricity and gas are not “youth” products. And when someone talks about “doing stuff on the net” the assumption is that the product is destined for, well, kids.
But the net is no longer a youth product. The web has been in mainstream use in Ireland for almost 20 years. There is an entire generation that grew up with the web, but almost everyone under forty isn’t afraid of it (and looking at some facebook photos, they will be at a later date).
Banking, shopping and house hunting are all online. Instead of getting a paper bill in the post, you could get your bill on-line. In short boring adult stuff. Except this point was raised at the meeting, and its not entirely true, at the moment there is dual paper and on-line billing and “in Q2 paperless billing will be available”. On that note, if you switch your power and gas bills will be separate bills (by design). combined billing or “bill shock” and a large bill arriving can scare people off.
Having said that, they have been supplying power for a while. They approached the National Ploughing championships with their offer. Their offer being a guaranteed 10% cheaper than ESB’s prices. So they signed up 15,000 of the 85,000 IFA members, and it seems they’ve been getting power for a while.
The prices are 10% cheaper than ESB for the 2008, and 5% cheaper than ESB for 2009 and 2010. The marketing manager, Nicky Doran, pointed out that its hard to do estimated pricing for more than 3 years. Also, Bord Gáis is regulated as they are the incumbent in the gas market, which means that if they want to lower their prices they have to go to the regulatory body to get permission to lower (or indeed raise) their prices. ESB have to do the same thing as they are the incumbent in the market. However, Bord Gáis is a new entry in the electricity market, so that’s how they can guarantee the price cut when compared to ESB. If the market gets completely unregulated, then blocks on the incumbent go away. So ESB are probably looking forward to competition.
Full disclosure, I just showed up. Apart from a cup of tea, I got nothing for this other than information (if you like I can clean up the notes I took at the session and post them in the comments). Is it worth switching? Well go check your figures and decide for yourself. I know that I don’t want to explain this one to my Mum without the paperwork in front of me.
The thing is, now that Bord Gáis has started talking to the public (well bloggers at least) and they are not only listening but talking (via @TheBigSwitchIRL on Twitter) as well as media monitoring. It means that they can hear.
Personally, I think its nice seeing a large Irish company treating the internet and blogging as something for grown-ups. Now, when are they blogging themselves?
