Watched Shai Agasi speak tonight at Harvard's Kennedy School

Shai Agassi is the founder of Project Better Place, the battery recharging initiative out of which we powered our Manhattan Concept and some of our Hawaii Concepts. As of this week, they have signed a deal with Hawaii to put in a network of charging stations. Perhaps we will soon see the iBite on the roads of Oahu?














In the meantime, we will keep designing and building.

I very much agreed with most of what Shai had to say, however, I am still mystified as to why he or Better Place will not share their system standards so that all of us can make cars that work on his network.

Nonetheless, they continue work apace with Renault/Nissan to develope and to produce a large inventory of cars.

Not to fear. We will soon emerge as a leading contender for their production battery and system.

Join me at Web Innovators Group in Boston

On Tuesday December 9th, 2008 Local Motors will be taking its message to the street at the WebInnovatorsGroup Conference.





Presenting as one of 3 "Main Dishes" along with TripChill and Crimson Hexagon, we will be bringing our message of automotive networked community innovation to a crowd of Bostonians gathered at the Cambridge Royal Sonesta Hotel.

Free.

7pm.

Here is the evite with all of the information....Register...600 other people already have.

For those of you flying all the way from Singapore to see this (wow, that is dedication).....

Mr. Auto Goes to Washington

Today the CEOs of the three largest domestic auto companies brough before Congress their new plans for their companies and the reasons why they are requesting federal assistance. The details of these proposals are coming out and they range from interesting to should-have-been-done-a-long-time-ago. These hearings were related to the second piece of automotive focued funding which has been proposed to be taken from part of the TARP funding of $700BN.

Perhaps more interesting was the working group meeting that took place yesterday at the Department of Energy. This meeting was focused on the first piece of automotive focused fnding, which was approved last year and funded last month. It is a $25BN package under the auspices of the Department of Energy, which is directed at retooling auto manufacturing and component manufacturing facilities to make them capable of producing “green” cars.

The meeting was run by the energy efficiency team at DOE, and was a time to explain the "Interim Final Rule" that the Department of Energy and the Administration had written to classify and codify the way in which money would be awarded to auto companies pursuing a new fuel efficient product or process.

I found the list of attendees on the DOE website and have included them here for your reference. Clearly some folks sent their lobbyist and legal hitters, but many showed up themselves....let's hope not in private jets. This is a small, but precocious list of who's who in the auto world. Check it out..... (perhaps you too can guess who is hiding behind the names of the big law firms).

Venable LLP
Office of Sen. Feingold
McBee Strategic Consulting
Hogan Hartson
Saturn Electronics and Engineering
Fisker Automotive
EcoMotors
Visteon Corp.
Delphi Corp
Brown Timothy
Advanced Mechanical Products
Bury David
Ener1
New West Technologies
US Trade Rep
Cozen O'Connor
Kelley Drye Warren
Butzel Long
OMB Professional
Precision Metalforming Association
Capitol City Group
R.W. Beck Federal
New West Technologies
Office of Rep. Paul Ryan
Continental Automotive
Dale Kardos and Associates
General Motors
EMC
MAGNA
Dykema
Nelson Mullins
USDA
Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association
Akin Gump
Bright Automotive
Mazda North America
Arent Fox LLP
Perman Esther
K&L Gates
Alcoa
XP Vehicles
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
Chrysler LLC
Tenneco Inc.
ATS Communication
Patton Boggs
Coherix
New York Times
Hill and Knowlton
Wetzler Nicholas

Tale of the Community Tape it is all about Member Intensity

Recently, I got inspired to look into the community aspect of other well known car companies.

Let's take a look at some of them (a random compilation from simple Google searches).

Mercedes Benz "Owners Online" - Official forum from the company. Very hard to join. Have to match exact VIN with Zip Code and Last Name on purchase. Good luck feeling like a community member. When you join (finally), your choices are to select your next Benz (thanks but most customer's are out of money when they buy one), to sign up for service plans ($$$), etc....not a site of other owners anywhere :(

Benzworld.org - Unofficial community forum site. At 8pm on Dec 1, 2008: 180,000 members. 1,400 online (400 members, 1000 guests). 0.2% Members on-line

Tesla Motors Owners Area: VERBOTEN....unless you have shelled out $109,000. I wonder if you've made a deposit and are still waiting for delivery, if they let you in here?? Once they do, I wonder what is behind the green door? It better be good, but my guess is that if there are only 50 delivered, and many to people like Ahnold Schwarzenegger, that there is little going on in the owners area (doubt that the Governator has time to spend chatting it up).

TeslaMotorsClub Forum: At 8pm on Dec 1, 2008: 624 members. 24 online (3 members, 21 guests). 0.4% Members on-line

Ford Motor Company Owner Services, Owner's Community: A place to access a limited list of Owner's Benefits, a few pieces of Merchandise (car shaped flowerpots, Mazda Zoom-Zoom day packs, Mustang cologne, etc.), safety education links, and a link to outside third-party forums. At least you can get in here without listing your family lineage, but still not a real heartbeat.

Ford Truck Forum: At 8pm on Dec 1, 2008: 490,000 members. 1900 online (700 members, 1200 guests). 0.14% Members on-line

Chevy Owner Services: The most promising yet for community, as there is a gucci Web 2.0 feel and a promise of connection with other users. But Ohmygoodness, 45 minutes later, I still was unable to get on-line with other users, after signing up for a Yahoo ID, and joining Yahoo Groups (which hosts the community), and then having Firefox browser issues, and then finally getting on but finding no one on line. Oh well.

FullSizeChevy Truck Forum: At 8pm on Dec 1, 2008: 102,000 members. 350 online (240 members, 110 guests). 0.2% Members on-line

And now let's compare to our partner, upstart auto company, Factory Five Racing Forums: At 8pm on Dec 1, 2008: 19,500 members. 1500 online (750 members, 750 guests). 4% Members on-line

That means Factory Five's community may be smaller but it has 28x's more activity from its members than does Ford Truck's largest forum, 20x's more than Benzworld and FullSizeChevy, and 10x's more than TeslaMotorsClub.

Those numbers may not look like a lot, but everything is about percent intensity when it comes to a share of a customer's mind and his wallet. Think of it simply as 28x more interest in Factory Five, 28x's more likely to return, 28x's more likely to ask a question of the company, 28x's more likely to give actionable feedback, and perhaps even 28x's more likely to spend a dollar at Christmas on a Factory Five part.

Wow, that is the kind of business I want to be in!

Thanksgiving thoughts of the Rally Fighter in person

Since we had a number of members my family in town for this Thanksgiving time, they asked if they could come to the LM HQ to see the progress on the Rally Fighter. With great excitement, we arrived at 16 Kendrick and my Father and Brother both made a bee-line for the shop to see the first full-size mock-up of the vehicle.

They looked and looked and looked....and looked some more on the mock-up, and then they both independently delivered their verdict:

"Impressive, I had no idea how good the proportions would look in person. I can't wait to see the finished product now. Congratulations, this is a winner." You could see the genuine interest and enjoyment on their faces.

Basically, both had been looking at the website for some time now, but for whatever reason they were unable to comprehend the scale, size, and feeling of this vehicle...until now.

It will likely be this way with many initial customers, and that is one of the primary reasons why we are so focused on having a Local presence and the ability for a customer to come to the facility to participate directly in the creation of their product. Only with such touch points, can the customer reach the last full measure of excitement that my father and brother have just experienced.

Go Local!
Go Rally Fighter!

Everyone is invited to come by our shop at any time.

Boston has begun

Time to get in on the action. Boston Motors has commenced with its submission period. We cannot wait to see what the community develops as they begin to absorb the Boston vibe.

Feel the Revolution.

This may perhaps be a lesser known-city globally, but Boston has what it takes to enchant. Let's see that the entries are encouraged and the web community is self-promoting for this area.

Go Boston

Rob Burns and his surf legend - Local Motion

We are regularly asked, is there any connection between our company and Local Motion, the surf company out of Hawaii, and I have always maintained that, if anything, any relationship is merely tangential . That was, until last week when I had lucnch with a gentleman who shared his street address with Rob Burns that founder of Local Motion. He told us a story.....

As it turns out, Local Motion got its start when Rob went from door to door (rather beach to beach) to meet the Local crowd and to sell them on the idea that he shaped boards for the individual shape of the Local waves. How cool is that?! Shaping a board for local feel rather than buying one of the many cookie-cutter designs. Awesome!

Check out our early logo idea. It even played off of the name association and verisimilitude.















Sweet break dude. It is fun to know that there are businesses out there with a similar Local focus and ethos.