Pace of Change….Is It Fast Enough?

#Write52

It was 30 years ago today…. I saw a change.

1992, do we need to make it go faster, today?

Yep, 30 years ago as a student project engineer, working over holidays and still at Uni, I came across something very, very rare.

Something back then you might have seen on Tomorrow’s World on the #BBC. (I reckon it would have been William Woollard doing this piece to camera)

I’d just put in some new electric charging points for temporary fork lift trucks, for the factory when I got the call.

Could I install the charging point for an electric car? ( *temporary, that’s a whole other tech story)

Sure, where, what supply was needed, what equipment would be fitted?

Calls like this weren’t unusual, despite our product not being high tech, we used high tech equipment and thinking.

From memory it wasn’t too difficult, the location slightly challenging in the middle of a car park.

The person who wanted it fitting? he owned the car park, in fact, owned the factory, so that was relatively easy.

We fitted it within the week. We did have other projects on, hence the delay.

The factory? that made soft drinks, bottled lemonade, orangeade and colas in their million, yet our owner had developed a passion for renewable energy.

He owned a wind turbine company, wind turbine farm and went on to create airline fuel from air.
Oh and he had a personal helicopter and we had a company plane.

This was 1992 remember.

He was ahead of his time and I got to do something we are only now trying to address and charging & chargers still appear to be a problem.

I wonder how many car parks could be transformed?

Next time someone tells you the pace of change is too quick I hope you’ll remember what I was doing 30 years ago.

Is the pace of change quick enough in the places we need?

note: the car below is a BMW 1992 E1 which had a range of 155 miles, top speed of 75mph. I can’t remember what model of car was actually put on the charger. 🤦‍♂️

#electricvehicles #charginginfrastructure
#change
#battery

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