Something that made me go "hmmmm," courtesy of Guy Kawasaki's alltop.com website, was Toyota Motor Corporation's Prius promotion. The marketing involves solar-powered wi-fi hotspots (and laptop charging stations) touring the United States this summer, disguised as giant daisies.
Now, before I go loping any further into this post, I should point out that my work life for the past four years has been intimately bound with Toyota. Not so much lately, but that doesn't stop my boss from nicknaming me "Ms. Toyota."
It's public knowledge that auto sales are not faring well, and also that TMC is taking even slightly more of a beating than the market as a whole. Moreover, they weren't bailout beneficiaries like the Big Three. I can't put my finger on the reason, but something about those daisies set my antennae a-quiver, thinking that perhaps Toyota is dipping its feet into the waters of household--meaning off-the-grid--power-generating equipment.
As crazy as it may sound, it makes a certain amount of sense. There was a time--and for all I know it may still be that time--when Japanese corporations took a very long view of markets and macro-trends. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been paying enough attention to know whether that mentality survived "the lost decade." But if long-range thinking hasn't, in fact, gone by the wayside faster than a BetaMax copy of "Gung Ho," peak oil certainly has to factor into planning. If, by some miracle, emissions standards for coal are enforced, the associated energy costs will spike. That leaves natural gas and nuclear fission among the non-PC dinosaurs of the power industry.
Decentralizing and diversifying the power grid makes tremendous sense, particularly from the standpoint of redundancy. If the "smart grid" is hacked, the lights dim, but don't completely go out. Ditto for monopolistic Enron-esque chicanery--the kind that helped drive Grey Davis out of office. And smoothing out the spikes in natural gas prices can't be a bad thing, so that folks on fixed or low incomes aren't forced to choose between food/medication/etc. and just staying the heck warm.
Understand that I don't expect off-grid power to keep everyone's lights on 24/7/365, at least not within my lifetime. Yet, even as a purely supplemental supply, the potential for transformation should be quite pronounced. Once installed, household energy production is perceived as "free" (because any extra cost is wrapped into the mortgage or rent), which is a huge incentive to purchase leaner appliances, computers, lighting, entertainment devices, etc. Its effects may well leave a deep mark on the design of any structure: residential, manufacturing, office, retail, etc.
So, while eighteen-foot-tall daisies probably won't amount to more than splashy marketing in the near term, don't be at all surprised to see renewed interest--and, hopefully, capital investment--in household power generation. Perhaps Toyota won't be the company to push it...at least not under the Toyota name. Then again, who would have predicted that a guy who invented an automated loom would dabble in automobile manufacturing? That probably didn't make much sense at the time, either.
