Electric Car Industry Pulls In For Quick Charge At Microsoft

This is the transcript of an interview about Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center Beyond Oil Conference:

Co-anchor Dennis Bounds: “The electric car industry pulled in for a quick charge at Microsoft’s Redmond campus today.”

Co-anchor Jean Enerson: “And as KING 5’s environmental specialist Gary Chittim shows us, some of the nation’s biggest companies are ready to plug in to this technology.”

Reporter Gary Chittim: “The American auto industry is shifting gears. This is Ford’s first venture into the all-electric vehicle world. In just a year it will enter into mass production, and Ford expects to ride it into a new age of automobiles.”

Mike Tinskey, Ford (driving Ford Focus all-electric vehicle): “(We’re) a year and a half from production. We’re starting to see that in multiple segments, customers are demanding the technology before it’s even out.”

Gary Chittim: “That’s the game changer – the growing customer demand. Ford is just one company represented at the Seattle-based Cascadia group’s “Beyond Oil” program. Manufacturers from Detroit, and the garage down the street, bringing in new ideas, new cars and new slogans (shows “AMPITUP” license plate on Tesla roadster) to put on the American highway. Having the big players on board does away with a lot of the skepticism people had out there about this industry taking off. After all, remember what happened when the big companies got involved with these (holds up cell phone), and who can imagine society without them?”

Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft: “We look back 20 years ago, at the mobile phone which cost almost $2,000, or a computer which cost $9,000. Did anybody envision the mass adoption which has happened, would have happened within 20 years?”

Gary Chittim: “Microsoft and other supporters see the electric car movement has the momentum to attract big-name companies, and familiar names now in the big time.”

Ron Sims, former King County Executive, now HUD Undersecretary: “This is a new technology. We want it to emerge as the nation’s technology, so we can be dominant once again in the automotive industry.”

Gary Chittim: “Ford and other automakers feel they missed the first wave of new auto technology and paid a heavy price. They apparently don’t intend to get left behind by the next one. In Redmond, Gary Chittim, KING 5 News.”

Co-anchor Jean Enerson: “One of the themes of the conference is how the Northwest is poised to lead in the electric car conversion.”

View the video here.