Detroit, China, Electric Cars, and the Electric Grid

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So the Detroit Auto Show is taking place right now. Seems a bit, um, looney to have a Detroit Auto Show, but okay. What do I know? And the buzz at the show is electric, electric, electric. Great. Fine. We all dutifully do our bit for the economy and the environment by buying electric cars.

But -- what's going to happen when we plug them in? Large chunks of the power grid in this country are in less-than-prime condition. I doubt that the grid will hold up under the burden of this new demand.

I gather Almost-President Obama realizes this and his transition team is soliciting plans and ideas for constructing a 21st century "smart" power grid.

Great! We need it sooner than we need new bridges.

But back to the Auto Show. The star of this year's event is the offering from BYD, a Chinese company. BYD's president says he'll be ready to start selling his electric cars in the U.S. in 2010. That's at least a year earlier than Chevrolet plans to release its hybrid, the Volt.

And, get this: BYD's car will cost about $22,000. The Volt? It'll start at $40,000. Both cars, by the way, are mostly-electric, meaning they're designed to run on their charge. Toyota's Prius, in contrast, is a gas-powered car whose electric motor acts a booster rather than the primary power source.

Anyway -- putting on my historian's hat to take the Long View of the Big Picture: All I can think of is the 1970s, when the Japanese began selling their vastly superior (and less expensive) cars in the U.S. Thirty years later, the American auto industry lies in ruins. Bye-bye, Ford, Chrysler, and GM.

Move over, Toyota and Honda. BYD is here. Read more in the excellent front-page story in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

E-Books, Self-Publishing, and the Future of the "Book"

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David Nygren of the Urban Elitist continues his analysis of the e-book. (Yes, I know: Why is a middle-aged Iowan is reading the blog of a Brooklyn hipster? What can I say? Good ideas transcend age and geography.)

His current blog entry is a delight: an idea-packed stroll through the possibilities of promoting/selling a self-published e-book. There's much to consider in his post, but I especially like his idea of serialization. As he notes, serialization was once a common mode of delivering books to readers.

In the 19th century, for example, writers routinely published their work as serials, with installments appearing on a regular basis in a specific magazine or newspaper. Many were authors no one has heard of since then, but among the better-known who published this way were Anthony Trollope (one of my favorite writers) and Charles Dickens. (Film studios, by the way, adopted the model in the 1920s: those "shorts" the preceded the main movie were short serial films whose plot continued from week to week.)

So why not bring back the serialized book? Have it delivered in chunks to your email inbox or Ipod or Kindle? Great idea! (The folks at dailylit.com are doing something similar with books in the public domain.)

David also points out that writers who go the way of self-pubbed e-books will need a "hook," something that will grab the reader fast so he/she will decide to buy the entire work (delivered in one piece or serially).

Here's one way to do that: writers could cooperate in operating a communal "storefront." The would-be reader visits the site, and "grabs" for free maybe the first five hundred or a thousand words of the book. If the buyer likes what she's read, she can then pay for the entire book. The money would go directly into the writer's account.

Anyway, as David notes, once writers AND readers get past the idea of the conventional publishing model (agents and publishing houses and physical objects sold in "real" stores), there's no limit to where creativity can take the new e-model for publishing and reading.

Again, there's plenty there for both readers and writers. Take a look.

Jay Brooks Looks at Beer In Art

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Jay Brooks is running an occasional series that he calls "Art & Beer." The images span the centuries and include a variety of artists working in different mediums. This is a link to the series up to now. Presumably he'll be adding more. When you land at the bottom of the first page, click "next" page" to see more entries. Jay never does anything by half, so each image is accompanied by plenty of background information and commentary. While you're there, take a look, too, as his predictions for the beer world in 2009.

Enjoy!