Suddenly there were many people asking us more info on the eCars - Now project, from all over the world. Some just having general curiosity, but many clearly thinking about the possibilities to join the project with a local initiative. Instead of answering each and every one separately day-to-day, I promised to write a how-to-blog.
Countries where we have been contacted in purpose to start a project or to just wanting to buy an eCar include to this day the following 18 countries: Denmark, Latvia, Great Britain, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Canada, USA, South-Africa, Australia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Nepal and Tajikistan. From more than half of these countries contacted us by more than one person.
Please keep in mind that the Finnish project is still in its early stage and we do not have crystal clear answers to everything. We did not intend to globalize before the introduction of the prototype to first have a proof that this can really work. So there is some uncertainty and "in construction" with the project that we are offering. On the other hand this might give you a more fresh and true perspective on how things can be done in real life. And yes, a globalized project can make the dream happen much much faster than previously held possible.
HOW TO DO IT
1. Evaluate what you have
Each one of you have a slightly different settings and local circumstances. Some of you might have background in the old car manufacturing or repair business. Some of you might have worked on environmental organizations and have experience on organizing not-for-profit projects. Some of you are IT specialists who are at home with all the web technics. All of these skills can be used for the project of course.
The Danish project, which is currently the only eCars - Now! country project besides the Finnish original one, decided to concentrate on getting a lot of sponsorship money and buying the whole conversion blueprint outside.
For some other person it would much more make sense first to do his own singular conversion with his own hands, even if it was never ment to be mass-produced. Understanding can be greatly grown from the concrete side. For some, doing the research work through the wikipedia and EV associations' sites is definitely what to do first.
Some people focuse doing things by themselves or within a small group. Some start immediately networking with possible partners. There's no single way to do it right. In any way, you must start from what you have, using what you know and do best. After that it's all expanding to areas of information that you don't yet know that much about.
2. What are your local circumstances?
What might work in the Finnish markets might not work somewhere else. For example, cars and gasoline are heavily taxed here. In the USA this is different, which may cause a slightly different approach in marketing be more effective than here.
Also, each country has it's own laws regarding electric vehicles: From conversion work to taxation and to registering an converted electric vehicle varies a lot from country to country. Would you guess that in Finland an electric car has to pay a yearly diesel-fuel tax !!
As far as I have understood, when a car is registered in any EU country, then it should be valid in any other EU country as well. Yet at the same time, the registration process may vary from EU country to other. This may lead to a situation that some countries will become exporter of converted electric cars inside the EU.
Also, if you are buying the ICE car from another country and after that converting the car, it could make the case really different from the option that you convert a locally owned car.
Almost all countries have at least one electric car registered so there should be some code of conduct for electric cars that you can find out from your local officials.
3. Is there a working Electric Vehicle Association in your country?
Some of the countries like USA, Canada and Australia have already existing strong and capable EV associations. Would it make sense to contact them? - Yes of course. Would it be best that the already existing organizations take hold of the local eCars - Now! projects? - Probably not.
In Finland we have had an existing EV association. Yet we decided to have the eCars - Now! as a separate and distinct entity. Even when many of the people working in the Finnish eCars - Now! are the same who are active also in the official Electric Vehicle Association, we have decided to keep the groups as separate entities.
If there is no EV association in your country, then maybe you come to the conclusion that it is the eCars - Now!, which is going to be THE electric vehicle association of your country. While you may want to focus just to the project goals - getting the eCars to the market - there are multitude of issues around electric cars that will inevitably come into the discussion when you communicate with folks: The energy production system, harmfullness of internal combustion engine, biofuels as an alternative etc. These all are things that are important to be able to know well and communicate eloquently to all people interested in electric cars.
4. How to organize?
We have made a decision of not to organize. This may seem as a paradox, but there are plenty of reasons to back up the soundness of this idea. First of all, eCars - Now! is an open source, open community project. Within that idea a membership and rules does not fit well. Also, once you start having formal meetings and certified procedures etc., much of the free spirit is lost.
Not to have any formal decision-making system has it downsides, of course. If there is going to be some major decision and a big minority, there is the possibility of breaking up. But this should be cheered. Breaking up means then following two separate paths. In so, it means growth in aspects as how things can be done. It of course means then splitting up forces that may slow down. This is the downside.
What it comes to making agreements with outside organizations, then formal and official entity has its role. Companies and officials have a hard time trying to grasp something that is not organized, "just a community", no matter what miracles it performed. So some sort of existing organization, be that EV association, environmental association, consumer association, car-owners association or even a private company is a handy thing to have at use when needed. But don't get preoccupied with that. My personal view is that the gains of not formal organizing are bigger than the losses as long as there is some supportive official organization for some "very official" needs.
5. Recruiting is everything
It is only natural to start things with your friends; work mate, school mate, a neighbour or so. Most of the best rock'n'roll bands have been based that way. Some of the most important technological companies too have founded their purpose, vision and succes from that start.
But that is just the start. You want more. In the "business" of non-profit recruiting is everything, because the cost of the extra labour is zero. To recruite people, you must create seductive things, you must be open, honest, fair, not egocentric and clear in communication. And there is a paradox too; if you just concentrate on recruiting, then there is nothing of a real soul in your project and people will sense that too. Recruiting is not that much of scanning potential people and persuasing them to do things for you. It is remembering that out there there are talented people that only wait to hear of you if you spread the word and wait with trust.
So the art of recruiting people comes along when you make genuine effort to polish your thoughts and use the time to communicate them over and over again. And to be open to really listen to all those other people that may be smarter than you. That creates the atmosphere where creativity flows and grows. That's what attract creative and talented people like honey does bees.
6. Learn from the original project, learn from other sister projects
In part two I will write a more closer analysis what is the overall scheme of the eCars - Now! project and how we have been able to move it forward and what wee see the next things to do. Again I must emphasize that we don't have all the answers, but we will try to help as much as we can. ( In this part one I try to write it out in a more general way, not yet coming into smaller details. )
7. When they see it, they'll believe it
Our experience is that many skills can have value within the eCars - Now! project. For some reason, here in Finland we have attracted many graphic designers to join the project. Since most of the project's communication happens in the web and since there is not yet much concrete stuff to give us credibility, I believe the work of the graphical guys has been essential to our succes from the start.
8. It's all in the web
I believe that for a sister project the good ability to read and write the web is essential. Probably even more important than the know-how on electric cars. As I wrote in the earlier blog, we are moving under Drupal open source web platform that enables us to give each country project a free site with unified database and all sorts of handy tools.
The development of the Drupal site has gone faster than expected and we are now in a phase were we could technically give administrator statuses for people to start building sister projects' sites. Having said that, there are still some decisions to be make for the structure, before we move into that. But it is just some weeks, not months when you can start your own site under the global eCars - Now! umbrella. Propably the blog post Number 3 will discuss those details and then you will be able to actually start building your local eCars - Now! project.
9. Start from the demand
When we started the eCars - Now! project, we had a clear goal in our minds: To create the market for the electric cars as soon as possible. For the market to exist, there is the supply and the demand. In the texbooks it is said that supply can create demand and demand can create supply. Now which one is more easily created?
In this case in order to create supply, one has to first build a prototype that fairly close matches the product you are going to send to the market. Not an impossible thing to do, that's exactly what the eCorolla prototype will be.
But even before that we created the demand. This was done much, much, much more easily. Everywhere in the world, there is a demand for a non-polluting, reliable and cheap way for personal travel. eCar does just that. When the public does not know of electric cars, there is no actual demand for them.
What is needed is just to coin the idea and ask people. - And Heureka! A latent demand is then turned into an active demand, even without showing any concrete product. That is why the visual and textual side has been and still is so important to the eCars - Now! project. It remains to be critical to the point when we have the first eCar prototype to show to the public.
(By eCar I here mean not just any EV, but a car that is able for mass electric conversion.)
I have a training for a social scientist. So making questionnaires is what I know something of. We made a questionnaire that created the actual, acute demand. I strongly recommend you do the same.
One beautiful thing of the questionnaire had, was that we asked people what kind of electric car would they want to have. This gave people the notion that their opinion had a way of affecting things. And it continues to do so, even after we have decided the first model to be eCorolla, people still want to say what they prefer, so that we can take their opinion into account when we consider the second car model to be converted. This willingness of people to show their wants gave us numbers; "1000 people have already answered our questionnaire…!" I believe that it also worked as a initiating phase to many who then became active in our electronic community.
We could translate the Finnish questionnaire into english and you could then translate it into your native language(s). That is one possibility. - Then again, there are different circumstances around the globe, so I tend to think not one global questionnaire will do.
We have been discussing with World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) with the possibility of creating a global questionnaire for the electric cars. One possibility is that we do that so that there would be let's say 10 global questions and each country could add their local questions as they like. They would all be in the same database, so that WWF could use the global data in their lobbying. Also with that, in each country you could have the local chapter of WWF to be your partner.
Also, even if we found that in Finland the second car to be converted should be let's say Renault Megane, if in Germany (having no active group for making a conversion prototype) had a questionnaire showing that there are lot of people wanting to have Wolksvagen Golf, we might better do that. Why? - Because 80 million people of Germany is more than 5 million people of Finland. All these conversion blueprints will be available through the whole world. So asking some of the questions in a uniform way globally makes sense.
10. Not all eCars - Now! countries need to have a conversion of their own
If we could have a three mass conversion schemes, we could create a huge global conversion markets. One would be middle class car, Toyota Corolla. Second could be a small city car, let's say Nissan Micra. The third one could be a family wagon capable of carrying seven persons.
Now let's say that in Finland we do the Corolla, Austria does the small car and USA does the family wagon. With these three options we can cover a very large portion of the car demand of the world. If we had two more, let's say Opel Corsa from the Danish project and some executive level car, say BMW, the hand would be quite full. This would require only five conversion projects.
For the conversion markets really to grow and glow we do need a hadfull of efficient, quality mass conversions. Three or four could be enough for that. But if these conversions just stay within those three or four countries, nothing great will happen.
So if you have appetite for the eCars - Now! project but are afraid if your car-making abilities are not good enough, don't be. Globally the demand side is more important than the supply side. Supply here meaning the supply of the conversion blueprints.
Supply of concrete conversion services will probably be essential in all the countries.
In the part 2 of How to start and eCars - Now! project, I will discuss:
- What could be the logistics of the global common purchases
- A story of how our project has gone along
- Translation of our questionnaire, so you will get some idea what kind of set of questions might work to you.
- Translation of eCars - Now! code of conduct
- What car to convert and on what basis to decide that?
- How will the buying of an eCar take place for an ordinary citizen
I thought of starting a global email list for discussing the matter on how to start an eCars - Now project. For the moment I feel though that it's best if you just spontaneously comment this blog posting. - I desperately need some feedback !!! ;-)
All the Best,
- Jiri
