Low on power? Change your batteries
So electric cars have limitations we hear about all the time. Short run times, slower vehicles, and limited life are all on the list of needs to overcome to make the all electric vehicle viable as a full time option. There are thousands of people working to fix everything on the list as they see EV’s as the next great solution, and I agree – to a point.
As I was making a phone call earlier in the day I hear that terrible chirp in my ear telling me that my phone battery is low, so I reach for the charger and think “this is going to take forever to charge” and it was at that moment that I remembers I had a charged battery for a different phone that happened to fit my new phone. I swapped batteries and all was right with the world. It was that simple, batteries of the same design to fit across multiple phones got me thinking about EV’s and a solution to two of the biggest problems for full electric transportation. Swappable batteries!
My mind raced as I thought about possibilities and logistics. I had a full business plan in my mind and I was ready to grab some web space and tell people about how I could change the world. I would convince everyone from Toyota to Ford to Nissan to governments all over the world to start building swap stations for car batteries. We could get everyone to create a standard battery pack and regulate those packs for minimum standards of quality and specs. We could design a station that would maintain these packs at peak performance better than the individual user, thereby resulting in a longer lifespan even under different loads and requirements.
There was money to be made in this idea, initially because some governments and private companies are shelling out big dollars for revolutionary ideas like this, was to make full electric transportation possible to replace fossil fuels, or at least supplement them to reduce their use. Then there are the leasing plans, the ability to set a transportation cost based on a fixed number. It would even be possible to build the cost of the battery swaps into the car lease or purchase price.
Facilities design would be paramount to the growth of the industry. Hundreds of thousands of empty gas stations can be converted to fuel cell swap stations replacing the large fuel tanks below ground with cell holding containers. Make each container fully contained in the same way Google adds server additions – fully pre built shipping crates that plug in like Lego blocks. Branded stations for whatever energy supplier comes up with the money to put their name on the station, both making additional income and connecting locally with the user base.
But enough about my thoughts, because someone has already beat me to the idea. A company called “A Better Place” has taken this idea and run with it.
I guess I’m not the smartest person on earth, and I’m a little late to the party. They seem to have a lot of the bases covered as far as building out the infrastructure and designs. Who knows about marketing and planning as I’m sure the numbers people are locked far away from public view. I’m going to keep an eye on these guys and see what direction they take and of this idea can get any traction.
Networking disaster case study
Tonight I was at a networking event for my local chamber of commerce. It was an interesting event that taught me about the chamber, but it was the networking after the event that proved to fuel this post. I met some new people tonight, some of them had some business to propose during our conversation, but all of them handed me a business card.
One particular egregious business card violation has just about everything wrong with it you can expect. It was a web marketing company called AdzZoo. Seems straight forward so far, and I don’t have any problems with companies taking a quirky name and branding it. But the double Z’s in the name can lead to some confusion if that’s all you rememberd about your interaction. I know the firat thing I did was to type AdZoo in my browser and come up with a GoDaddy parking page. Not good right away but forgivable once I saw the card and really looked for the company. That’s when I really looked at the business card….
the website on the card was www.clientname.adzzoo.biz it took me almost two minutes to type that into my browser…and when I did I get a message that “This Representatives Site does not exist” could it get any worse? Not only is the domain less than perfect the company requires their sub dealers to maintain some cryptic sub-domain impossible to type site. Directly from their website;
Your AdzZoo website domain name (XYZcompany.AdzZoo.com) cannot be changed. Having an optimized AdzZoo.com site link as a part of the name allows our clients to take advantage of organic search clicks and additional exposure, building our customers a more comprehensive online presence. Clients may purchase a domain from a domain provider (like GoDaddy.com) and then point that domain to their AdzZoo site as well.
So this expert web marketing service requires their dealers to maintain this…how do they expect them to build these contacts?
But wait! It gets worse….much worse…the email on the card is a verizon.net account. No adzzoo branded email to go along with the sub-domain requirement.
I should say I did not review what this company does, and I do not know if they are successful. I really don’t have the desire to find any more information because this first impression really turned me off. So let’s take a lesson from this….
Do Not;
Have confusing letter combination in domain names
Use un-necessarily long web addresses
Use generic email addresses
First impressions are key, and you should make it as easy as possible for someone to contact you. The above issues all make it near impossible.