Read this to marvel at the prospects of humanity’s technological progress—and, unfortunately, to shudder at the economic and geopolitical catastrophe guaranteed to us by the oil kleptocracy created by Putin.
Sergei Filonov, Vice President of Technology at Crowdage Academy, Tesla owner: When I registered it with the traffic police (GAI, the old name for Russia’s vehicle registration authority), they had to create a new entry. It simply wasn’t in the database. Andrei Podshibyakin, CEO of the agency Social Insight, journalist: It doesn’t even have exhaust pipes. The traffic police must have been pretty surprised. Filonov: That’s nothing. You haven’t seen what’s under the hood! (Tries unsuccessfully to open the hood for a minute.) It’s actually smarter than it looks. (The hood opens. Under it—empty space.) There. Podshibyakin: Wow, two trunks! Is it hard to charge? What, does it really refuel from a regular outlet? Filonov: It comes with a standard charger, and I bought two additional sets. You plug them into an outlet, and the other end goes more or less where the gas tank would be. At 12 kilowatts, it charges overnight. On a full charge it shows a range of about 450 kilometers (280 miles), but that’s on the highway. In Moscow you don’t get that, especially since you want to put your foot down—and “putting your foot down” here means 0 to 100 km/h in 4.2 seconds. I’ve never done more than 250 kilometers (155 miles) around Moscow in a day, and that’s fully restored overnight. But I don’t even drive that much—I’m not a taxi driver. ...
... Podshibyakin: Is it expensive to charge? Filonov: 68 rubles for a full charge—if you use the night rate. By the way, it also has another built-in possibility: because there are different electricity rates, day and night, if you live in a detached house, you can use the car as an uninterruptible power supply. In other words, you charge it overnight at the cheaper night rate, and during the day you power your house from it. Savings! http://vozduh.afisha.ru/technology/mashiny-bez-benzina/ Think about that. This is not California, and not some experimental car on the streets of Cupertino. This is Moscow, where a mass-produced car with no gasoline engine at all is driving through the streets. A full charge costs about the same as two subway rides. Right now, with customs duties and shipping, this car costs $200,000 (Russian officials buy ordinary Mercedes cars for that kind of money), but it’s obvious that in 10 years they will cost less than cars with internal combustion engines, and in 20 years most cars will be like this. In other words, it’s not just our children—we ourselves have every chance of seeing streets full of silent, environmentally friendly cars charging like mobile phones. Where will Russia be then, after being definitively turned over the past 15 years into a raw-material appendage of the developed world, with an entire economy tied to the extraction and export of hydrocarbons.
And what makes it most bitter is that the colossal sums earned from the last oil boom in human history could have been invested in development, science, and technology—things that would have allowed the country to compete successfully in the global arena. And what do we have to show for the $3 trillion earned from selling oil and gas abroad? A record increase in the number of billionaires who make their money here but somehow make up the leading ranks of Britain’s richest people list. An APEC summit that cost 146 times more than other APEC summits (and after the summit, everything fell apart). An Olympics that is costing 146 times more than other Olympics. A FIFA World Cup that will cost 146 times more than other World Cups.
Sorry, grandchildren—we didn’t leave you an electric car, but you can envy the fact that in our day newspapers competed to guess how much money Putin had in Swiss bank accounts: a hundred thousand billion, or three brazillion?
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