{"id":74444,"date":"2016-10-23T06:30:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-23T04:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e52.nl\/?p=74444"},"modified":"2016-10-23T06:30:32","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T04:30:32","slug":"tomorrow-is-good-daan-kersten-elon-musks-plan-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/tomorrow-is-good-daan-kersten-elon-musks-plan-b\/","title":{"rendered":"[TOMORROW IS GOOD] Daan Kersten: Elon Musk’s Plan B"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow is good.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>In a weekly column, alternately written by Lucien Engelen, Maarten Steinbuch, Carlo van de Weijer and Daan Kersten, E52 tries to find out what the future will look like. All four contributors<\/a> are \u2013 in addition to their \u2018normal\u2019 groundbreaking work \u2013 linked to theSingularityU The\u00a0Netherlands<\/a>, the organization that focuses on spreading knowledge about technologies that can provide solutions to the problems of our time. This Sunday, it\u2019s Daan Kersten\u2018s turn.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Daan Kersten<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"SU<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomorrow is good, let’s collaborate\u00a0to ensure that promise. As I wrote in my first column we can all do our own part to fulfil \u00a0this promise.<\/p>\n

If there is someone who is really working on this goal, it must be\u00a0Elon Musk. With Tesla he rapidly changes the image of electric vehicles. He makes them sporty, exciting and responsible at the same time. Who would have thought that, after the dominance of the ‘sexless’ Toyota Prius, the Leaf Nissan and GM Volt. Henrik Fisker’s beautiful Karma unfortunately failed because its batteries caught fire. Something which does occur in the industry’s best families, as Samsung has proven. With his Models S, X, and 3 Musk is building a series of cars that each of us would like to have in the driveway. Even my partner and complete petrolhead Jonas confessed – after his first ride in a Model S – that his gasoline powered car felt somewhat\u00a0old-fashioned. The main contribution that Musk delivers with Tesla is not the beautification of our fleet, but the drastic improvement of the position of this whole category of vehicles. With this, he lowers the threshold for others to build cars that can make tomorrow better.<\/p>\n

For this contribution alone Musk already deserves a statue, but he doesn’t stop at that. As if being a revolutionary car manufacturer is not challenging enough, Musk looks at a broader perspective. Because, if we make electric cars that run on electricity generated from coal, tomorrow may still not be better after all. So he helps his cousins \u200b\u200bsetting up SolarCity, a company that installs solar panels on homes, and he builds the Tesla Power Wall, a large battery to store the electricity that has been generated by these panels. This way,\u00a0the car can be charged with really green electricity. For him it then is logical to merge this company with Tesla for a fully integrated proposition. Again,\u00a0Musk thinks one step further than the established order and he makes it easy for people to choose the\u00a0technology that makes tomorrow a little bit better.<\/p>\n