06 THE NEXT... GAS STATIONS
CHARGE POINTS

AUTOMAKERS MAY be scrambling to make consumers love lithium-ion battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) but the real fortunes are to be made from electric charging points.

The outfit credited with developing the world’s first truly generic EV refuelling network is Britain’s Elektromotive whose Elektrobay charging point is now trialling in the UK, Holland, Sweden, Iceland and Germany. More than a glorified plug, the Elektrobay is also a smart meter that identifies the user and transmits energy usage wirelessly to the energy provider, who will issue a bill. Meanwhile, Richard Jupp, co-founder of the UK’s Park and Power, claims to have already developed a ‘fast charger’ that greatly cuts the charge time. He says a charging point currently costs between €3,000 and €8,000 depending on ancillary services such as installation and maintenance.

Elektromotive founder Calvey Taylor-Haw, claims that his largest sale to date is 150 charging posts to a Saudi university, but elsewhere much larger developments are in motion. Arizona-based Ecotality recently won a €68m federal stimulus grant to install 12,750 charging points in five US states to juice 5,000 Nissan Leafs. But the real players look likely to be the Chinese. Shenzhen Goch Investment will manufacture the charging points for Ecotality in a joint venture, while China itself could soon absorb millions of charging points. The market for electric car charging systems in China is being driven by several forces. Chinese automakers such as BYD, Chery and Geely want to become world leaders, while the Chinese government has thrown its weight behind EVs to alleviate the country’s air-quality problems.

07 THE NEXT... ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT
PHILANTHROPY

NO ONE is saying that the High Net Worths are going to stop rewarding themselves with the odd Ferrari purchase, Judith Leiber handbags, Christian Louboutin shoes, Cartier watches and Ritz-Carlton experiences. But the lead set by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in big-league philanthropy has created an ‘alms race’ predicted to get much bigger next year.

In its latest survey of luxury trends, the Luxury Institute quips: “It’s not much fun for kids to have the wealthiest parents in private school when everyone knows they made their money in a Ponzi scheme that brought the world economy to its knees.”

Such an atmosphere is already generating plenty of sackcloth behaviour by repentant wealthy executives trying to carve out new legacies by engaging in serious philanthropy. Next year will likely see all the bad boys of 2008-9 (think ex-Lehman boss Dick Fuld and ex-Merrill boss John Thain) pinning charities to their lapels in search of redemption.

08 THE NEXT... BIG BROTHER
LIFELOGGER

GEORGE ORWELL might have predicted our surveillance-obsessed Big Brother society but he didn’t foresee the rise of personal CCTV: citizens watching each other. Getting short shrift from a car rental clerk? Watch the smiles break out when you threaten to YouTube the grimaces direct from your mobile phone.

On the road, a more practical use for the mobile video camera is emerging: the accident eyewitness. To record SMIDSY (sorry mate, I didn’t see you) collisions, hands-free video cameras are being fitted to motorbikes and bicycles. China’s Muvi Micro DV Cam is just 55mm tall, has a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, and is only €100. The X170 helmet-cam from the UK’s Drift Innovations is twice the size and price but shoots 720 x 480 pixels and sports a tiny LCD screen for instant playback of roadside transgressions.

In automobiles, the technology has gone a step further, recording performance parameters before, during and after an accident. Around 120,000 cars in the US and South Africa are already fitted with a Total Event Data Recording system from DriveCam, which costs €1,500 a year and involves “driver coaching”. Around €1,100 cheaper, the Roadhawk camera fits behind the rearview mirror and, with its GPS chip, logs speed, position, direction and G-force. Crash reports can be generated with video embeds and mapped in Google Earth. Already widely fitted, ‘black box’ cameras could become compulsory for fleet operators as they improve driver behaviour, reduce insurance costs and, as careful motoring equals frugal motoring, save on fuel bills.

Meanwhile, a camera you can wear to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by UK-based Microsoft Research Cambridge. Invented to help jog the memories of Alzheimer’s sufferers, the ViconRevue, might one day be used by the Facebook generation to create “lifelogs” that archive their entire lives. Worn on a neck-cord, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1GB memory.