Statewide LG EE Best Practices: Weekly Update

! Here are your wEEkly updates:

1. Webinar on Energy Technology Competition 8/28: The U.S. Department of Energy will present a live webinar titled “JUMP SIEMENS Call for Innovation” on Friday, August 26^th. The Call is seeking innovative ideas for the use of personal “smart” devices to interact with public spaces.

2. Webinar on Hydrogen Infrastructure 8/30: The U.S. Department of Energy will present a live webinar titled “International Hydrogen Infrastructure Update” on Tuesday, August 30^th.

3. Energy Storage Summit 12/7-8: The 2016 U.S. Energy Storage Summit will be held in San Francisco this December 7th and 8th – and early bird prices for registration end August 31st! Get the agenda, more information, and/or register.

4. CPUC Decision on the EE Rolling Portfolio Now Final: The CA Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Proposed Decision Providing Guidance for Initial Energy Efficiency Rolling Portfolio Business Plan Filings (R.13-11-005) was voted on this week and was passed. Whether you are developing a business plan for energy efficiency funds and programs in the coming years, or providing feedback on one - or simply plan on seeking energy efficiency program funding – this decision covers a number of topics (Regional Energy Networks, issues by sector, pay for performance programs, third party and statewide programs, M&V) that may be of interest. You can access the Proposed Decision – and its table of contents – here.

5. Rolling Portfolio Background: Need a refresher on R-13-11-005 and the rolling portfolio? Check out coverage on this Proceedings, Decisions, and Legislation page. You can also get involved with current proceedings through the CA Energy Efficiency Coordinating Committee. Or, learn how to interpret CPUC documents and proceedings in this helpful 101 webinar.

6. CEC Staff Report on SoCal Electric Reliability: A new CEC staff report has been made available in preparation for the August 29th workshop on Electric Reliability in Southern California.

7. New Proposed Energy Storage in SoCal: Southern California’s utilities are turning to energy storage developers to get battery projects up and running at a record speed. This week, utilities Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric officially asked the California Public Utilities Commission to approve contracts for more than 50 megawatts’ worth of lithium-ion battery projects. Learn more from Greentech Media.

8. $1.2B in Cap and Trade Proposed by CA Senate: This Wednesday, California’s State Senate proposed a series of clean energy funding initiatives totaling $1.2 billion to address greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector and air pollution in urban environments.

9. Connecting Home Buyers with Metrics to Value EE: We’ve seen a lot of recent studies on how energy efficient homes are worth more; but, communicating this value has been a challenge, making the market slow to respond and leaving dollars and energy efficiency opportunities on the table in our communities. (This is especially unfortunate in low-income households, since connecting homes energy efficiency can help fight poverty.) This week, Greentech Media explores options for creating a easy metric to help home buyers include the value of energy efficiency in their decision making.

10. Low-Rise Mandatory Energy Code Measures Summary: The California Energy Commission (CEC) has just released the 2016 Low-Rise Residential Mandatory Measures Summary – this is a great document to share with your buildings departments as a resource to help designers and permit applicants in your jurisdiction comply with the new energy code.

11. California ZNE Milestone Achieved: The California Public Utilities Commission, California Energy Commission, and the New Buildings Institute (NBI) announced earlier this month California continues the march toward its zero net energy (ZNE) goals, with 108 new and renovated commercial buildings that have been either verified as generating as much energy as they consume or are working toward that target. More on zero net energy here – or, learn about ZNE tracking tools.

12. Waste Collection Zones Reduce GHGs: A new study of New York City reveals that commercial waste collection zones may reduce truck traffic and greenhouse gas emissions associated with waste collection.

13. New Research on Water and EE: Increased coordination between the water and energy sectors breaks down traditional silos and paves the way for an integrative approach to saving energy and water. This week, ACEEE has released a new summary of water-energy efficiency research and best practices, The Energy–Water Nexus: Exploring the Stream of Opportunities, which summarizes past research (see below) and discusses new opportunities, including joint energy and water utility collaboration.

14. Job Announcement: MCE is hiring for a Marketing Manager! Learn more here.

15. RFP Announcement: The City and County of San Francisco Department of the Environment (SFEnvironment) announces a Request for Proposals for As Needed Energy Services for the Department’s energy and climate programs, including energy efficiency, renewable and alternative energy components, and climate protection initiatives.

As always, you can keep track of relevant events by connecting to the EE Events Calendar, and find more resources being added daily on the EECoordinator website – including past WEEkly Updates.

That’s all for this week!

Hitting the hydrogen highway is the ultimate video game

Hydrogen is not yet a viable, cheap and easy-to-use fuel.

But the quest to solve that clean energy puzzle continues.

Sciencedaily.com reports that scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a nickel-molybdenum-nitride catalyst to more cheaply crack hydrogen from water. Chemist Kotaro Sasaki is quoted as saying his team wanted to find a high-activity low-cost method of extracting hydrogen.

He says the catalyst "actually outperformed our expectations."

And according to globalenergyworld.com, Lynne Macaskie, professor of applied microbiology at the University of Birmingham in England, reports a method of creating hydrogen from food waste. "The bacteria can produce hydrogen," says Macaskie at a bioenergy workshop in São Paulo, Brazil. "At the moment manufacturers pay to dispose of waste, but with our technique they could convert it to clean electricity instead.”

Not ready for prime time

Impressive. So what's the hold-up? Why can't entrepreneurial ingenuity figure out a way to get a clean fuel on the market that could transform our skies and reduce the competitive pressures forcing up the price of gasoline, diesel and other fossil fuel?

The answer thus far has been cost and technology. Solve the dilemma and emission-free power remains a matter of infrastructure.

The benefits are many. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe and No. 3 on Earth.

However, the reality painted by this Pres. George W. Bush-era study remains relatively static.

"To be economically competitive with the present fossil fuel economy ... the cost of producing hydrogen must be lowered by a factor of 4." The study, Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy, published by Argonne National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy in May 2003, says the performance and reliability of hydrogen technology for transportation and other uses must be "improved dramatically."

The ultimate gamer's quest

Unless, of course, somebody figures out the game. Compare the challenge to one found in a video game, perhaps the most difficult ever, with multiple levels, constant attacks by impossible to kill opponents, no cheats and the most elusive final key in recorded history.

Carrying this analogy further, I introduce gaming expert Pyree, who posted this answer to the question of most impossible game on tomshardware.com forum: "So apparently the hardest game is this one called 'Dark Souls,' made by Japanese game studio From Software."

Pyree, whose alter ego appears to be Wall Street Journal reporter Ryan Kuo, says the game makes it simply impossible to avoid dying excessively and horribly. There is no way to save or pause the game and if your avatar dies, the level resets. "Only attempt it if you are the hardcorest of the hardcorest rpg gamer and love to take on a near impossible challenge," he says.

Dark Souls to clean energy

Whether or not hydrogen is the Dark Souls of the clean energy world, I don't know. But I do know it will take some serious smarts and tenacity to break the code, find all the clues and track down the ultimate treasure.

How close we're getting depends upon whom is asked. I posed the question to a guy I've gotten to know here in the San Joaquin Valley. His answer surprised me. "Getting close," he says.

How close? By the sounds of it, very. I may be providing an update to my series on the hydrogen highway quite soon. A hint is here in a post by Laurence O'Sullivan on suite101.com that says, "Combined together, wind and hydrogen can cancel out their inherent defects and be an effective tool in the battle against carbon dioxide and global warming."

Pulling onto the hydrogen highway

There is also activity on the corporate front. Mercedes-Benz recruited drivers like actress Diane Kruger to drive its electric fuel cell vehicle, the B-Class F-Cell in California. Kruger is one of more than 35 "environmental enthusiasts and early adopters" in the state. Kruger, who stars in "Farewell, My Queen," drives the rig, which converts compressed hydrogen into electricity to deliver a range of up to 240 miles and an average of 55 mpg equivalent while emitting only water vapor.

I also checked in on Bob Lazar, whose company, American Hydrogen Energy, is gearing up to produce kits that convert gasoline-burning automobiles to run on hydrogen. Lazar converted his 1994 Corvette to run on H2 produced by solar panels.

Lazar explains how it works this way: "The hydrogen gas is safely stored in a solid form (advanced metal hydride) and is in fact safer in a collision than your Gasoline tank. The only exhaust you get from burning Hydrogen as a fuel is water vapor (steam), with very small amounts of nitrogen oxides. It's about a 'green' a fuel as you can get."

Rare Earth complications

Yet Lazar has encountered trials. His latest has to do with source materials. He says in a recent update on his website that the conversion system is dependent upon rare Earth metals and compounds. The Chinese government's decision to limit export of the country's domestic supply means prices have skyrocketed and more than quadrupled the cost of his conversion kits.

China dominates the rare Earth market. U.S. deposits exist but remain mostly out of reach due to a lack of mining. The materials have names like lanthanum, cerium, yttrium and neodymium and also are used in the manufacture of electric car batteries, wind turbines and solar panels.

China has spent the past several years locking up supply of these elements, planning ahead and banking on their value escalating.

"We are looking into all possibilities," Lazar says.

So the game continues. I'll drop in another quarter, and push "Ready Player One."

Photo: Actress Diane Kruger fills up her Mercedes B-Class F-Cell.
More posts:
Hydrogen Highway: Demonstrating a fill-up in LA
Hydrogen power integration as fast as a Zeppelin
Hydrogen Highway is possible but unrealistic, for now

Zero emissions? Hydrogen highway is possible but unrealistic, for now

In a 2008 video, Bob Lazar calmly explains how the fuel system he developed works.

What he doesn't say is that if proved to be commercially viable it would give oil companies a serious competitor and turn highways from pillars of pollution to clean, moisture-laden vapor trails.

Lazar proposes converting everyday internal-combustion automobiles to operate on hydrogen. The fuel, he says, can be produced from a solar-powered system that costs about $10,000. It uses electrolysis to separate hydrogen gas from water.

He's among a growing group of backyard mechanics, university research teams and even automotive manufacturers looking to shift into burning one of the cleanest and most plentiful elements in the universe. The trouble appears to be cost and infrastructure and, perhaps, getting a deep-pocketed or politically influential sponsor.

“If we had the budget of only one day in Iraq, this entire system would be available to everybody,” Lazar says.

Who's killing the hydrogen car

Lazar's system is the subject of the video short “Who’s Killing the Hydrogen Car?” by Jon Farhat, one of the film industry’s top visual effects guys. Farhat asks straightforward questions, sounding more like a guy who went over to Lazar's garage and stumbled upon a really awesome custom car.

Certainly, Lazar, whose company is United Nuclear Corp., has a cool car. It's a 1994 dark red Corvette that runs on hydrogen.

After separating out the hydrogen molecules, Lazar stores the gas in tanks similar to the oxygen bottles carried around by the old smoker down the street or the nitrous tanks in the dentist's office. And this appears to be Lazar's lock on the process.

As he explains to Farhat, transporting gaseous hydrogen by standard means would require huge tanks while liquid hydrogen requires keeping the gas extremely cold, about 423 degrees below zero or hanging around the surface of Jupiter. Instead, Lazar uses four tanks containing a hydride compound, which stores the hydrogen until heat is applied to release it.



Going the distance

“That’s the volume it takes to propel this car close to 400 miles, just about what it gets running on a full tank of gas," Lazar says. "And it’s a lot safer than gasoline. They can be shot at with incendiary bullets, cut in half with a chain saw. You can throw a match on them and they just smolder. … Only the hydrogen you need is released when you heat it so there’s never much gaseous hydrogen in the system.”

Kevin Kantola of www.hydrogencarsnow.com, who has been writing on the subject for about six years, says most, but not all, of the industry has settled on compressed hydrogen gas as the standard.

"There are some others working on developing cars that use a chemical carrier for hydrogen such as magnesium + hydrogen, different hydrides, ammonia, slurries, etc.," Kantola says via email.

Hydrogen production & distribution

Kantola says how to produce and distribute hydrogen is still up in the air, with manufacturing it from natural gas being the most popular method. He adds that there are some solar-electrolysis stations and even a wind-electrolysis station making hydrogen. "So, as an emerging technology there is a lot of flux right now."

One of the biggest problems is that of infrastructure. The transportation systems in our global economy are geared now to run our cars, buses and trucks on fossil fuels. The corner gas station from Deadhorse, Alaska to Hoboken, N.J. is part of the landscape.
"It's not so much an issue of cost, as the economics of producing and distributing hydrogen are understood," says James Warner, director of policy, Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, via email. "The issue is, how to build sufficient stations for a vehicle rollout, and how to keep them in the black as the population of vehicles increase."

How important is clean air?

It's really a matter of values. How important is clean air? Can a price tag be applied to stopping the flow of carbon into the air, acidity into the oceans and pollutants into the food chain?

To me, that's rhetorical. To others, the whole climate debate is considered misguided. Our economy is based on coal and oil. Separating such a major component is like slicing out a conjoined twin. One will surely die.

But do we have a choice? More rhetoric. But I'd certainly like to keep driving, and this hydrogen option sounds like a good one.

This could take awhile

Scouting around the web, I found quite a bit on the subject. An older piece in Popular Mechanics describes the contentiousness surrounding the technology and details the pullback by the Obama Administration after President Bush's endorsement.

Erik Sofge of Popular Mechanics writes in his piece, "Why the Hydrogen Feud Needs to End: Analysis," that hydrogen fuel cell research, which appears to be the method of choice for automotive propulsion, is mired in "tumultuous debate."

Sofge says while proponents sink money into research and marketing, opponents refute their claims with their own numbers, "asking that researchers shift time and money to more promising technologies, like batteries."

The answer may be grassroots

Endless debate won't shift even a small percentage of automobiles or fleets onto a hydrogen highway.

I stumbled (seriously, on stumble.com) across a video from Juan Pablo Girardi, engineer and a founder of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Brain Optimization Institute. He says while electric cars don't burn fossil fuel, they require creation of toxic materials via construction of their lithium-ion batteries. He also touts hydrogen.

Girardi says health-wise the evidence against gasoline is overwhelming. As for hydrogen, he says its development is not a technological issue but a political one. He urges a grassroots movement for getting U.S. government support of the production of hydrogen cars and the conversion of existing cars.

Maybe that will happen. But collateralized debt obligations, which in part led to the housing crisis masking toxic mortgages to investors, still exist despite heated opposition to the practice. So maybe not. This may need a big corporate supporter.

"You can move a 747 with hydrogen," Girardi says. "The technology is there. Let us stop procrastinating."

Hydrogen gets YouTube hits

There is interest. On YouTube, Girardi's video has just 3,660 hits. However, a test drive in a hydrogen BMW has 232,000 and an instructional piece with about the Formula Hydrogen racing car project, a collaborative exercise between RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and the University of Applied Sciences, Ingolstadt, Germany has about 72,000.

Geoff Pearson from RMIT's School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering heads the team and explains very simply how it works. "A lot of the technologies are very similar to what you'd find in your standard vehicle," he says.

Using standard technology is exactly how Steve up in Davis, Calif. attracted a collective 356,700 hits on his YouTube channel. His most popular is a 1:31 minute video of a raggedy old Ford running off a standard welder's tank in which he says is hydrogen. "The truck runs better on hydrogen than gas," he writes.

Steve, who goes by powerzap69, also peddles several books he's written on converting anything to run on the gas.

The tiger in your tank will cost

Gene "Hydrogene" Johnson, an energy consultant and managing editor of H2 Nation who lives in Fresno area, puts it in perspective. He told me awhile ago, "Let's help get the OPEC monkey off our back."

Hydrogene sent me a picture of his H2 HHR SSR, an acronym for Hydrogen Hot Rod Super Sport Roadster, taken at Sunline Transit H2 Refueling Station in Palms Springs, Calif. back in 2007. He says hydrogen is possible. “The challenge with anything new is the cost. The tank alone (on the SSR) cost us $10,000. Total install cost around $20,000.”

Hydrogen power integration as fast as a Zeppelin

Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel and perhaps the most plentiful element in the universe.

Its atomic number is one. The sun, which has a mass about 333,000 times that of earth, is about three quarters hydrogen.

So why can't I convert my car to burn it? Jay Leno drove the BMW Hydrogen 7, which runs on hydrogen or gasoline with the flip of a dashboard switch. (I am so jealous.) But he doesn't own one, at least as far as I know.

Ask the best friend

I ask my friend Eric Storms what's going on. "Why can't I have a hydrogen-powered car?"

He says (and I'm making this up since I haven't really asked, but we've done this back and forth so often my guess is usually pretty close), "Because you're not Jay Leno."

Me: "So what?"

Eric: "You don't pull down an annual salary of $30 million, you're worth far less than $150 million and you don't employ a massive garage filled with expert mechanics who do nothing but maintain and restore your amazing automotive toys."

Me: "Yeah, I get that. But I'm talking daily driver. A car for the masses."

Eric: "You already have a VW Bug."

We have the technology

Me: I look at him sideways. "It needs a paint job and a new wiring harness. That's not the point. I believe we have the technology to extract hydrogen from whatever source be it natural gas or electrolysis of water and run our cars on it. We'd use internal combustion engines because we've already mastered that technology. We'd continue to research fuel cells but we'd develop infrastructure to support our existing transportation network of two cars for every adult in the United States."

Eric: "Sheep."

Me: I ignore the comment.

Eric: "We love oil. It's in our blood. You grew up in Alaska. You get it. Oil is our way of life. It pays your Permanent Fund Dividend check. It is the nectar of gods."

Me: "Nectar of gods? And I haven't lived in Alaska since 1992 when the evil McClatchy empire bought and shut down the Anchorage Times."

Eric: "You know what I mean."

Me: "Yeah. I do."

Hydrogen fuel may be close

This particular conversation between Eric, who lives outside Seattle, Wash., and I can continue for hours and sometimes does, especially these days via cell phone. However, in this case I believe we may be closer to using hydrogen than I first believed.

BMW says it's already developed the first production-ready hydrogen vehicle and boasts, "It's already proving itself in the real world too: we're putting 100 of them to the test as loan cars for leading figures from the worlds of culture, politics, business and the media."

There's that Leno reference.

Delving deep into automotive hydrogen

I recently stumbled across a site devoted to hydrogen-powered automobiles, hydrogencarsnow.com and read through quite a bit of the reference information and blog posts. The site also features online conversations about insider topics that required me to do research just to get an inkling of what the writers are talking about.

But the information is fascinating and gives insight into what may be around the corner. Yeah, I know. Dumb reference with zero time element. OK, maybe down the road is a better idiom. I just hope Cormac McCarthy won't write the script.

According to hydrogencarsnow.com, Nissan is scaling up the heights of hydrogen fuel cell development and are ready for commercialization. Even better, "the cost of the 2011 fuel cell stack is near what the U.S. DOE has been asking for in regard to commercializing fuel cell vehicles," the post says.

Technology advances rapidly

And there's a bunch more information out there. The Department of Energy commissioned an exhaustive report that chronicles much of the nation's hydrogen research, patents and developments. Dubbed "Pathways to Commercial Success," the 240-page report features a mass of data about such things as the advances made by DuPont Fuel Cells (with DOE aid) in creating more chemically stable fuel cell polymer technology eight times more stable than than existing technologies.

The problem with fuel cells is their inner workings break down, meaning cost goes up.

Other advances in the DOE report include developments in advanced coolants for fuel cells, thinner and cheaper fuel cell "stacks" and new generation methods.

New players emerge

Up in Modesto, Calif., Hydrogen Technologies Inc. continues to work on bringing its energy-generation systems to market. It has partnered with the Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 442.

Boulder, Colo.-based analyst Pike Research released a report saying fuel cell vehicles will reach the market by 2015, and, according to the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, the market could reach $16.9 billion by 2020. Pike says the problem with the cars is cost.

So what's it all mean? Heck if I know. Like most consumers I wonder about variables like: How much will it cost? Where can I find it? Will my wife allow me to spend more money?

The basics.

What's the hold up?

I pose the question of what's keeping hydrogen from automotive tanks to James Warner, director of policy for the Washington, D.C.-based Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, and he says, "Industrial hydrogen production is well-developed and has been for years. The issue is getting hydrogen infrastructure installed — what comes first, cars or infrastructure?"

It's "not so much an issue of cost, as the economics of producing and distributing hydrogen are understood. The issue is, how to build sufficient stations for a vehicle rollout, and how to keep them in the black as the population of vehicles increase?"

Kevin Kantola of Hydrogen Cars Now says he test drove a BMW Hydrogen 7 dual fuel car a couple of years ago. "It was a nice ride, but it could only go 60 miles on hydrogen before it ran out and had to switch over to gasoline," he says.

Kantola explains that the BMW used liquid hydrogen. He says the automaker has since backed off on the concept perhaps because it is comparatively expensive to cool, store and build the equipment to do it. He says other major automakers have opted to run their cars on gaseous hydrogen, which is supported by most of the vendors building fueling stations.

Going mainstream

If I start seeing hydrogen at the corner gas station, I'll believe hydrogen has gone mainstream. Otherwise it's just one of those "good for the Space Shuttle" fuels. Still, I remain ready to jump on the band wagon. I love the concept: clean, green and plentiful.

I can imagine what Eric's thinking.

Eric: "Buy a Ford. Then order the chicken-fried steak at the Country Cousin in Centralia."

Me: "And forgo my peanut butter sandwich?"

Eric: "Loser."

Prof: Use solar to make hydrogen & power the world

On any given day, humans blow through millions of gallons of gas, untold tons of coal and scads of electricity from nuclear plants, hydropower dams and various other power-producing operations.

The cost is tremendous and its perpetuation a main driver of the global economy.

All that energy equates to about 15 terawatts, give or take, per year. A terawatt is a trillion watts. And demand, while stymied somewhat by recession-aided stagnation, is expected to grow.

The problem is that we humans are burning, churning and polluting our way through a finite fuel source. What if, on the other hand, we got handed to us a viable energy source that doesn't stink up the place?

We did. Or we do. It's the sun and an element six times lighter than air -- hydrogen.

Sure, the statement's old new to anybody on the clean energy front. "Solar, solar, solar," the mantra drives oil industry execs to distraction.


But tapping into the sun for all the world's energy is possible, we just have to figure out how to pull it off, says Derek Abbott, who looked at energy problem as an engineer would, calculating out a potential solution without letting minor details get in the way.

In a six-part lecture posted on YouTube and viewed in most cases just several hundred times, Abbott, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, spells out just what it would take to capture solar energy and provide enough to power the world's 15 terawatts. The sun, he says, produces enough energy to power about 10,000 of our planets, or 174,000 terawatts.

Imagine 500-by-500 square kilometers of parabolic mirrors used to capture the sun's rays and reflect it back to boil water used to create electricity. Abbott's concept is to limit "digging in the ground" for energy, thus going with mirrors rather than photovoltaic panels.

He says that is all it would take, should his figures prove correct, to crank up those 15 terawatts.

"That's the size of Victoria," says the Australian, referring to the southeastern state of his country that stares across the Bass Strait at Tasmania. "Would anybody miss Victorians?"

Possibly not New Zealanders, but that's incidental. (I'm hardly an expert in down-under razzes but a good example is the reference to Miss New Zealand in a couple of "Flight of the Conchords" episodes by Australians.)

Abbott proposes to solve the on-again, off-again nature of solar power by using it to produce hydrogen via electrolysis of water. The electricity created by solar energy would create the separation of the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen could be exported as fuel.

Abbott's concept involves garnering government support for research and some initial subsidies and is focused on what Australia can do. His university has as a motto: "Our students make an impact on the world."

Abbott points out that his theories require vetting and further research. But he also mentions that Henry Ford started building his wildly successful Model T prior to construction of many sealed roads and service stations. So it's a Frisbee. What the heck? I'm always up for a game.

As for the safety of hydrogen, Abbott says he was encouraged by a University of Miami study that showed how a puncture of a hydrogen tank on a vehicle compares with one in a gas-powered vehicle. One explodes, one doesn't. Suffice to say hydrogen cars, which have been embraced by the likes of Jay Leno, won't necessarily work for a Michael Bay film.



BMW offers its hydrogen powered series 7 car with an internal combustion engine. And as Leno says, "It's a fuel just like any other fuel." The fuel is maintained cold enough to be in a liquid state.

Leno says he suspects hydrogen as a fuel will move rapidly. Of course with the BMW, the driver can switch without any trouble to gasoline.

As BMW says, "The future is closer than you think."

Photo: Courtesy bmwcoop.com.