make it games come true sometimes seems impossible now Henry Ford knew a few
things about that this shed you see behind me is actually where Henry Ford
started about a hundred years ago so obviously fort haven't always been a
huge global international car company when he started he obviously didn't
invent the car called bends dip but he had the idea of bringing the automobile
to everybody and he had the idea of creating the assembly line something
that was unheard of that point in time and when he did it he actually changed
the car industry forever those type of things can still happen today even
though today we of course have brands that are so iconic that are so giant so
overwhelming if you think about these brands behind me they have amazing reach
all over the world coca-cola distribution marketing budgets huge
facilities and I'm sure if you go in a plane and take a trip over Africa and
jump out the plane to Paris you would land somewhere in Africa there may not
be any electricity no food no water but within five miles you can probably buy a
coca-cola that's how powerful they are so when a guy suddenly had the idea to
start another software drink a soft drink which were not just about tasting
good what about getting energy it was about delivering something different
that was chalio the started Red Bull people told him that was insane you'll
never going to be able to make it he knew or probably thought it was nearly
impossible but he still took the risk he still did it he believed in his dream he
had a god feel and he went out and did it Richard Branson Virgin Airlines when
he had the idea about starting a new airline that's not so many years ago
just think about what it costs to buy planes to get the licenses everything
else is involved now he got one aizen's and one plane and the reason he
did it was because when he flew he felt there might be something else we can do
for the customer we could change it we could make it more fun maybe we could
make a bar inside the plane we get a drink maybe get a haircut at the lounge
things that was never done before and actually can get those things and he
started with Virgin Airlines and today that's probably one of the most famous
airlines in the world and the last one Dyson now he invented a new vacuum
cleaner because he thought all the current one sucks was they kind of do
but he invented of course the one without the bag and he went around and
presented this dream this invention to all the makers of vacuum cleaners and
they all rejected him and laughed at him said is never going to work so what he
did was he obviously started himself and years later he became the leading seller
of vacuums here in the US and in many other markets in the world and the same
people that rejected him are today copying him so it shows that it is
possible to go out even today and make the dream reality it is possible if you
take the risk now when I was eight years old I was sitting in the back seat on my
father's Saab 96 back in Denmark and sunny I saw that silver Maserati passing
me and I got butterflies in my stomach and you have to think about Denmark is a
small socialistic country we're seeing something like a Maserati is like seeing
a UFO or Bigfoot it's very rare so that was a huge event and at that point I
knew I want to do something with cars I didn't know if I was going to be an
engineer I didn't know if I was going to wash cars build cars sell cars I just
knew I want to do something with that fascinating thing called a car now so
what I did was I kept on drawing cars way beyond my age so to speak so in
school instead of taking notes I kept on drawing cars just like that notebook you
see there and eventually I had a meeting with a counselor when
I was about 12 13 years old and I remember she said well what do you want
to be when you grow up and I said well I want to be a car designer and she said
well there's nothing called a car designer you can be an engineer so that
was very discouraging but i kept the dream alive I kept on sneaking my
drawings in here and there and even through college I did that which meant I
didn't do very good in school but after college I got a job that closed I could
find a technical draftsman and even at that job i start joining cars and
eventually my dad said well why don't you write a letter to a car company so i
did i wrote a letter to volvo saying i would like to be at the car designer
because in denmark there is no car industry and volvo wrote back saying
well look you don't have any education but we can recommend a school in
California called Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and they have another
branch in Europe in Switzerland which same school so I took all my drawings
threw them in my old rusty elf Romero which is sort of a european honda for
those who don't know the car a little bit better and i drove down to
switzerland and got accepted at school few years later I started at BMW in
Germany in Munich and that was really when I started to learn about the car
industry and how complicated this and the dream I had about sort of creating
my own car company sort of faded quickly away as I realized it's hundreds of
millions of dollars is very complicated and I had a very exciting time I got to
design a BMW z8 sports car which eventually got into a James Bond movie
which were way beyond my dreams until I saw the film and they cut in half but
then so i migrated to aston martin and did a couple of things there but the
point is that i did learn about the industry and i got to do some fantastic
stuff but i still thought that there must be something more I realized that
the passion I had as a kid with those exciting cars looking at the car saw
them in the last 20 25 years a lot of that passion has kind of disappeared and
you look at some of the three set best-selling cars today I'm a car design
and I can say which ones they are so what happened
in the last 20 years is cars have become more of an appliance they used to be all
about emotion and fun and they used to be fairly cheap to run and now they
become an appliance gasoline is expensive in some countries you get
taxed on them and on top of them on top of that we start feeling a bit guilty
about driving a car because as it pollutes use a lot of gasoline so I
thought to myself what if you could create a car that took all the
environmental aspects that we know as possible and basically unite that with
the emotional side of a vehicle widest you know electric cars or small
fuel-efficient cars always have to look dorky why can t make a beautiful
gorgeous car so the what-if was really saying we put a instead of a normal roof
what about putting a solar panel on the car that can help charge the car you
know when I was working as to marching like all car manufactures would go to
Brazil and pick up you know the wood in Brazil and bring it back go with the
flamethrower sand it down and put in the car after was lacquered and I thought
what if we just get the wood from the California fires we don't need
flamethrower was already done and it sounded funny at that time but it can be
done so that was something I thought about and I also thought about if you
think about how the car is designed it hasn't really changed in the last
hundred years when we first develop the car you saw a car in a single Road in
the middle of nowhere and that still held advertising look today you jump in
the car and you drive around and the free open road but reality of course is
we sit in traffic like here like you see behind me that's reality that's how a
lot of us drive to work every day so I thought what if you can create a car
where when you sit in traffic and you listen to music you are conditioned on
you need power or what if it's just electric and what if because you want
the freedom that we've want to drive from LA to las vegas or New York or San
Francisco after maybe about 50 miles of gasoline engine turns on the create
electricity while you drive why can't we do that
so I thought there must be a way we can do that a lot of people of course as you
talk about these type of deers start telling you can't be done it's
impossible there's doubters but I still said what if I decided I was going to
take that risk now one of the two things that sort of inspired me was first of
all everybody's saying it couldn't be done that gave me sort of extra fuel and
power and the second thing was that I thought even the biggest car companies
in the world they still are only run by humans in fact any giant companies in
the world they might look giant but behind them is a human being and I'm a
human being and these guys they need to sleep eat and do everything else that we
do and they have the same problems so I thought why couldn't I then do it that
was part of my feeling of being able to take that risk now when you stand on
that cliff and are ready to jump off into the ocean and when I did that I did
see an island out there and I felt like I could swim there and as soon as I
jumped in the ocean suddenly that island kept on moving so it's pretty clear that
it isn't as easy as a sound and new is never that easy but for those of us who
take the risk and jump in the ocean I think that doesn't matter we still feel
that it's worth to pursue the dream is worth to do it and one of the reasons
for me is because the doubters that out there they are rarely the builders and
those who are the skeptics are never really the inventors and I feel there is
a possibility to go against the naysayers take the risk go out there and
follow your dream and get people behind you because there's a lot of us out
there that believe the dreams are possible so with that thank you very
much I appreciate it thank you you