It is a pleasure to be here.
I'm going to just be very brief and start by actually repeating themes that Bertrand
(sp) and Andre (sp) have noted, because this wonderful achievement -- I mean, this -- really,
this engineering marvel cuts -- touches on four really critical areas for the Department
of Energy.
They've brought them all together into this wonderful system.
But one is of course solar.
That's obvious.
Number two, as mentioned, energy storage.
Flying in night would be a little bit more difficult without batteries.
Number three, energy efficiency and system integration -- enormously important area,
of course.
And fourth, I would just single out kind of the advanced materials, in this case, the
lightweight materials.
But those four areas, and the last three in particular, of course, cut across many of
the critical technologies we are developing, including, for example, good old-fashioned
land vehicles drawing upon storage and efficiency and advanced materials.
So let me just say a few words about some of these elements from our DOE perspective
as they have been so wonderfully brought -- so inspirationally brought to us here with this
project.
On solar, first of all, I should note that, you know, I -- it was mentioned I -- my career
has been mainly at MIT, and at MIT, we also had a solar airplane, much lighter than this
one, for all -- you know, with all due respect.
This was a technology in which a novel way of depositing solar electrode material could
be applied to just ordinary paper.
Then the paper was folded up into a little plane, and no pilot, but it's actually very
interesting.
There actually is, I would argue, a strong synergy here.
What we're talking about is advancing solar technology in many dimensions, going to things
like flexible substrates, lightweight.
This is important, obviously, for the solar plane, but it's important for lowering the
costs of rooftop solar.
One of the reasons the current costs are so high is because of those costs of installation
with big, heavy systems.
I would argue that, number one, a lot of people are going to be surprised 10 years from now
at where solar is, and not only in standard applications, but in applications we don't
know yet because of the various types of solar technology being put forward.
In fact, this morning I spoke at our annual Energy Information Administration conference,
and one of my themes was, you know, we look back 10 years, and we say, wow, the world
looks really different today.
You name it, iPhones, no more, you know, big hero evening news anchors, we get our information
in other ways, et cetera, et cetera.
But when we look 10 years ahead, we think the world's going to look the same, and it's
not.
These are examples of the technologies that will make 10 years from now look just as different
as it does when we look back 10 years and see the enormous changes that we've had.
So that's one point.
Secondly, storage.
I'm going to flip now, in fact, to vehicles on the ground.
Just recently some of you may have seen we had an interesting event in which Tesla paid
of a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the Department of Energy nine years ahead of schedule.
They're making money.
Obviously, this is an expensive car for the mass market, but the base cost has come down
by almost a factor of 2 in four years.
Consumer Reports rated the Model S the best car they ever tested, not the best electric
vehicle, not the best vehicle that year, the best vehicle they ever tested.
It is a high-performance vehicle.
Now, clearly, we got to get the cost down, got to get the battery cost down, et cetera.
But these are technologies that are -- as we heard, are on the way.
Energy efficiency, systems integration -- I won't go through all of these -- advanced
materials -- equally important, but I think the message is -- what I wanted to leave is
that if you look at the -- (certainly ?) the Department of Energy's research programs and
technology visions, it involves many of the same kind of technology advances that these
gentleman have put together in an integrated system to accomplish something that would
not have been thought of a few years ago.
And again, I believe in 10 years, we're going to see the fruits of all these technologies
changing the world.
So with that, I want to really end by thanking once again Bertrand (sp) and Andre (sp) for
their enormously inspirational activity and success.
Thank you