- Wine & Conversation at Rotary's first evening meeting Oct 26
- Inspiration from Tesla's vision and a key player in its development
- Breaking the rules - John Miller's birthday deserved a song!
Apologies from this week's editor for not getting the newsletter out to you earlier. The World Series kinda got in the way! And what a Series it was! Personally, I'm delighted the Astros just won. That community certainly deserves some joy right now!
Guests: Members of AYPA, family members of Rotarians, Tesla store manager, Michelle and her colleague.
Inaugural Evening Meeting!
Casual conversation, a couple of Teslas, delicious wine and some tasty apps (Thanks Rob!) made for a fun and informal Rotary gathering last Thursday! We invited the Aspen Young Professional Association to join us at the downtown Tesla location for the first of many future evening get togethers. Not only did about 40 people join in, but we were entertained by one of the people instrumental in Tesla's growth, fascinated by an inside look its philosophy and inspired by its mission. Rotarians loved the casual, evening concept, which was the brainchild of our leader, Scott Russell.
Speaker:Diarmuid O'Connell
Snowmass Village resident Diarmuid O'Connell retired a month ago as Vice President of Business Development for Tesla after joining the company in 2006 and working alongside founder Elon Musk. Before that, he served as Chief of Staff for Political Military Affairs at the US State Department, worked in corporate strategy as a management consultant, and was founder of an educational software development company. His career began as a senior executive with two of the nation's largest ad agencies.
A few comments and some insight from Diarmuid’s talk:
Elon Musk allowed me to follow my passion after 30 years of following a paycheck and bullet points.
We can do much more than we think we can do. Most people are satisfiers instead of strivers because we become focused on shelter, food and security, and we stop striving earlier than our capabilities would allow us to do.
Meeting Armory Lovins caused me to start thinking about how to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
We (at Tesla) didn’t start out thinking we would create an automobile…and it was idiocy to even think of building an electric vehicle. The company’s fundamental idea was to develop the battery and the drive train.
Tesla’s real mission is to catalyze a mass market for electric vehicles. The idea was to create as many competitors as possible.
Our other mission is to expand beyond vehicles to the energy arena, developing batteries for utility scale use. We’ve created a micro grid in a number of island communities, for example, Kauai. We acquired a solar company and build a huge solar field. Tesla is now an energy company – from generation to use. We’re trying to be a beacon to other industries. We de-risk a category and if we’re successful, we invite in other competitors.
Our Giga Factory in Reno, NV is the world’s largest battery factory and is close to our vehicle facility. The goal is to go from raw materials to finished product in one facility. The idea is scale and taking as much cost as possible out of the picture. It’s been producing for the past year.
Tesla batteries now have a 200 mile range, plus we’ve built super chargers.
The Model S now outsells all vehicles in its class – and it's taking a bite out of the German market’s similar class.
What’s going to push this thing forward is brutal competition and the realization that this technology is much better than that in other vehicles produced in the past.
GM won’t and can’t create this technology; they’re too big and too arrogant to ever create this.
Thursday, Nov 2, Mountain Chalet. Breakfast starts at 7:20am.
World Community Service Co-Chairs Heidi Hoffmann and Bill Smalls will talk about where our Club's projects
Mark Purnell and Griff Smith will speak on the committee work in Bariloche, Argentina, of which our club is the United States sponsor.
Bill will talk briefly about the trip to Guatemala that he took with his daughter for the Guatemala Literacy Project.
Heidi will speak about her recent trip to India for the Solar Energy for Himalayan Villages project.
11/9/17 Mike Serio of Wells Fargo Bank
After singing "Happy Birthday" to Rotarian John Miller (seated in the foreground), Rotarians enjoyed our first experiment in quarterly evening meetings at the Tesla showroom in downtown Aspen.
Your editor this week feels privileged to have had two of her photographs selected by the jury for the Four Rivers Biennial Exhibition show at the Aspen Chapel Gallery. Stop by any day to see this show of diverse work by many local artists. It runs until November 26th.
The Weekly Newsletter of the Rotary Club of Aspen.
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