This week, I'm in San Francisco attending the Electric Vehicle Consumer Adoption Summit.

Today was the first day, and as conference chair, I've had a hand in every session and been able to meet an interesting mix of thought leaders who really understand the electric vehicle space.

But even after devoting two full days to this event, the summit only breached the surface of what EVs are all about.

This is a great, deep dive for me - at our next summit we're doing one session on EVs. And after what I saw this week, I can tell you there's a whole lot more to explore. This article is a brief recap of the highlights, and I'll do the same for day two in my next write-up.

The summit started strongly with a presentation from Marc Tarpenning, one of the co-founders of Tesla Motors. For those who don't know Tesla, their Roadster really embodies the sex appeal of electric vehicles; it's really sharp looking, has all the power you crave and of course, is very eco-friendly. However, there's a six figure price tag (News - Alert) with that, so it's not going to recalibrate the balance of power any time soon, but it's setting the bar high for what electric cars can strive for.

Marc gave us a lot to think about, and I could build this whole article around his comments. The key topics included why the time is right now for electric vehicles and why earlier entries like the EV-1 failed. Not being very technical, I really enjoyed Marc's practical insights, especially as they concerned the global market opportunity for electric cars (including how important behavior change and attitude shifts will be to the success of this market.) I also enjoyed how he identified home-charging as a great opportunity for utilities to deploy smart grid/smart home solutions and make themselves a more active part of the electric car equation.

Following Marc, John Bryan gave an engaging presentation about electric buses, which is a very different opportunity. Portal readers may recognize John, who has contributed his views here, and spoke at our last summit as head of the Secure Smart Grid Association. John gave a solid overview of how vehicles in general are underutilized assets - especially buses, which are typically only used four hours a day for perhaps 180 days out of the year. As such, these vehicles are sitting idle and fully charged for most of their useful life. This represents a substantial vehicle-to-grid opportunity for utilities, but he explained why this is easier said than done. Speaking on behalf of Burt Fleet Services, John talked about how they have 33 buses in the field now doing this. It's early days yet, but they're providing some proof points to validate the concept, and is another example of new business models that are emerging now around smart grid technologies.

I got to play moderator for the next session, which was a panel featuring Sven Thesen of Better Place and Josh Schellenberg of analyst firm Freeman, Sullivan & Company. This was another strong session, and Better Place is playing a major role in advancing the concept of charging stations, which will be so vital for mass adoption of electric vehicles. He showed a great video clip highlighting the first commercial deployment ever of this with Better Place and a taxi fleet in Japan. It will be while yet until you can just pull into a charging station and do a full recharge in just a few minutes. Taxis can't afford that kind of down time, and in this deployment, the taxis simply swap out their spent battery for a charged one. It's just as fast as filling up with gas, and in NASCAR style, the process is no different from a pit stop - the taxis drive into the charging station and with robotic efficiency, the replacement process is fully automated and they're back on the road in no time.

After this, we had a very engaging and colorful presentation from Simon Saba (News - Alert). His company, SABA Motors, is your classic self-funded startup and he brought a prototype of their electric car on display. It's bright yellow - you can't miss it - and Simon was nice enough to let me sit inside (photo on my blog.) It's just like a racecar - very spartan interior and no doors - so it has a way to go to be truly roadworthy. However, as things progress, SABA is targeting the middle market that he believes they can address successfully. This car is priced much less than a Roadster - about $40k - but as Simon pointed out, with federal and state EV subsidies, the price comes down quite a bit. It comes down even more when you factor in the cost savings on gas that add up over the life of the car. Will SABA make it? Time will tell, but they're a great example of the innovation we're seeing from a variety of entries trying to stake their claim in this new market.

The rest of the day was equally interesting, starting with a panel discussion about regulatory issues and policy, which is particularly important in California, which leads the U.S. in most aspects of electric vehicles and clean tech issues. What I also liked about this session was the sense of advocacy and even urgency around these issues. Buying into electric vehicles is also a vote to move away from fossil fuels, and one of the panelists - Felix Kramer of the California Cars Initiative is a great example of this.

Following this were strong presentations about battery technologies, the affordability of batteries and rapid charging solutions. All the sessions had active dialog with the audience, and most everybody stuck around for the full day. Not sure if I can absorb any more at this point, so it's definitely been a full day. Am looking forward to more of the same tomorrow, and I'll have a recap for you shortly after.