Day two of the Electric Vehicles Consumer Adoption Summit picked up where the previous day had left off. A lot of attendees were still around for the summit's 8 a.m. start and there was quite a bit of material for everyone to discuss.

The day began with a wide-ranging presentation from Bill Moore of EV World. Bill spoke about peak oil prices and the obvious implication for electric vehicles - we could have spent a whole day talking about it. Bill provided an extensive range of data points showing the trends in both consumption and production of oil. He noted that 68 percent of oil is used for transportation, so electric vehicles clearly have a lot to do with how we migrate towards adopting cleaner energy practices. There was certainly a lot of religion surrounding both sides of the argument - for every proponent that said we're a long way from running out of oil, there were a lot of counterpoints arguing that demand is exploding and oil is getting harder to find.

Bill covered a lot of ground and we had some lively debate about some of his numbers. The crowd certainly understood the bigger picture as well as the opportunities electric vehicles are seeking to address. We all know there's currently a disconnect between supply and demand and it was revelatory to have the real numbers in front of us.

After Bill, there was a technical presentation about rapid battery charging, which proved a hot topic in these circles. There were a lot of engineers at the summit, so this turned out to be a pretty engaging discussion. For the non-technical types, it may have been a bit dry, but it reminded me of my early days in VoIP, where similar exchanges took place over subjects like voice quality, scalability and protocols.

These are important discussions to be having, as motorists only have two options if they want to keep driving once the battery runs low - they need to either recharge or swap out to a fresh battery. The latter isn't practical on a mass scale, and if it takes two hours to recharge, the inconvenience will far outweigh the relative ease of re-fueling our regular cars at the corner gas station. Of course, behavior change is a third option, and once we're ready to do that, we'll find ways to adapt around what works best for EVs.

Will motorists choose to do most of their charging while the car sits idle at home or will they stop at charging stations while they're on the road? A number of chicken and egg conversations developed from this question, and without exploring them too deeply here, it should be clear that there are many costly decisions at stake depending which aspect of the EV market you're trying to serve. If the vehicle is going to be charged at home, then the onus falls largely on the local utility; but if the charging is done on the road, the burden shifts to private companies like Coulomb or Aerovironment to build out the infrastructure and create new business models to resell electricity at their charging stations.

Moving on, Broc TenHouten gave an engaging presentation. He was with Coda Automotive, another new entry to the EV market. Where SABA Motors, which presented yesterday, gave more of a startup prototype, Coda showed themselves to be serious players with big money behind them. Personally, I think Coda is a great example of what the future of auto companies will look like -- they're a company to watch.

The other sessions continued on these themes and it was great have the audience engaged and asking questions throughout all of them.

One thing I found interesting was how a number of speakers had previously worked at big auto companies like GM or Chrysler. I'm sure this is happening on a broad scale and the pattern is identical what we've seen in telecom.

Where incumbents have stalled or been slow to adopt new technologies, market disruptions have hurt their business, and invariably people have left. Look at how many great telecom startups came from those leaving the likes of Nortel (News - Alert) and Lucent - I have no doubt we'll see the same thing happen with EVs.

These are interesting times, for sure, and I'm glad to have been part of things at this summit. I hope to engage some of these speakers for more thought leadership on the portal, so you can expect to see more coverage of EVs here soon.