^Blog Advanced Electric Vehicles, Northwest Grants Focus of Beyond Oil

(Left to right) Standing in front of the first all-electric Ford Focus in the Northwest, Ford’s Mike Tinskey and John Viera talk to U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (Wash.). All three were conference speakers. Mike Wussow/Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute
The second (and final) day of Cascadia Center’s sixth annual “Beyond Oil” conference is now in full swing. Conference attendees just finished listening to Spyros Sakellariadis, director of Microsoft’s Enterprise Strategy Team, and Kush Parikh, vice president at Inrix. They opened today’s first session — “Making Transportation Smart: Software, Connections and Information.” Attendees are now hearing from Set America Free’s Anne Korin, who is discussing the public policy imperatives for moving beyond oil in transportation — especially from a national security perspective.
Yesterday’s sessions were very well attended and covered a lot of ground: policy, technological developments and grant awards for the integration of technologies that’ll electrify transportation. As those of you who were there will attest, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house at Microsoft’s Executive Conference Center on Friday. If you haven’t had the chance to attend this year’s session (and even if you have), Seattle’s King 5 story about the conference gives a good snapshot of some of the issues at stake.

Some of the many electric vehicles on display at “Beyond Oil.” From left to right, the Ford Focus, RAV 4 and Tesla Roadster. Mike Wussow/Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute