NYC's Mayor Bloomberg Touts Benefits of Automotive XPrize Competition
March 25 2008 / by Alvis Brigis
Category: Transportation Year: 2008 Rating: 2
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who last week proudly announced that his city has agreed to host the first leg of the 2009 competition, is a big fan of the impact the event could have on the way we approach the future.
“We really do need some new thinking, we need some innovation,” urged Bloomberg, “We’ve got to get people to participate, and to change their lives and to understand that we’ve have to use less energy and that we have to find alternative energy sources that aren’t destroying our planet.”
Check out Bloomberg and XPrize CEO Peter Diamandis in action at Thursday’s XPrize Announcement press conference, just released to the web a few hours ago:
“I don’t think there’s any bigger threat to our world and out country than global warming and our dependency on oil,” added the philanthropist-business-magnate-turned-mayor.
Peter Diamandis, Chairman & CEO, XPrize Foundation, echoed Bloomberg’s sentiments, stating, “It’s a challenge to every one of us. We face these issues together. We must solve them together.”
Most interesting, as Jump the Curve author Jack Uldrich points out, was the ambitious project scope that Diamandis laid out:
“We’re not talking about concept cars,” says the XPrize CEO, “We’re talking about real cars that can be brought to market in the near-term, that consumers will want to buy.”
(cont.)
Mayor Bloomberg sums up, “Progressive hearing the call and putting up $10 million bucks is exactly the right thing to do. I think it says an awful lot about [the] company and the people that work there.”
It also makes a great deal of financial and branding sense for the auto insurance company, which is essentially spending its advertising dollars on something that incidentally benefits society. Let’s hope that such win-win contests become the norm over time, as they seem to have the power to bring about not only awareness, but tangible change to industries that desperately need it.
