Last week Silicon Valley Bank saw a lot of me - two afternoons in a row at events they sponsored.

The 'Technology on the move' event in their Tasman Drive offices was worth the time. Good reviews of the silicon systems in cars from Simon Segars, ARM; and Taner Ozcelik, NVIDIA. Their components are used not just for entertainment and navigation, but also for instrument cluster replacement (the 'glass cockpit') and crash and engine simulation systems. NVIDIA's parts are in more than 100 models of car, and ARM's in very many more.

A panel discussion about electric vehicles focused on what it would take to have EVs be the primary household vehicle. Better battery life and higher petrol prices are part of the story - so is an incentive for drivers to understand their actual day to day requirements, rather than needing to own a vehicle which is only used to its full capacity during a long summer vacation drive.

Mark Platshon, who set up BMW's venture fund, ran through a future scenario where his calender was connected to his car, enabling advance reservation of parking spots close to meeting locations and suggestions about proximity of colleagues, friends, and restaurants, to illustrate the sort of things in which i-Ventures is investing.

This wasn't discussed at the meeting - what I really want isn't so much a particular car as Transportation as a Service - being able to drive myself, or be driven, or take public transport, or have things delivered, as something for which I pay a subscription. All the technoloy to do this exists, but the APIs don't. It would take capital, and interaction with very disjoint transport providers - the Bay Area can't even operate a one ticket system for the different (and very poor) rail services. Expect something like this to emerge in one of the Scandinavian cities first.

Speakers and organizations listed here
http://babc.chambermaster.com/events/details/technology-on-the-move-145

"the work we do to build our cities directly drives the work we do to build our communities online." The importance of public traffic data - Anil Dash http://dashes.com/anil/2012/06/the-importance-of-public-traffic-data.html

Updated to add - Steve Jurvetson has the first Tesla Model S, and here are some more http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/7408464122/in/photostream/

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