Today, I found that not only is Neil Young a musician-filmmaker-activist-artist-legend, he is also a social innovator. This is what I’ve found out about LincVolt: Repowering the American Dream.

Neil has a new band, and this time they’re car mechanics, engineers, and eco-enthusiasts. The man is on a mission to take a 2.5 tonne 1959 Lincoln convertible and make it run on clean fuels. So if you’re into classic cars and believe the children really are our future, it sort of makes sense to put the two together. But it’s also ridiculous. Everyone else is making smaller cars, that you can park at funny angles, that say, ‘I’m Humble as well as Nice to the environment’. And why is it being made by a 60 year old plus musician?

It begins to make more sense when you understand the vision of the project,

Our goal is to inspire a generation by creating a clean automobile propulsion technology that serves the needs of the 21st Century and delivers performance that is a reflection of the driver’s spirit. By creating this new power technology we hope to reduce the demand for petro-fuels enough to eliminate the need for war over energy supplies, thereby enhancing the security of the USA and other nations throughout the world.

This isn’t a rich musician with too many cars and too much money ego-project. This is a rich musician with too many cars and too much money save the world project. Apparently, LincVolt is about ending wars. I like that. Setting the bar low. It’s also very clever in that he intuitively understands that if they want support for this hair-brained project, you need to show people the benefits, and those benefits have to be selfish benefits, that somehow relate back to their lives. Not being killed in a war is always a good truth to tap into.

There’s a shrewd man / team underneath the bonnet of this project (sorry, couldn’t resist) because they ‘get’ that fundamentally people love big cars, and yes people love the world we live in too, but until we’re all huddled in a bunker in some post-apocalyptic burnt out world, people are going to want both things. I suppose this ties in with New Labour’s vision of the ‘Politics of And’. The idea that you can have economic development and social justice. Personal success and collective good. Peace and (er) War (maybe that analogy doesn’t quite work). Still, you get the point, however distasteful it is. People are selfish, people don’t want to go back to not having things once they have had things, and the way to get them on board is to make projects appealing to them. Small and humble is no good for a mass market weaned on big and brash.

A lot of people want big cars…That buyer is the secret to making change happen. This buying segment will not want a new small car. They will want a big one but won’t buy it either in this economy. We think if they could have a big monster Escalade or F250 with a green pedigree and a super new and clean motive power system that delivers BIG power, low emissions and HI MILEAGE efficiency, they would buy it right now. That is how the big change will happen, not by just making 3 wheelers and super-little lightweight cars, whether they have luxury or not. For these car buyers, offering small lightweight electric limited range cars is going against the flow and will mean change will come too slow to matter. However, they WILL buy a new, big, fast and green car that says “this is me” to them. That is the way to get the huge gas guzzlers off the road.

BIG and GREEN. There’s the answer right there. GOOD for me. GOOD for the world. That is the quickest way to get people on board, not just with clean fuels, but with any social change project. Serve a greater good, at no cost to product efficacy.

There are lots of other things that I like about this project. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous youtube channel, the webcam, the facebook page, but I especially like the live streaming. He takes the car out for a test drive, with a laptop in the back seat, and a community of people egging them on, and it feels like our project, not just his project.

I’m into the fact that data from the project is shared on the homepage, good or bad, it’s all there for people to see

There’s the documentary that they are making about the whole thing, as they go on a trip around the USA to build support for their adventure.

Linc Volt, “Re-Powering the American Dream” is a documentary currently in production at Neil’s “Shakey Pictures” studios. The documentary will include footage of his Fall 2007 drive from San Francisco to H-Line Conversions in Wichita and all the gas stops along the way, including interviews and reaction from folks he met en route.

The whole thing can be followed from the web as is fashionable nowawdays.

Lincvolt’s journey will be carried live on the web at Lincvolt.com, with live real-time statistics on the site. You will be able to view our location, MPG, altitude, speed, battery power, and generator activities as they happen. The public and the automotive community will be able to view our statistics and use the information for the common good.

And more than anything else, it feels like fun. A bunch of blokes on a serious mission, with a serious objective, but coming across like they’re just messing around. There are loads of lessons in here for anyone interested in social innovation.

1) have a big, hairy, bold ambition (stopping wars is a pretty good one)

2) make that big, hairy, bold ambition relate back to small ordinary world that people can relate to (the car you drive, for instance)

3) remember the selfish gene (if we want the fastest route to change, don’t ask people to compromise)

4) use the web to make it feel like an adventure that we can all go on. The failures will seem part of the trip that way.

5) have fun. You’re probably not going to save the world, so just enjoy trying.

6) make friends with Neil Young. He knows things.

Tags: neil young, Social Innovation