{"id":7903,"date":"2026-10-30T11:23:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T11:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=7903"},"modified":"2026-10-30T11:23:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T11:23:49","slug":"its-only-when-you-see-49-ton-trucks-in-china-running-on-batteries-that-you-realize-how-serious-electrification-is-octopus-energy-ceo-greg-jackson-on-europes-incumbency-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=7903","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s only when you see 49-ton trucks in China running on batteries that you realize how serious electrification is\u2019: Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson on Europe’s incumbency problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The brutal business of selling mirrors is not for the faint-hearted. The challenge is category differentiation, given that a mirror has one simple task\u2014reflection. One of Greg Jackson\u2019s first jobs was working for a mirror manufacturer which, at best, broke even or made a small profit. And then he had an idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe started making mirrors that had really wide frames,\u201d the founder of Octopus Energy (the U.K.\u2019s largest energy provider) told me. \u201cAnd on a picture [on the internet], suddenly we had a mirror that looked different from everybody else\u2019s. And they sold like hotcakes \u2013 and that transformed the business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Approaching a business from a different point of view is an essential ingredient in the hunt for innovation. Jackson\u2019s essential insight when it came to mirrors was that, online, every product looked the same. That is what the customer saw. And he realized that if the customer saw something different (a mirror with a wide frame), they might buy it. Which they did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not seeing something that is obvious to an outsider is a firm\u2019s \u201cincumbency cost\u201d\u2014 embedded in the regular behavior of doing the same thing tomorrow as you did yesterday. It is one of the most significant brakes on the ability to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the single biggest factor affecting Europe\u2014and an issue the U.S. is not immune to\u2014is incumbency,\u201d he told me. \u201cChina and the Gulf are not held back by incumbent industries. Instead they are, at huge pace, delivering the new world. If I look at electric vehicles as an example, there\u2019s not an incumbent car industry in China that\u2019s struggling to manage the transition to an entirely new technology. But if I look at Europe, European governments and consumers want electric vehicles, but the European car companies have not yet been able to be competitive at building them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf we want more growth, we need to allow creative destruction so new companies can deliver the productivity we need\u201d<\/p>\n

Octopus energy ceo greg jackson<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Chinese electric vehicle sales in Europe are growing rapidly. Chery has tripled sales in Europe in the past year, BYD has doubled, Geely is up a third, and SAIC is up 23%. Taking the four leading Chinese car makers together, their EV market share is now at 14.6%, up from 9.6%, according to the latest figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers\u2019 Association. In response to claims of state subsidized dumping by China, the European Union has applied duties of up to 35% on top of the standard 10% import tariff. Chinese cars are still over 20% cheaper to buy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIncumbents crowd out the innovators in many sectors and markets,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the Post Office [the UK\u2019s public mail service] that invented email. The music industry held back streaming and digital music for 10 to 20 years. What you need is routes to market for new technologies, and I think that can be a challenge in Europe because so many of the big industries essentially have a stranglehold on policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEconomists have said that nearly all productivity growth comes from new companies. If we want more growth, we need to allow creative destruction so new companies can deliver the productivity we need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jackson said that Europe has a number of successful sectors that it can learn from\u2014for example, the continent enjoys a vibrant and innovative fintech sector whereas in America \u201cthey take my card around the back of the bar because their terminals and processes are so dated.\u201d Few people have seen a check in Europe in more than a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Octopus grew out of the need for a new way to manage energy supply and demand. Jackson initially attempted to convince legacy businesses that they would be far more efficient with a fully overhauled technology platform but, after not progressing very far, decided that he could build a team that could modernize more quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was that through technology, we would be able to provide lower costs because we\u2019d be more operationally efficient,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019d be more agile, so we can incorporate technologies like electric vehicles and solar panels and batteries directly into the energy system very efficiently. That would also help with cleaning up energy because you can use more renewables more cost-effectively if you\u2019re more agile. We set out building that company in 2015, and nine years later, we became the biggest energy company in the UK, overtaking all the incumbents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe came from outside energy, we came from tech, and just like the people that built Uber didn\u2019t come from personal transportation, and the people that built Airbnb didn\u2019t come from hospitality, and the people that built Amazon didn\u2019t own bookshops. What we were able to do is build an energy company not based around the assumptions of the industry, but using technology to meet the needs of customers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The brute force of market dynamics is pushing the world towards a different energy mix. In the European Union, wind and solar power produced more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time last year, according to Ember, the energy think tank.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe technologies of electricity are improving exponentially, and the technologies of hydrocarbons are not,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cA car engine costs roughly the same now as it did 20 years ago. They\u2019re not particularly more efficient. Meanwhile, an electric vehicle battery today costs 10 times less than it did 15 years ago. Solar panels cost 200 times less than they did 40 years ago. Wind turbines have come down two thirds in price over the last 20 years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jackson was in China earlier in the year and said that electrification is continuing at pace, with battery swap stations, rather than recharging, reducing the amount of time drivers have to wait to between three and five minutes. \u201cIt\u2019s only when you see 49-ton trucks in China running on batteries that you realize how serious electrification is. The drivers don\u2019t care about the price of diesel.\u201d Which might give Donald Trump pause for thought as he eyes both the American mid-term elections and the rising cost of fuel in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

#49ton #trucks #China #running #batteries #realize #electrification #Octopus #Energy #CEO #Greg #Jackson #Europes #incumbency #problem<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The brutal business of selling… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10889,10890,283,173,2472,5953,424,4676,1715,1836,10893,5958,2303,1126,10892,812,10891,2999,5484],"class_list":["post-7903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-49ton","tag-batteries","tag-ceo","tag-china","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-electrification","tag-energy","tag-energy-industry","tag-europes","tag-greg","tag-incumbency","tag-jackson","tag-letter-from-london","tag-londonarticles","tag-octopus","tag-problem","tag-realize","tag-running","tag-trucks"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018It\u2019s only when you see 49-ton trucks in China running on batteries that you realize how serious electrification is\u2019: Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson on Europe's incumbency problem - Finance News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=7903\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018It\u2019s only when you see 49-ton trucks in China running on batteries that you realize how serious electrification is\u2019: Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson on Europe's incumbency problem - 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