gm decided to go with a smaller battery pack and have backed-up gasoline. thee saun and others, those cars are all pure batteries. i think as you look down the road at more electric cars and people try them and actually get to drive them, they ll be able to drop the price. even now i think you can lease an electric car for around $350 a month. it s getting affordable for more and more people. you not only focus on some of the big car companies that are doing this, but there s one guy you profile who is kind of an individual tinkerer or inventor named greg gadget abbott. we ve got a little exchange from the film i want to play for you and then you can tell us briefly what you think about it. around the world, an underground movement is growing. these people are making their own electric cars right here and right now. i m gadget. i ve been living and working in
it is in other countries. you could be a steven spielberg, you can be a bill gates. you can get out there and if you believe in yourself and you ve got a heart for something you can do something historic. yeah, we used to call it, chris, up from the tinkerer s bench in the 19th century. that you can invent anything. we were a nation of mechanics. people that had an idea and would take it all the way to the top. it wasn t necessarily horatio alger stories but just people that believed in products. henry ford being the great example of the model t. he had failure after failure, but he knew that cars weren t just for rich people, they were going to be for everyday people. and it s the same with steve jobs. he didn t think that computers were just for the defense department or for a huge corporation, but people were going to carry them in their pocket. and those types of american entrepreneurs are really the large figures in u.s. history. thomas edison and henry ford rank up there with w
who started a company in his garage with a high school friend. he reflected both the time and the place he lived in. he s the first baby boomer industrialist who grew up amid the san francisco counterculture. and we re proud in america all of us that we created someone like steve jobs. is his story still possible in america? joining me is historian doug brinkley. you and i love this country and we write about it and think about it. and the thing we think about is you don t have to go to oxford or cambridge in this country. the establishment s nothing like it is in other countries. you could be a steven spielberg, you can be a bill gates. you can get out there and if you believe in yourself and you ve got a heart for something you can do something historic. yeah, we used to call it, chris, up from the tinkerer s bench in the 19th century. that you can invent anything. we were a nation of mechanics. people that had an idea and would take it all the way to the top. it wasn t necessarily
job of roofing. steve didn t start off like that. i worked for pixar and i knew steve. he started in his garage tinkering. and that s the key. thomas edison, he was a tinkerer, leonardo da vinci was a tinkerer as a child. we don t allow our children to do that anymore. we started this program, ten by 20. because the bureau of statistics said we re going to be bereft of ten million jobs in manufacturing by 2020 because the average age is 56 years old. they re retiring soon. how do you reach that goal then? if you go to the website, center for america.org, you can download my handbook and whatever you do, whoever you are, anywhere in america, it will show you how to start promoting skilled hands-on talent. give me an example. if you re a manufacturer, then go to the local school, invite the guidance counselors,
self-pro claimed tinkerer who zips from customer to customer on his motorcycle. this is my fourth house call today. this emergency call is at the hospital. there s this problem with the lcd screen where there is a scrape in the middle. 10 minutes, $75 and it s done. want an m&m? but there s one catch. having your phone fixed outside of apple could void your warranty. apple is a total hassle to me. the one time i went in there, you have to schedule the appointment, you wait, they tell you they can t fix it. next stop, back home to more customers. what s up with your phone? i dropped it. oh, no. it s a story he hears over and over again. were you very upset? no. some people break down and cry. it takes a tiny screwdriver, a razor blade, and, of course, the screen. courtesy of china. and that is a new iphone screen