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DON GRIBBLE: 1936-2020
The founding editor of Batteries International passed away in November. As a pioneer of electric vehicles he led the first, ultimately unsuccessful charge into the sector. But he left a legacy that extended to more than just the creator of this publication.
The battery, the essential key to a new EV world
Bottom left: Graduation day: 1957. Bottom right: Mary and Don, two years ago at the Tower of London. It is with deep sadness that we report the death of Don Gribble, almost the last figure of a generation of battery giants that dominated the industry some 30 years ago.
Unlike the other greats who achieved fame through academic, technical or commercial prowess, Gribble is best remembered as the founder and firstmover of Batteries International — a magazine that would bring a fragmented and divisive battery industry sector together.
Oddly for a man who spent most of his career in the administrative and technical side of things, one of Gribble’s earliest jobs after obtaining a degree in metallurgy was as a journalist on Engineering, a well respected magazine. When he left in the mid-1960s he was the editor of the Metals and Materials section.
In 1960 he met his the lady who was to become his wife, Mary. It was a chance meeting — Mary and her friend had tossed a coin to see whether they would go out that evening to the Young Conservative club or Scottish dancing lessons. She lost and it was the visit to the club. She met Don, and the rest is history.
Family legend is that later that evening, with Don as a partner Mary played cards so badly that she made an indelible impression. In any event, the two were hooked. They were to remain together for a lifetime.
In May 1962 they married. Children followed quickly. Their first, Nick, was born the following March. Fiona came in January 1965 and Jonathan in February 1968.
With a growing family to support, Gribble decided to put the world of less well paid journalism to one side. He decided to concentrate on increasing his earning power. His first step was to act as an adviser to the Aluminium Federation, the trade body, and then in 1972 he joined the Lead Development Association — better known nowa-
days as the International Lead Association — where he was manager for battery activities until 1978.
Realising the power journalism can have, in 1975 he came up with the idea of publishing Lead Power News to help serve the association.
Before we go further, Gribble’s life at this point needs to be put into a larger context.
The late 1960s and early 1970s were an exciting time for modern technology. There was a growing feeling that everything would, one day, finally become possible. It was the age when Boeing decided to only make a few of the new 747s — “we’re expecting all planes to fly supersonically” — they even said at the time.
In Britain there was talk that its future was to be forged in the “white heat of scientific revolution”. One television programme in the UK called Tomorrow’s World attracted weekly viewing figures of 10 million — roughly one in four of the adults at that time. Electric cars were just part of its remit.
And EVs were one of the sexiest parts of this revolution.
In the US, for example, pioneers such as Robert Aronsson attracted huge publicity with his Mars II vehicle, which drove 2,200 miles between Detroit and Phoenix complete with fast charging along the route. This was going to be the future. And a future coming very soon.
Gribble followed the seemingly meteoric rise of the hype around the electric car with fascination. Moreover his work at the LDA had put him, substantially, at the heart of the electric vehicle industry.
Furthering a career
In 1979 he moved on to become director of the Electric Vehicle Association of Great Britain — strangely enough an organization that had been put together in the 1930s — and supported by the Electricity Council.
It was a bold decision for him, given that at that time there were about 48,000 electric vehicles in the country, but they consisted almost entirely of milk floats and distribution equipment such as forklift trucks. The number of electric cars actually on the roads could probably be counted on both hands. Or perhaps a couple more.
It was here that he met Hugh Cullimore, who was to become a close friend and long-time associate for some 40 years.
Cullimore, a former technical journalist with IPC turned public relations consultant and later to prove capable of much, much more, joined EVA as press officer and was involved with Gribble’s new publication for the EVA — Drive Electric — which came out in 1979.
“Reading the magazine it was clear that much of EV technology, from accurate battery monitoring to the motor and drive train, already existed,” says Cullimore. “The main requirement was for an effective battery as the power source, a subject which matched Don’s expertise.”
Gribble had his work cut out for him at the EVA. There were rival factions competing for funding and projects. Moreover as the 1980s unrolled it was becoming clear that the electric vehicle revolution had stalled.
“Don and I were acutely aware that EVs were going to be a key technology of the future — all the more so after the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s,” says Cullimore. “We realised too that batteries would be an essential part of that future.
“The trouble was that we were 40 years too early.”
Drive Electric was limited by being an association newsletter. In early 1985 it was decided to relaunch it as Electric Truck & Vehicle World and — crucially — supported with advertising.
The title proved popular with readers and advertisers alike, but it did little to energize the larger industry. The problem was the market.
For Gribble, head of the EVA in the late 1980s, times started to become tough. The EVA — a creature of its time but also ahead of its time — was in difficulties.
Any dreams of popularizing the electric car were proving difficult to substantiate. The launch of the Sinclair C5 — a one person battery electric car (of sorts) — in January 1985 proved to be a huge flop.
Membership income was dwindling and Don, who now had a long experience in the battery world, was increasingly relying on consultancy work to support his family through his work at the Lead Development Association.
Now in his mid-50s, his future prospects for work had started to look bleak. Gribble wondered if there was something else he could do. At this point Cullimore and Gribble put their heads together.
We knew the real issue challenging EVs was the development of suitable batteries,” says Cullimore, “The industry deserved a publication that addressed this.”
“In the US there was The Batteryman, which was well liked but generally regarded as lightweight,” Gribble later
Hugh Cullimore in 1979, who later said: “Don and I were acutely aware that EVs were going to be a key technology of the future — all the more so after the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s. We realised too that batteries would be an essential part of that future.”
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Gribble and Cullimore spent time wondering what they were going to call the magazine but the solution presented itself in a simple analysis of what the content was going to be.
“It wasn’t about energy as such, nor was it about cars — though automotive batteries was going to be a huge part of its remit — but it was simply going to be about batteries,” Gribble later told this editor.
“And since I didn’t want it to be a UK title, especially as those were the years when we finally saw the end of British battery manufacturing, it had to be an international one.
“Batteries International seemed to say it all.”
From the beginning it was a strange triumvirate that made Batteries International work: Gribble working in a rented office a few hundred yards from his house; Mary, his wife, selling subscriptions to the magazine in the afternoons (and doing so amazingly well); while Cullimore, working from his PR consultancy office in Surrey, had added a new position to his work load as advertising manager for the new magazine. His son, Nick, driving the electric go-kart Don made for the family in 1974.
said. “And there was also a technical journal that was over the heads of most of the business.
“There was a market gap.”
Gribble spent time talking with Cullimore about setting up the magazine as a partnership, with Gribble having the controlling stake in the firm.
As anyone involved in publishing can tell you, setting up a magazine from scratch is an enormous task. The immediate question is the product itself.
How many pages is it going to be? Who will be the intended readership? What is the so-called URP (unique readership proposition)? What kind of stories will one run? What kind of features will fit your URP? What kind of writing style will it have?
And from these basic questions a host of other questions immediately arise — from the balance of the story mix to the relationship the magazine would have with advertising and, of course, the commercial relationship it was to have with editorial integrity.
Oddly enough, although these are vital questions for a magazine, the fact is that publishing has to be a commercial business. And all the normal logic behind setting up a business have to be addressed.
For a start-up magazine the biggest problem is invariably cashflow. There are two main revenue streams for a magazine — advertising and subscriptions.
Advertisers never like to pay in advance — especially for a start-up issue — and then only when they see the distribution. Subscribers aren’t likely to pay up front for a magazine that they have yet to see.
One advantage Gribble and Cullimore did have, however, was that they had a huge database from their previous media work. The first issue of Batteries International incorporated their previous title ETV World. It could have been very hard but a combination of two factors helped Gribble turn his plans for the new magazine into reality. The first was £5,000 ($7,000), a legacy from the death of his mother. This allowed him the cushion of time to get the magazine ready before invoices were paid. The second was plain luck. At
Cullimore’s insistence Batteries International reached for, and then grabbed, a new stream of advertisers in a totally untapped sector.
Drive Electric was limited by being an association newsletter. In early 1985 it was decided to relaunch it as Electric Truck & Vehicle World and — crucially — support it with advertising.
It was unexpected that the response would be so strong but vital to the fledgling magazine’s success.
From the beginning it was a strange triumvirate that made the magazine work: Gribble working in a rented office a few hundred yards from his house; Mary, his wife, selling subscriptions to the magazine in the afternoons (and doing so amazingly well); while Cullimore, working from his PR consultancy office in Surrey, had added a new position to his work load as advertising manager for the new magazine.
Gribble and Cullimore were to work together for six years until Gribble sold the magazine in 1994. Cullimore would stay on until the turn of the new century, working for the new owners.
Both said they’d been amazed to find that several of the advertisers paid in advance.
“I was cashflow positive from the outset,” Gribble later recalled. “The magazine filled a niche in the market and by the end of the first year it had provided me with a living.”
Part of the success also came from the fact that he was both a clear thinker and a clear writer.
“Writing came very naturally to him,” says Cullimore. “On other titles that we worked on together, you could easily see his writing style — he could condense technical material into an easy flowing piece of copy.”
In an interview with Batteries International a couple of years ago, he said he remembered with fondness his early struggles to get the magazine recognised — he even tried to interest the Lead Development Association into taking a stake.
“If they’d done so, their investment would have paid for itself several times over,” he said.
Gribble, through a chance meeting with a Chinese businessman organizer called Zeli Wang, saw that China was going to be a huge market for his subject matter — and also a fresh stream of revenue for his fledgling magazine.
Over the next years he was to produce about a dozen copies of the magazine in Chinese that were sent to battery makers and distributed at exhibitions and conferences in the People’s Republic.
It was not just China that was interested in the contents of the magazine. By the second year it could claim to have subscribers in 75 different countries — a facet of its business that continues to this day.
But after six years of running the magazine, Gribble called it a day. A City publishing house known as Euromoney was interested in the title and he was minded to retire, “while I still had life enough in me to enjoy my retirement”, he said.
The sale of the magazine in 1994 provided him with a lump sum and a pension that lasted him well.
His retirement years were happy ones. After fulfilling a two-year takeover period while a new editor took control, he pursued his many hobbies.
He was an accomplished self-builder and single-handedly added extensions — complete with electrics, plumbing and even sash windows — to their house in Hindhead.
He, his wife and family spent much of their time in a cottage they bought in Dozulé in northern France. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gribble, a man with an eclectic past, turned out to be a more than competent French speaker.
If Don Gribble were to look back on a full and varied life, he would be bemused at the legacy he created.
Batteries International is now in its 32nd year, having taken on a life of its own from its first year of publication. It became an almost instant success under Gribble’s editorship.
The baton of editor was passed on to Gerry Woolf and then to Mike Halls to provide a magazine that continues to serve the battery markets.
Don Gribble was well liked and admired for his candour in addressing industry issues. It is hard to imagine seeing such a figure emerge nowadays.
He leaves behind Mary, his wife of 58 years, three children and five grandchildren.
Above: a recent shot with youngest son, Johnny and Mary; Fiona’s award of a PhD in 1998. Below: on one of many holidays in France with Mary.
