Posts Tagged by electric transportation
Plug-In Hybrids: Now THAT’S Complexity
| April 11, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Here’s a wonderful video that explains the multiple drivetrains at work in the Chevy Volt. A couple of immediate impressions:
1) No wonder the price on this sucker is $41K, with all that going on. The bill of materials (costs of the individual components) must be enough to choke a horse. And the non-recurring engineering costs must have been staggering.
2) This further amplifies my belief that plug-in hybrids really are not the answer to transportation. It’s like using an elephant gun to kill mice. Electric transportation will succeed when we get the price, energy density, and power density of batteries into an acceptable range – and, of course, when we can get enough renewable energy on the grid that we’re not charging them with coal.
So when will this happen? The question is political will. If we rely 100% on market forces, especially while we continue to subsidize fossil fuels, it could be A Long Way to Tipperary.
Video: Sustainable Transportation
| April 8, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Here’s a video in which I introduce a new 2GreenEnergy Associate – Dan Sturges, a senior consultant in sustainable transportation. As we sit here today, there are a few dozen of the world’s great cities that have extremely aggressive goals with respect to transforming the way their citizens move their bodies and their cargo — those who aspire to become beacons of hope and progress in this space.
While most state and local government groups are happy to maintain the status quo for as long as possible, thank goodness, that’s not true of all. And for these few forces of progress, Dan stands ready to help them wrap their wits around all the issues re: electric transportation, mass transit, car-sharing, incentives to encourage for walking, biking, ride-sharing, car-sharing, etc.
A Promising Player in Neighborhood Electric Vehicles
| April 8, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Here’s a short video I made recently on a company in Michigan that I believe to be one of the most promising players in neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) aka low-speed electric vehicles (LSEVs). These guys have the design, the team, and the background to be quite successful in this space.
Connecting Eos Energy Storage to Strategic Partners in India
| March 23, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Energy Storage |
I started my day with a predawn call to Edison, New Jersey and Mumbia, trying to connect my people at Eos Energy Storage with strategic partners in India. The breakthrough in battery chemistry/design will result in product for sale in 2013 at $165/kWh. This, of course, will change the game completely, both for electric vehicles and for utility-scale grid storage — and India will be an enormous market. What’s the loss on an hour or two of sleep in the scheme of things?
Dan Sturges — Changing the Paradigm in Transportation
| March 9, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I’m very proud of 2GreenEnergy’s dozen or so “associates,” who perform a huge variety of tasks for our clients – everything from raising capital, to performing engineering reviews, to marketing and public relations, social media, project management to IP protection. My aim is simple: When someone asks if we can do something for their clean energy business, I want the answer to always be a resounding Yes.
One of the associations we recently formed is one with Dan Sturges, in which we deliver cutting-edge thinking in transportation for city planners who may be looking for a better way of moving people and goods around a local area. For a century, we operated off a central paradigm in transportation:
Virtually everyone 16 years or older has his own car, a huge piece of steel that weighs Read More
EV Adoption Curve Will Benefit from Critical Mass
| March 8, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
My friend and colleague Tom Konrad does not share my belief that the consumer adoption of EVs is, to some degree, driven by perception of the long-term prognosis for electric transportation.” He writes:
If I’m buying an EV, why should I care if it’s the way of the future or not? My car will work as long as I have electricity and roads, the supply of neither of which is under threat. Owners of natural gas vehicles may need to worry about charging infrastructure, but while a robust charging network for EVs would be nice, it’s not absolutely necessary. If it works today, it will work 10 years from now.
I think, though it’s just a theory, that most people don’t want to own a form a transportation that few other people use — especially in this case. To the degree EVs do not catch on, there will be very little build-out of charging infrastructure, and very low resale value for used cars.
Changing the Equation for Electric Transportation
| March 7, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I’ll be at the 26th International Electric Vehicle Symposium (“EVS26”) in Los Angeles in May. If anyone wants to meet me for a cup of coffee, please hit “Contact” and let me know.
The migration to electric transportation is going through a period that some of us anticipated: a bit of nervousness brought on by the fact that the value proposition for the consumer is simply not there yet. EV start-ups are having a hard time getting there, which has given the established auto industry a great deal of time to breathe, take its time, hedge its bets, and, perhaps most to its liking, milk the internal combustion engine cow a few more years.
Take the Ford Focus Electric, as an example of what I mean by consumer value proposition. I’m sure they’d explain it differently, but, at a high level, Ford has taken an extremely unexciting, garden variety passenger car, the Focus, ripped out Read More
Carnegie Mellon University Studies Electric Transportation
| February 29, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Glenn Doty points out a flaw in my recent piece about electric transportation. He writes:
(The Carnegie Mellon University study) assumes a life-cycle grid emissions profile of 615 g-CO2E/kWh. That is blatant BS.
The impact of new marginal electricity demand (as represented by shifting transportation demand from liquid fuel to electricity) can only be satisfied by spare generating capacity. There is no renewable spare capacity in most of the country, and in the places where there is spare capacity (TX, IA, MN, ND, IL…) there is no benefit to be had from a constant 8+ hour nighttime demand increase, as the spare renewable capacity in these cases is curtailed wind, and the constant 8+ hour night-time demand would be satisfied by not tamping down baseload power as much each night. Read More
Big Advancements in Electric Vehicle Batteries
| February 29, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A reader asks my opinion of Envia Systems‘ lithium-ion battery. I reply:
If these claims are true, it’s a really important breakthrough — potentially even more significant than that of my friends at Eos Energy Storage.
The number one issue that electric vehicle nay-sayers throw in the face of us advocates is resistance of battery technology to rapid change: both in terms of cost and energy density. In particular, they say that where Moore’s Law (the idea that the functionality of technology increases exponentially over time) applies to things like integrated circuits, it absolutely does not apply to power systems like motors and batteries. I believe the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and perhaps this is evidence of that. We’ll see.
U.S. Military Eagerly Adopting Renewable Energy, Electric Transportation
| February 28, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
As suggested in this article, the U.S. military is leading the way in the migration to renewable energy and electric transportation.
Obviously, there’s a certain irony here, as the role of the American military is, in large measure, to ensure our access to oil on an ongoing basis. But anyone can see the rationale: depending on gasoline and diesel while you’re actively in battle or defending a military position is a potentially lethal place to be. According to my understanding, more of our soldiers are killed defending the supply line of oil to military bases and outposts in the Middle East than in any other single activity.
Thus the interest in clean energy here is rooted in self-preservation – which is more than fine by me; whatever gets the job done. I’m like anyone; I hate to see young people killed or wounded – for any reason.
