Here’s an article that describes a collaboration between GM and BMW on fuel cell vehicles.

Wow, that’s remarkable. Just when I had started to trust the car companies based on the sincerity of Nissan/Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn and his people who build and promote the LEAF, I see this.  A few basic points:

• The oil companies are the main supporters of the hydrogen economy. They see hydrogen as a mechanism for them to continue to retain a service station which will continue to provide the consumer with something they can pump. Electricity, on the other hand, is ubiquitous.

• Creating hydrogen suffers a 4:1 efficiency issue. I.e., generating hydrogen in a renewable way requires four times the number of solar panels that would be needed to make the electricity to put into my battery.

• Fuel cell vehicles’ fuel pods cost $500,000 to $1,000,000 apiece. The cost of creating a delivery infrastructure for hydrogen in a landmass the size of the U.S. is ridiculous. Anyone who’s looked into this even casually can see this; the math really isn’t that tough.

• 90% of our travel is commuting 40 miles or less. If the argument for hydrogen is that we need a dispensable liquid fuel to deal with range anxiety, realize that we’re talking about a very small percentage of our driving.

• Hydrogen is incredibly well financed; there’s a Hydrogen Caucus in Congress – a group of senators and members of the House, whose meetings occur only because of the funding of the oil companies.

As always, I encourage readers to jump on garbage like this. We need to recognize that articles like these are essentially lies and obfuscations that only serve to threaten our survival, while making a tiny few billionaires even richer.

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Customer: You say I’ll get X miles in range. But I drive in hilly terrain, and I’m not exactly a little old lady behind the wheel. I do 75 miles per hour on the freeways – and more, when I think I can get away with it. Somebody told me that, mile per mile, I’ll use twice as much charge per mile at 75 as I will at 40. This whole EV thing sounds like a non-starter to me, since the range I get in the real world may be absolutely terrible.

Salesman: I hear ya – and there’s an easy way to find out. Put this device in the car you’re driving now for a week, and just drive as you normally do. It transmits your exact real-time energy use to a computer. It tracks your speed, acceleration, braking, climbing and descending hills, and so forth – with amazing accuracy. You’ll receive a report every night by email, and at the end of the week, we’ll review a report summary together, and see pretty much exactly how far you could have gone in the — (e.g., Nissan LEAF).

Sounds like a solid, slam-dunk sort of sales tool. But what if an OEM, say Nissan, is so confident in its sales projections that they don’t think this is necessary? What if the OEM is hedging its bets on EVs overall? What if  …? There are a half-dozen other scenarios that could make this device unrequired. But I have to think, at the end of the day, that there are a whole bunch of EV prospects who are very interested in the idea of driving by gas stations for the rest of their lives, but are sitting on the fence, each wondering: “Will this work for me?” The EV Profiler brings a rock-solid answer to a very good question.

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As you check out this electric bicycle, the Pi Cycle by Pi Mobility, think about a few of the design ideas that went into it.  While you’re doing that, think about all the ways this could be done wrong; i.e., the thousands of different ways that E-bikes can be made too heavy, too expensive, uncomfortable, dorky-looking, prone to failure, requiring constant upkeep, hard or pricey to repair, requiring hard-to-source parts, easy for thieves to disassemble and steal, quick to discharge, slow to charge, dangerous, dirty, counter-intuitive, or unergonomic. 

That’s the beauty of the Pi-Cycle.  Nothing’s wrong!  It’s the perfect design.  When I met these folks at this year’s Clean Business Investment Summit, I knew I had a winner on my hands.  And when I had lunch with CEO Marcus Hays at his factory in Sausilito (Northern California) last week, I knew I was in the presence of one of the true greats in this exciting niche space.  He’s been hard at work creating the perfect e-bike design for over a decade.  And it shows. 

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Of course, their industry position makes Glenn and his company a natural competitor to electric vehicles, and thus some may regard the statements he makes on the subject as suspect.  Still, as a scientist, I’ve consistently seen that he maintains a total objectivity in his analysis.

In his recent comment here, he’s brought up some interesting and important fallacies in the analyses we’ve used in determining the validity of electric transportation as an eco-friendly replacement for internal combustion engines.  Having said this, here are a few things to think about:

1) A significant amount of electrical energy from coal is dumped back to ground each night because the rapid ramping of coal plants is not feasible and the off-peak energy is too expensive to store. To that degree, of course, one could say that any of the energy that would go to charging EVs in that scenario would have no carbon content at all.

2) Some of the most EV-friendly parts of the world, e.g., the Pacific Northwest of the US with its massive amounts of hydro, and France with its nuclear, produce electricity 24 hours a day with very little carbon.

3) I look at this whole evolving arena in terms of decades of growth and change. Even the most optimistic among us understands that the adoption of EVs will take decades, during which the levelized cost of energy from several different flavors of renewable sources will continue to come down, which, of course, will drive higher levels of penetration. Simultaneously, aging coal plants will be decommissioned.

4) At the same time we are achieving significant penetration of EVs, I believe that we will be implementing energy storage and smart-grid technology (including V2G) at approximately the same rate, and that these items will mutually re-enforce one another, e.g., more EVs will enable a greater penetration of renewables.

In conclusion, I believe Glenn’s insight is correct, and that the DoE’s concept of applying the current grid-mix to determine the eco-value of EVs is fallacious to a certain extent. But here, I think you have four reasons that this is a bit more complicated and interesting, and that EVs do, in fact, have significant value today – and even more with each passing year.

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I know I’m not Winston Churchill, but I try my best whenever I’m asked to speak publicly.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I’m speaking at the Electric Vehicle Summit at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. If you happen to be in the area and want to check out my talk, please let me know, and I’ll get you a free ticket.

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Just got off the phone with Brooks Agnew, CEO of Vision Motors, with its unique, low-cost design for electric pick-up trucks. I really enjoy Brooks; he’s got a terrific temperament for dealing with the frustrations that are inherent in getting a project like this off the ground. And fortunately, he was able to provide good news on a number of fronts.

In particular, the GSA (General Services Administration) has placed an order, and the Department of Defense is looking at 41,000 units. The DoD’s reasoning is simple: saving lives. Fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan is kept in portable bladders that have to be guarded 24×7. On average, one life is lost every time one of those bladders is moved around in the field.

As I told Brooks, “I’m not sure our government is too motivated by issues like climate change, ocean acidification, peak oil, or even the respiratory health of the world population, so I wouldn’t expect the EV push to be based on any of those factors – or even a reduction in fuel cost. But our military most certainly cares very deeply for the safety of its soldiers. I’m very glad to see this moving forward.”

Still, the company needs to raise equity capital, to enable the debt financing, that will in turn, get them out of their modest quarters and into mass manufacturing.  “We have some terrific prospects here too,” Brooks said cheerfully.  You gotta like a guy with this type of spirit.

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I got the joke instantly.  These guys didn’t get where they are by taking their eyes off the ball financially.  And here, it looks like BMW’s attention hasn’t moved too far in the intervening 24 months. According to Greenbeat,

“The ActiveE isn’t going directly on the market, like the Nissan Leaf or the Tesla Roadster — instead BMW will lease about 700 cars out for $500 a month over 2 years. …. BMW said the car can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in about 9 seconds. The Nissan Leaf, another plug-in electric car, can accelerate from 0 to 60 in about 7 seconds based on independent testing. BMW is known as a manufacturer of performance vehicles, so some critics question why the company didn’t create an electric car with more power….”

Sorry, guys, maybe I’m missing something, but it still doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard.

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By the way, this is not an academic question. Along the way, there are going to be plenty of hot business opportunities. But where exactly do they lie?

Each week we see the product announcements, the wild claims, and the editorials. We read the speculation on the EV adoption curve, a lot of which directly contradicts itself; some reports are euphoric, some cautious, others dismal. At the same time, we hear the rumors. Warren Buffet is heavily involved. And Bill Gates….

So what does all this mean? And again, even more important, where are the profit opportunities for people like you and me?

Let me call your attention to a special 68-page report that the editor-in-chief of EVWorld.com, Bill Moore just wrote. For the first time in the 13 years he’s been covering the industry, he’s offering bold predictions about specifically what will happen during the rest of 2011 and beyond from a financial perspective.

Bill traverses the globe, going to conferences, interviewing the top players in the industry. From his travels, he’s been able to piece together the most likely, critically important events that will shape the immediate EV future – and pave the way for you, if you’re interested, to profit handsomely from involvement with the right parties and the right times.

Bill’s report “The Top Trends Shaping The World Of Electric Vehicles in 2011 and Beyond” normally costs $395.00. But if you buy it before May 10, 2011, it’s yours for only $195 – a savings of more than 50%. And, if you’re not 100% satisfied with the level of scope and insight, we’ll provide you a complete, no-questions-asked refund. Click here to get the report:

The Top Trends Shaping The World Of Electric Vehicles in 2011 and Beyond

In “Top Trends Shaping The World Of Electric Vehicles in 2011 and Beyond,” Bill presents his take on the most probable winners (and losers). He does what he can to separate the truth from the fiction, and points to the few meaningful facts in a sea of trivialities and outright bull.

Here’s that link again:

The Top Trends Shaping The World Of Electric Vehicles in 2011 and Beyond

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I just came across this article on Chrysler’s plan to offer a natural gas-based car in 2017. 

I know this sounds like a strange reaction, but personally, this cheeses me off.  I see it is an attempt to confuse and distract the consumer from alternate fuel vehicles, so Big Auto can sell more internal combusion engines and Big Oil can pump more gasoline for a few more years while the market scratches its head and tries to sort this out. 

Of course, Chrysler is free to choose whatever product marketing strategy it cares to.  But the net of this decision will be only two things:

a) An ultimate failure for Chrysler (and the tax-payers who bailed them out after their last many decades of failure).  There is no way in the universe that CNG (even though it’s cheap now) will become a viable fuel for the US long-term.  How much more will they need from us to cover this fiasco?  

and

b) A short-term confusion and turn-off for the consumer, as it will serve to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the evolution to EVs.

As always, not everyone sees it the way I do.  I just spoke with Plug-in America co-founder and heavy-duty EV advocate Paul Scott.  Paul welcomes Chrysler’s idea, and (though he didn’t say it) clearly thought I was half crazy for my reaction to the news. 

But hey — it’s a difference of opinion that makes horseraces. 

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Am I the only one who was a bit stunned at Honda’s announcement today? CEO Takanobu Ito outlined the company’s plans to introduce both a mid-size plug-in hybrid and an electric commuter vehicle in the U.S. and Japan by the end of 2012. He told Reuters, “It’s starting to look like there will be a market for electric vehicles. We can’t keep shooting down their potential, and we can’t say there’s no business case for it.”

So what so weird about this?

In the first place, Honda’s longstanding commitment to its current alternate fuel vehicle, the hydrogen fuel cell F6 Clarity, which, of course, is an electric vehicle; batteries and fuel cells are simply two different ways of providing portable electrical energy. Perhaps Ito simply misspoke, but that strikes me as a mistake that the CEO of Honda would be most unlikely to make.

Also, Honda’s spokespeople – in the US at least – have been fanatically careful not to “shoot down the potential” of battery EVs. I recall the words of Steve Ellis, an extremely senior fellow at Honda’s US headquarters in Torrance, CA, when I interviewed him for my book on renewables. He spent the majority of the 90-or-so minutes we were together pointing out that the proponents for battery EVs vs. fuel cell EVs should not be throwing stones at one another, as there is plenty of room for both.

I privately suspected that the company would someday develop a battery-based car in addition to the F6, as the latter has obviously been a struggle to market commercially. But let’s look at the big picture and not quibble over details. That Honda will have a plug-in hybrid and a commuter EV on the roads soon? “It’s all good,” as my kids like to say.

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