Posts Tagged by EV World
EV World Editor Bill Moore Speaks with Craig Shields on Renewable Energy
| October 21, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
Here’s a grainy but clearly audible video in which EVWorld editor Bill Moore interviews me over a Skype session on my book, Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies. He’s a good guy, and asked some terrific questions.
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Sam Smith of EV World Associates: Conservatives Can Be Environmentalists
| June 12, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Sam Smith of EV World Associates spoke with me on the 2GreenEnergy Report recently, and began by explaining how conservatism and environmentalism are compatible.
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Remediating the Gulf Oil Spill
| May 26, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
Please check out this video by David Serada, a friend of a friend, offering a natural way to bioremediate the oil slick in the Gulf with waste fibers from cotton waste fibers.
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Thoughts on the EV Adoption Curve
| March 16, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Every so often, I like to write a short article that gets us thinking about the rate at which electric vehicles will be assilimated into our culture and brought onto our roads, replacing internal combustion engines. Here are a few ideas to consider.
1) What does Big Auto think (or, at least, claim that they think) about EV production rates? Considering there are 230 million cars on the road in the US alone, the needle will not be moving in the short-term:
Nissan: Has pre-orders for 56,000 LEAF all-electric cars.
GM: Last year, had 50,000 expressions of interest in the Chevy Volt, though presumably that figure is somewhat larger now.
Mitsubishi: Bumped up its 2011 production schedule of the i-MiEV from 8,500 units to 9,000.
Better Place: Placed an order with Renault for 100,000 electric vehicles based on the Fluence ZE for its deal with Israel.
2) But is there any reason to believe anything coming out of Detroit?
Today, the population of Detroit is about half of what it was in 1950. The city has 33,500 empty homes and 91,000 vacant lots. A recent AP article asserts that vacant property totals 40 square miles. But Big Auto is not at all apologetic for the meltdown, and points out they couldn’t have foreseen the dynamics of oil prices that created sharp inflection points in the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles in favor of the Hummer and other gas-guzzlers. If this is false, they’re disingenuous; if it’s true, they’re incredibly obtuse. Either way, it’s hard to trust what they’re saying.
One thing for sure: there is nothing good in EVs for the big OEMs. They are happy to drag this transition out for decades, selling gas- and diesel-based cars and trucks as long as possible.
3) The Department of Energy apparently is not bullish on pure (battery) EVs.
Check out this report on the future of the automobile. Although the author sees lots of hybrids in our future, he really doesn’t see any pure EVs. Remarkable. I have to think this is simply a mistake.
4) Industry analysts are hedging their bets.
As reported in EV World, Accenture recently performed a survey that showed that six out of 10 consumers are more likely to buy a hybrid or electric vehicle “only when it is superior to gasoline-only models in every way.”
I understand that merely “being green” isn’t good enough for the vast majority of car buyers. But this report strikes me as the usual MBA malarky — a consultant who reads your watch and then tells you what time it is. What about the other 40%? Isn’t that a substantial market? And what exactly does “superior in every way” mean, exactly? How will the typical consumer react to a value proposition that includes dramatically lower fuel cost and huge reductions of other pieces of his total cost of ownership?
My belief: Give me a freeway-speed battery EV with comparable fit and finish to a garden-variety 5-passenger sedan, a 75-mile range, and price tag under $25,000 after rebate, and you won’t be able to manufacture enough of them.
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Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles
| August 14, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A reader writes in:
A lot of acceptable solutions for electric passenger cars (light duty vehicles) were already proposed and I agree that are very viable. Unfortunately for heavy vehicles (interurban buses and trucks) are not so many.
I see this changing quickly, driven in part by government mandates. There are 70,000 diesel container movers operating in the Los Angeles/Long Beach harbor, and the state of California is getting extremely tough on diesel emissions. In response, companies that offer heavy-duty EVs like Balqon are springing up. My consulting company, EV World Associates, happens to have dealings with them. I love their design; 140 kWh battery packs line the sides.
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Bill Moore – Electric Vehicle Evangelist
| July 29, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I can’t imagine anyone who has earned the respect of more electric vehicle enthusiasts than J. William “Bill” Moore. Born in Germany, educated in England, Bill is the founder and publisher of EV World.Com, an online ‘zine dedicated to tracking the development and deployment of sustainable vehicle technology. The site was launched on January 1, 1998, and has become regarded as one of the most respected sources of information about EVs online today. Over the last decade, Bill has written millions of words, conducted thousands of interviews (including congressmen, presidential candidates, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Planet”, as well as respected academicans and up-and-coming entrepreneurs), and attended hundreds of conferences and expositions.
Perhaps more importantly, he’s made countless friends all over the world – and I’m proud to count myself among them.
His articles have been published in Discover, Popular Science, Air & Space/Smithsonian and Mother Earth News. His first book publishing effort, Electrifying Rides, is in the works now. “I’m just about wrapping up Chapter Three,” he told me cheerfully when we spoke just now.
As the name implies, ELECTRIFING RIDES: The Electric Vehicles of the Past Decade… and the Next takes its reader both into the past and into the future.
Moore writes,
(The book takes the reader) from the steel gray waters of the English Channel to the chalk gray surface of the Moon to explain how the revival of the electric car came about and where it’s taking us.
Though it seems counter-intuitive, the modern era of the EV (electric vehicle) began in the air and not on the ground with the flight of a fragile, human-powered aircraft made of aluminum and mylar plastic. When Bryan Allen, struggling with leg cramps, dehydration and fatigue, triumphantly set down the Gossamer Albatross on the sands of Cap Gris-Nez, on the French side of the English Channel on June 12, 1979, he unwittingly set in motion the resurrection of a technology long-consigned to the footnotes of history.
Two years earlier, Allen and his mentor, Dr. Paul MacCready had won their first Kremer Prize for sustained human-powered flight over a mile-long, figure-eight course in the Albatross’ predecessor, the Gossamer Condor. That flight, as daunting as it was, took just over seven minutes and covered 1.35 miles. The flight across the Channel would be 35.8 km (22.2 mi) — 26-times further than the flight at Minter Field back in California — and take nearly three hours, all of it over water.
Six years earlier, the last of three, multi-million dollar electric vehicles completed its own mission along the waterless — and airless — Sea of Serenity. When Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt switched off their LVR (lunar roving vehicle), it had carried them, during three exploratory missions over as many day across the Moon’s rugged Taurus-Littrow region, almost exactly the same distance as the Albatross had carried Allen: 35.9 km (22.3 mi).
As far apart in space and time as these two incongruous events might seem, a common thread — beyond the uncanny similarity in distance — not only binds them but also constitutes a double helix of sorts that is the common DNA of virtually all contemporary — and future — electric cars. These entwining, interlocking strands are themselves comprised of a surprising small subset of individuals, a sort of human ATGC, that binds and breaks and binds again into new, but always familiar organisms, each with its own unique story, only a fraction of which can be told in Electrifying Rides. We trust those we’ve chosen will convey to you the reader, a sense of the urgency and excitement that has propelled a long dormant technology from the night of irrelevance into the brilliant daylight of necessity.
I know we’re all looking forward to the opportunity to sitting down with this one.
