We don’t have time to look for something better. Therefore, if a corporation can figure out a way to make this newer version of the li-ion battery as cheap or cheaper than led acid, it will “always be a hit”!

I highly doubt that there are not sufficient quantities of the element needed in the Earth’s crust to make this so on an ever exponentiating level…
This, then would give RE the ability of exponentiation and even “powering” a V2G setup.

I had the good fortune to have worked for General Motors for about 25 years. I worked primarily in product engineering and program management. I also had the fortune to have worked in a lot of different areas because my focus was to become a vehicle systems engineer, which one day might have lead me to be a car division Chief Engineer. GM like many large companies was a game of musical chairs, where all people tried to move quickly around the Corporation becoming a Jack of all trades but master of none. To really learn you need to stay with a car program from start to finish. GM lost that focus, but my skill set was still total vehicle focused. During the last 5 years I worked on the EV1 and on EV conversion programs. I left GM and worked with 2 Tier 1 suppliers for 6 years and then started my own consulting business in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. My last experiences linked me to my current position as President and Founder of EnVironmental Transportation Solutions, LLC, a company that develops, markets, and soon to start production of a city based electric Low Speed Vehicle, called EcoVElectric. What makes us unique is not only our road-worthy family of products and both also our unique business structure which allows us to design in America, source in America, build in America and still be thousands of dollars less than our competition. However our challenge remains to get the capital we need to start production.

Let me get to your article. I think the issue of the success of EV’s is way beyond marketing. The American public thinks with its pocketbook. EV’s, either with or without Government subsides will be limited in success, because they do not make economic sense. How does the average person justify spending $33,500 for an electric Malibu (Volt) with different appearance? Yes there will be early adopters, but after they have bought Volts, where are the rest of the sales going to come from? I predict after the market stabilizes, the OEM’s will be back to Obama asking for more financial subsidy for EV’s. If America is serious about EV’s and alternative energy, then we need to tax people directly for use of oil and coal generated electricity. I have a proposal on how to do this and where the money goes and how these tax dollars are spent including public over sight. Until alternative energy is lower cost that status quo, we are talking to a wall. EV’s can be lower cost than ICE vehicles but the OEM’s need to work to bring cost down, which I think they don’t want. I also think that your comments about it will take the polar ice caps to melt is wrong. We will have a war in the Middle East long before climate change and that will bring this country to it knees. 1970’s will happen again but it will be 10X worse since we are now 3X more dependent on foreign oil. And that is how Washington works, totally reactionary, never proactive. We need proactive politicians (oxymoron?? I also think the V2G is way over expressed. The utility companies are stuck because they can’t build now power plants and we are running out of power. V2G offers some load balancing but there is no extra energy created with V2G which is what this country needs. I also do not think the utility companies have done a very good calculation on the “real” costs to pull a kWh out of an EV’s battery pack. Battery packs are not like fuel tanks. They age, shrink in energy capacity, wear out and need to be replaced. Each kWh pulled must be cost justified to the owner or he will elect to not allow the grid to take energy from their cars. This calculation is easy to do if you know the price of your battery pack in $/kWh and you know the number of cycles your batteries can sustain. Just divide the two and you get the $/kWh/cycle.

I agree that EV’s will happen from outside of mainstream automotive, but the one’s that will succeed will have a strong core of workers and leaders from the auto industry. Without this knowledge, the companies will not survive. There are a bunch of these new companies popping up, but my prediction is most if not all will fail. This includes Tesla, Fisker, Coda, Aptera, and a big bunch of others.

Why is this so? Bill Weaver is pretty much on target, but is missing some issues. Yes, capital costs to do something new is always expensive, but then you put on management the huge investment in place today in people to design, test, validate ICE’s (internal combustion engines), facilities and equipment to manufacture engines and transmissions in high volume and highly developed supply base for parts; you have the formula for fear.
The issue of risk and liabilities is really pretty small for the OEM’s because they know their customers and how they use products very well. Product liability is a huge concern for start ups who do not know this information nor do they know how to test their products to the extremes that customers drive. They do not have the background or experience to ask the right questions. These questions are called the things you don’t know, that you don’t know and they can be very severe finding out.

Mr. Weaver’s statement only scratches the issue EV’s change in the current automotive world. It is not only the fact that EV’s require significantly less service, in fact an EV is almost maintenance free, but EV’s are more like your furnace motor and will last a long, long time. The major paradigm change is that people who buy EV’s will like the convenience they offer, the reliability they possess and the long life without problems they exhibit. Owners will not be back to the dealer every 2, 3, or 4years to trade in their old car to avoid problems and maintenance expenses that their ICE cars of the past had. This will turn the current auto world upside down, but the public is the clear winner and that is why EV’s will happen. What will happen is that people will get new battery packs at the end of the 10 year battery pack life and drive the vehicles for another 10 years.

So what are the OEM’s of the World doing to slow down this paradigm change? Lots of things. First of all they like hybrids because hybrids typically use ICE’s that they know how to build, they know wear out in about 10 years and they know people have to bring their vehicles back constantly for service and maintenance. The OEM’s like this and like the complexity hybrids offer. The OEM’s constantly put concern into the public about “range anxiety.” They put fear into the public about the need for charge stations everywhere. They put fear into the public over the high cost of EV’s. Basically the OEM’s don’t want change that will cause them to have to reinvent themselves, because they basically can not do that. My favorite example of this is the fact that the Swiss invented the electric watch, showed it at a Swiss watch show as a novelty not worth pursuing, and stepped back. Japan took the idea to mass production. Now all the Swiss build are expensive exclusive mechanical novelty watches; they could not reinvent themselves and loss most of the World’s market for watches. The cost of EV’s is now high and the OEM’s are trying to keep them that way. If you look at all the EV batteries being developed and manufactured, none of them are interchangeable. There are no size standards for EV batteries. This will keep battery costs high, development costs high, time to market long, and technology development slow. Today you buy almost any portable electronic device and 90% of them use standard AA, AAA, C, D or 9V batteries that you can buy anywhere and very low cost. That is what standardization does. When every manufacturer has their own size battery, the replacement costs will be extremely high, when the batteries do not have to be if battery modules were standardized to some extent. Not one of the factories, we the US taxpayers have given grant money to support, will build an interchangeable battery module. They are all building plants to build one OEM’s battery. Sure they can build others, but that takes lots of money and time.

Carlos Ghosn is a true paradigm breaker and leader. But Nissan does not have a choice. Nissan is ranked as #8 in World sales and Renault is #10 (but when combined they are #4). Nissan must make the effort or they will disappear. The choice they have accepted is to go to electric drive when everyone else is trying to avoid EV’s or are doing EV’s only to appear green. Nissan will have their work cut out to get EV’s to be more affordable but they will succeed because they are committed to electric drive.