Jack Ewing of the New York Times just published:
A More Circumspect View of Electric Cars
This, on the heels of:
Chevy Volt: Why production was halted and what it means
How can this be, especially as the Opel Ampera (above) won European Car of the Year, and this is the Continent's version of the Volt!
Well, I hate to do this, but more than three years ago, I told you so in a Huffington Post article:
Specific to the GM Volt in:
A Solution for the American Auto Industry
is a quote:
The vaunted GM plug-in Volt, for example, will sell beginning in 2010 for $40,000. As an intermediate step, I guess this is the best they can do, but this is no way to reassert American dominance in the field, for the Volt will use a lithium battery from South Korea. Why? It appears that countries from Europe and the Orient have a lock on workable next generation battery patents for lithium. The sad conclusion is that we have no future in battery powered vehicles.
Even worse, these plug-in EV's are using U.S. mainland electricity prices, one-third the Honolulu rate, which is in the range of 33 cents/kWh. Add 10 cents/kWh for Kauai and the Big Island and about 5 cents/kWh for Maui.
Equally troublesome is that almost half the electricity generated in the USA comes from coal, which is the worst fossil fuel in terms of global warming. As you might know, annually for at least the past decade, coal world-wide has been the fasted growing energy source.
Did you notice that only 1% of the national electricity comes from petroleum? Well, this figure is 77% for Hawaii, and when you add coal, fossil fuels account for slightly more than 90% of the electricity generated in the state.
So is this the end of battery-powered vehicles? No, because hybrid systems remain efficient enough to survive. Gasoline in Hawaii is only 15% higher than on the mainland. However, as green as the Better Place concept might sound, there is no hope for plug-in EVs in Hawaii for a long time to come, not if convenience and economic sense are important. Not blaming her, but that is former Governor Linda Lingle above being lectured to by Better Place.
Okay, do I have a better idea? Yes, read my HuffPo's above: the direct methanol fuel cell has long been my recommendation. How is this biomethanol economy progressing? Not at all. Am I disappointed? I'm in depression.
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The Dow Jones Industrials are up again, +71 to 12,908, while major world markets also increased. Gold back up to $1700/toz, an uptick of $14 today. The WTI Cushing is at $107/barrel, while the Brent Spot is at $126/barrel.
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