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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

I spoke with a couple of the people promoting the 2012 release of the Prius plug-in hybrid yesterday at the 2010 Plug-In show. Gosh, this seems like a strange concept. Its all-electric range? 13 miles. The net effect for the typical customer? A bit better gas mileage. “This is what Prius customers want – a more efficient Prius,” one guy told me.

I was incredulous. Maybe they want that now, pal. But do you honestly think they’re going to want that two years from now, when they can have a LEAF, an I-MiEV, a Mini E, a Volt, or half a dozen other EVs of various sizes and types? You’re going to ask them to go through the exercise of plugging their car in, just to get slightly better gas mileage?

This is a truly terrible idea. I have to think something has gone terribly off the rails there. Unless they make a major change, I predict that Toyota’s decade 2005 – 2015 will be the biggest single meltdown in automotive history.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

The 2010 Plug-In show, featuring the latest in electric transportation, is now in the books. I spent yesterday at the event, meeting people, interviewing key industry players, and taking in all that the show offered. But while I enjoyed the experience, I was totally unprepared for what I saw.

In a word: small. The main impression that anyone would take away was how incredibly and unforeseeably tiny the event was compared with those of past years. I can’t be precise about this because, in truth, I never stopped to measure, for instance, the 2008 event, held in the same place (San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center). But yesterday, we had 38 exhibitors (down from many hundreds) in a floor space that could have accommodated a tennis match, and (I’m guessing) perhaps only a thousand or so attendees.

So what happened? I’m not 100% sure, but I have a guess. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

On June 18th, 2010, Google launched yet another smart energy project: cars that plug into an electric grid powered strictly by solar energy. The project is called “RechargeIT.org.” In the U.S., transportation contributes to about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions, with more than 60% coming from personal vehicles. Google believes that by transitioning to electric and plug-in hybrid cars, greenhouse gases can be reduced, dependency on oil can be reduced, and power can actually be sold back to the energy grid – the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

More people each day are disgusted with the course our civilization is taking. Whether your main concern is social injustice, proliferation of nuclear weapons, environmental ruination, white-collar criminality, the decay of morality, growing rates of addiction to recreational and psychiatric drugs, the decline in educational standards, or the ravages of corporatocracy, one thing’s for sure: you’re one of very few if you believe the human race is on the right track.

I don’t have a lot of answers. But I think I can say this without fear of contradiction: It’s up to all of us to raise our voices when we see things we don’t like.

Here’s something else I suggest we do with issues: analyze them honestly. Is there any commonality among all these social ills? I believe there is: the concept that someone else – another person living now somewhere on Earth – or someone who will be born in the future – should pay for the benefit you’re taking here and now. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Wind Energy

The EIA chart below shows the percentage of all energy and renewable energy categories produced and consumed in the U.S. Note which are the leading categories of renewables and the relationship to wind. (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

A recent article in Japan’s Nikkei newspaper urges the country’s automakers to head directly to battery EVs, rather than further protracting the lives of hybrids.  The piece suggests that both Toyota and Honda must shift towards EVs, or risk having the nation of Japan fall behind the competition:

…both Toyota and Honda had until recently thought that the era of hybrids would continue for a while before electric vehicles began to gain popularity. But the automakers are now accelerating their efforts to develop electric cars, and there are two main reasons for this. One is the tough new fuel economy rules the US administration of President Barack Obama will introduce in 2012…The second reason for the heightened focus on electric cars is China’s move to promote them.

 This advice, which is what millions of other people and I have been saying for years, is so obvious that it’s really rather ridiculous. Both Toyota and Honda, with their huge balance sheets and engineering staffs, could have done this in a heartbeat anytime they wanted over the past decade. Why didn’t they? I can think of only one reason – that they were already perceived as green – and saw no reason (other than decency) in offering a product that would bring an end to an existing profit stream.

Now, their backs are up against the wall, forced to move fast to avoid being marginalized in a world that’s running 100 MPH towards EVs. I hate to sound like a Monday-morning quarterback, but couldn’t someone somewhere have seen this coming?

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Photovoltaics

The company Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT), a leading supplier of solar panel manufacturing equipment, recently commissioned a new survey on solar energy to gauge the public’s current views and knowledge on the subject.

Here is what was revealed: (more…)

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Energy Storage

I hope the world is paying close attention to the development of molten salt technology to store solar energy as heat, for later conversion to electricty at night and on cloudy days. As reported here by The Guardian, the Italian utility Enel just unveiled “Archimede,” apparently the first solar thermal / concentrated solar power (CSP) plant to use molten salts for heat transfer and storage.

This subject came up in detail in the interview I conducted with Dr. David Mills for the chapter on the subject in my book. It was clear to me at the time that molten salt has a long way to go if it is to scale to the extent that it will move the needle in terms of facilitating the penetration of renewables. However, this is a true breakthrough.

I only wish Sicily were in my travel plans; I’d love an excuse for a visit at this momentous occasion.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketA few people commented on my piece about nuclear energy last week, and scolded me for believing that shortages of uranium may be one of many serious issues confronting this beleaguered industry. I’m not the only one who sees this, however. Editor of Peak Oil Review and former CIA analyst Tom Whipple writes this week:

China’s demand for uranium may rise to 20,000 tons a year by 2020. That translates into more than a third of the 50,500 tons mined globally last year. All of the world’s current uranium output currently has a market, supplying the existing global demand for uranium. Don’t be surprised to see uranium in shortage by the second half of this decade. Looking ahead, there’s just not enough new production in the planning stages. The world needs new mines, but startup costs are much higher than 10 or 20 years ago.

China currently has 12 reactors in operation and another 23 under construction, with others in development, according to the World Nuclear Association.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

One of my duties as a partner in www.EVWorld.com is occasional proofreading; every few weeks, Bill Moore asks me to review his newsletter, The Insider. I look forward to this, as it forces me to keep up on the news in electric transportation, and the proofreading requires almost no more time than would be consumed in simply reading Bill’s insightful writing. And frequently it makes me smile.

You may have noticed that last week brought us another wrinkle in the litigation in which Florida-based Paice Corporation sued Toyota and Ford Motor Company – a dispute involving Paice’s assertion that both the Toyota and Ford hybrid drive systems violate its patent and that it is entitled to compensation.

When I came across this sentence: As you might imagine, Toyota certainly wasn’t happy about the Texas jury’s decision, nor when they lost their apparel to the U.S. Supreme Court, it took we a few seconds to discern what Bill had intended. They lost their shirts, perhaps? No, I ultimately realized that what they had lost was their appeal, not their apparel.

So what was the news? None of the parties in the lawsuit will say how they settled, but Bill thinks “we can safely assume that Paice and its attorneys broke out bottles of bubbly last week, even if they it means they’ll likely never do business in Detroit again.”

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