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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketFrank Eggers writes in:

EVs may well be the vehicle technology of the future, but it is too soon to know for sure. It may be that artificially produced fuels, such as ammonia, will become practical to replace petroleum-based fuels and internal combustion engines designed to run on those fuels will predominate.

Frank:  Thanks for this. Please tell us all more about liquid ammonia as fuel. Matt Simmons of Peak Oil fame, with whom I’ve spoken a few times, really loves ammonia.  But I have trouble understanding the attraction. OK, it’s another liquid, and the building out a new delivery infrastructure won’t be as arduous as it would be for hydrogen.

But do we really need it? Aren’t we fairly close to batteries that get the job done? 

I don’t see big money betting on it — or even discussing the idea.  What am I missing?

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73gipIGigFo&w=445&h=364]

When guest Paul Scott was on the 2GreenEnergy Report recently, I asked him about the organization he co-founded: Plug-In America.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketIn response to my piece about the EV adoption curve in New York City, Josh Levin writes:

Eighty percent of the adults who live in Manhattan do not own motor vehicles, and rely on buses, subway, taxis to get around — plus their own two feet … Manhattan is a rather atypical place. My guess is that only 1-2% of the US population lives in Manhattan or similar center-city areas.

Thanks for writing, Josh. You’re certainly right that Manhattan is atypical re: the issues facing car drivers. Every few years, I’ve been unlucky enough to find myself driving a car in The City that I love — but the driving climate that I royally hate.  And yes, with the traffic, the parking prices, the super-aggressive pedestrians and bicyclists, the taxi drivers from hell, ultra-complex signs and rules, rudeness, double and triple parking — they have FAR bigger driving challenges than transitioning from ICEs to EVs.

To me, the EV slam-dunks of the world are places like Bermuda (thus my team’s concentration on bringing EVs there): low speeds, short drives, narrow roads, great incentives, ridiculously high gas prices, and an eco-sensitive and wealthy population. As I joke with my friends, if I fail with EVs there, I’m jumping off a bridge.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

PhotobucketOccasionally I like to write a short piece that offers my viewpoints on political philosophy as it applies to sustainability, examining the nature of our moral obligations to our fellow human beings. To what degree do our ethical sensibilities call upon us to behave in ways that respect the welfare of other people – both those currently inhabiting the Earth, and those as yet unborn?

Let’s start with the notion that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and that we should treat other people as we ourselves like to be treated — both concepts that have come through the millennia essentially untarnished. Yet while I don’t object to these as moral goals, I point out that they are wildly out of kilter with the actual day-to-day behavior of the vast majority of people – not to mention the institutions on this planet.
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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIup3ZoX_rA&w=445&h=364]

Here’s another in a series of interview snipets that I conducted with Paul Scott, vice president and co-founder of Plug-In America. Here, we discuss the concept that the big oil companies will fight electric transportation to the death.

Full 30-minute show on electric transportation here.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

In response to my complaint about Deloitte’s recent market research study on electric vehicles in which it was clear (to me at least) that they had surveyed irrelevant people as thus missed the mark with their conclusions, a gentleman named Gus wrote:

I believe that the comment “…the same critical mistake that most people do: survey the wrong people…” is at the root of the problem. Who are the right people then? Only the ones who think the way we do?

This is an astute comment. I’m not saying that these “irrelevant” people are not fine human beings. My mother, for instance, is a kind, intelligent and loving woman. But I can assure you, insofar as she’s extremely unlikely to by an electric vehicle – now or ever — any research process that included her opinion on the subject would be, to that degree, misguided.

The reason I regard your comment as astute is that it highlights one of the true art-forms that lies at the base of all good research: walking the tightrope of assumptions. When we assume too little, we wind up with soup – with generalized garbage that does not point the way to answers. Conversely, if we assume too much, we prove little more than we’ve already assumed, and we wind up with equally useless circular logic, e.g., More than 90% of all qualified homebuyers are those with both the current willingness and the ability to purchase a dwelling.

Market research looks easy — until you try it yourself. There are many ways to ruin a project — and until you make some of those errors and learn from your mistakes, it’s really not a piece of cake.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketThe other day, Nissan began construction of a 1.3 million square-foot manufacturing facility in Smyrna, Tennessee that will produce the lithium-ion batteries to power its LEAF – slated for US production in 2012.

I’ll be very happy when I can formally eat the words I’ve been writing these past few years – words to the effect that the OEMs – due to their lack of real incentive to put EVs on the road – are very likely to dawdle and continue to spew a never-ending stream of excuses why production quantities of EVs are impossible. I know that Mark Perry (Nissan’s North American director of EV and Advanced Technology), whom I’ve met a few times, was clearly miffed with me last fall when I expressed some level of skepticism about the effort. “I thought you were paying attention,” he said. Mark, that’s not the issue. I am paying attention; trust me.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

PhotobucketThanks for your comments on my pieces on Deloitte and the dubious validity of its EV-related research. Perhaps the real issue is actually something that I’ve seen quite often in research efforts: proving what they’ve already assumed. Also known as circular logic, begging the question, or as the Latin scholars would say, “petitio principii,” it’s parodied here in an episode of the old sit-com Happy Days:

Fonzie: I know for a fact that she’s a virgin.
Richie: How do you know?
Fonzie: She told me.
Richie: How do you know she wasn’t lying?
Fonzie: Simple. Virgins don’t lie.

It seems funny here, but applying it in business can be lethal — and it’s a very easy trap into which to fall.  If you’re trying to prove that a strong market exists for a certain product, there is almost always a way to construct a research effort that will bear that out. Conversely, studies that take a step back and attempt quantify markets honestly and accurately are not as common as one may think.

The case here — research concerning EVs — is particularly susceptible to this frailty.  A guy called me from New York City yesterday wanting me to nail down the projected penetration of EVs in Manhattan by 2015. There are methodologies that will provide some level of insight in the direction of that figure, but, obviously, they’re not at all precise. (If you want to know more about how we will be cracking that nut, please feel free to write or call.) In any case, you can rest assured that our approach will not be to make some assumption and back our way into proving it’s correct.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

PhotobucketAre you familiar with the concept of a temper tank?  During the winter in most parts of the US, hot water heaters take water out of the ice-cold pipes and heat it approximately degrees 50 F – in the summer maybe 30 degrees. Now, image an indoor holding tank, which preheats the water to room temperature before it enters the heater, greatly reducing the amount of energy required by the heater. In the summer, this preheating occurs completely free of charge. In the winter, some of this heating process is performed with the energy you use to heat your house – but keep in mind that home heating systems are generally far more efficient than hot water heaters. The net is a considerable savings in overall energy use.

Now obviously, there are low-end and high-end approached to this idea. If you want to explore something that I think is truly state of the art, check out Integrity Water Solutions.

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by Craig ShieldsPosted on Posted in 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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