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abitare (99.44)

Electric car vs Ferrari

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June 25, 2008 – Comments (16) | RELATED TICKERS: TTM , TM , GM

Electric cars are coming. Those, who have not seen the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? should take a look. The battery technology was bought and buried by Chevron, according to the film. 

FYI - "The Japanese-French auto alliance has separately said that it will manufacture a hybrid by 2010 and an all-electric car by 2012.

Electric cars, which have existed for more than 100 years, are becoming all the rage — both GM and Toyota have said they will manufacture plug-in hybrids by 2010. But Agassi's plan stands out because it focuses on the infrastructure for recharging cars instead of on the vehicles themselves."

Of interest Israel Looks to Electric Cars.

Tata Motors is producing a NEW car for $2500 and a car that runs on Air Compression. Suck it SUV owners.

Now for the big race. 

 

 

16 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On June 25, 2008 at 8:14 PM, binv271828 (< 20) wrote:

Toyota Prius+ Plug-in! Chevy Volt !! yeah!!!
..... mmmmmm..... Tesla Roadster..... (if I had the $$$) :)

Companies can buy technology and flush it down the toilet for so long, people are thirsty for it now. The car of the "future" will finally start becoming real.

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#2) On June 25, 2008 at 8:17 PM, kdakota630 (33.48) wrote:

I haven't seen the movie (although I've heard it's quite good), but I always have a hard time believing stories like that, about a company buying and they burying technology, or blueprints, or whatever.

I HAVE seen that there are some very interesting electric cars coming out though.

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#3) On June 25, 2008 at 8:24 PM, camistocks (< 20) wrote:

The Tesla Roadster $98'000 electric car. George Clooney has also ordered one...

 

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#4) On June 25, 2008 at 8:29 PM, LordZ wrote:

I've seen that movie and I believe it, the oil companies wanted to get high speed high burning vehicles that could achieve high speeds on vast common six laned expressways, in fact they tinkered with tires made from the same stuff that makes bullet proof jackets, so that you could safely drive over 100 MPH without worry or concern about your tires blowing or failing.

The technology had it been utilized and developed could have made oil obsolete.... so anyone who has worked in this area has been bought off.

SAdly its too believable and common.

heck the cigarette company came out with a burn free cigarette that wouldnt cause second hand cancer to non smokers, but the product was so addictive and unhealthy to its user they had to scrap the smokeless cigarette.

 

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#5) On June 25, 2008 at 10:33 PM, abitare (99.44) wrote:

ALCON,

Thank you for the reply. The movie Who killed the electric car is on Google video , you can watch it there for free. 

binv271828,

I wish Tesla would fall below $30K. I would buy one of those bad boys.

camistocks,

Nice video.

LordZ,

Good to hear from you, good reply. I also sent you a reply on updown.com. FRO- I don't like the "dry bulk" shipping space. I think they are ripe. I understand Cramer has not recommended FRO, since he and GS started the run up of dry bulk with DRYS, his bad mouthing "dry bulk" is a bad omen. I would be careful. 

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#6) On June 25, 2008 at 10:45 PM, lquadland10 (< 20) wrote:

Well, they can't make money from housing anymore and tec burst so create an energy shortage and let the people spend their money on new cars to combact the high price of gas and they make more money. Then they will start bigger wars and once eveything is torn down then they will rebuild.Then gas will be cheep again  and we will get bigger and better cars.

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#7) On June 25, 2008 at 10:58 PM, abitare (99.44) wrote:

lquadland10,

Good to hear from you. I hope we are done with wars.  

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#8) On June 25, 2008 at 11:20 PM, AnomaLee (29.20) wrote:

You have to elaborate on type of hybrid cars the major auto-manufacturers are shifting to in their designs.

They are shifting to hybrid technology where a fossil fuel motor is only used to recharge the power source of an electric motor. The electric motor is what is used to power the "driving force" of the car. That's a big change from the past and on a large scale it is FAR more economical the wasteful combustion engines we currently use to power the "driving force" of our cars...

"Me caveman!!! Me everything!!!"

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#9) On June 25, 2008 at 11:50 PM, FleaBagger (33.13) wrote:

Abit - you get a lot of comments. About FRO: it is not a drybulk shipper, it is a tanker, it was recommended by Cramer very recently, and it has hiked its dividend a lot lately up to $2.75 in the most recent quarter (for a stock that, after its recent run-up still costs just $71). That means that with no change in dividend, it would take just 6 1/2 years for the stock to pay for itself.

I don't own FRO, but I will if it pulls back and I don't have some other amazing opportunity pulling my attention away. 

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#10) On June 26, 2008 at 12:46 AM, GreenMycon (< 20) wrote:

Who Killed the Electric car is a great video, but like all videos of this sort, you need to look at both sides. There is the advocacy that the electric car is significantly greener and significantly cleaner than oil, and to a big extent it is. However, obtaining the materials for the batteries in these cars is a big deal. Not to mention that there is not enough Lithium available in the world to even allow the average american to purchase a Tesla assuming that the price were to drop to something affordable. The mining operations to obtain these batteries is arguably no better than drilling for oil, and is dependent on the oil industry anyway to provide them with energy to obtain the natural resources to begin with. While the battery technology was not necesserily a limitation of bringing the electric car to market, it will be a limitation (at the current) in providing a complete change over of infrastructure to electric vehicles. Additionally, there is still the problem of gaining government and industry support, although that should hopefully improve in the next 5 years. That still leaves a period of around 15+ years before the electric car can truly become an american staple.

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#11) On June 26, 2008 at 1:12 AM, AnomaLee (29.20) wrote:

GreenMycon:
"However, obtaining the materials for the batteries in these cars is a big deal. Not to mention that there is not enough Lithium available in the world to even allow the average american to purchase a Tesla assuming that the price were to drop to something affordable. The mining operations to obtain these batteries is arguably no better than drilling for oil, and is dependent on the oil industry anyway to provide them with energy to obtain the natural resources to begin with."

Although, your arguement about the supply is true your arguement about the pollutive nature of exploring for lithium is  not. It is that type of short-term planning that is being promoted today that we're only post-poning our problems and passing them on to future generations -  much like social security, budge deficits, and thinking the answer to dwindling supplies is draining the supply even faster...

What do you think is more pollutive long term? If you mine for the materials that can be recovered later and re-used, or burning hydrocarbons which can't be recovered and re-used. The only reason the footprint for discovering many recoverable materials(steel, gold, etc) is so high is because we're using non-recoverable methods to dicover them....

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#12) On June 26, 2008 at 10:46 AM, cubanstockpicker (< 20) wrote:

Excellent Post. GreenMycoon, you didnt watch the viedo did you?

The part where the GM rep states that the car was priced to go around 250 to 500 a month?

Also, who said they had lithium batteries in there?

I install solar panels in SOuth Florida and we dont use lithium at all. No need for what we need to get out of them. There are very efficient dual cycle batteries with many different technologies that work well for average commute.

 

As Far As Our Self Serving president goes, please donmt tell me you guys dont see the blatant connetcion between pursuing a bad idea like Corn Ethanol to create the illusion that we need to keep drilling.

If the EV would have continued, there would be lines around the country waiting for these cars now, and GM, FORD would be selling them left and right. Sort of stupid now how GM caved in and started selling hummers instead. 

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#13) On June 26, 2008 at 11:28 AM, zygnoda (27.26) wrote:

Gm wanted to make big bucks with suvs.. not build electric cars   The cash cow is now dead and they are quite dissapoined.  Excellent planning as usual!

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#14) On June 26, 2008 at 2:13 PM, GreenMycon (< 20) wrote:

AnomaLee:  While in the long term the recoverable (to an extent) lithium batteries might be less detremental than the hydrocarbon usage of oil, the electricity required to charge the batteries doesn't come entirely from non-polluting technologies (coal isn't friendly at all).  I think the electric car is a vitally important long-term environmental solution, but I think current advocation of early adoption is not the best idea.  Once batteries can be made from readily available organics and the power grid is significantly supplemented by renewables, there should be no stopping the growth of the electric car.  With that said, Lithium-Ion and NiMH technologies are not "next generation" batteries, so mining them to anticipate recovery later on down the road might not be a good assumption. 

Cubanstockpicker:  I was merely referring to the Tesla having a lithium based battery.  Li-ion and NiMH are the current most prevalent battery technologies for electric vehicle applications.  Both have significant mining detrement when it comes to manufacturing them.  As the power to recharge them is coming mostly from coal, another severely pollutng operation, I'd argue that at the current these cars are not as "environmental" as people would like to believe.  Give it another decade and that will change (hopefully). 

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#15) On June 26, 2008 at 6:35 PM, dwot (99.58) wrote:

A concern I have about electric cars is all the fossil fuels burning up to make electricity...

Where I am in the North West Territories they generate our electricity from fossil fuels.

I remember when Bush got elected one of the first things in the news that absolutely disgusted me was all the measures being announced about increasing electricity through setting up these fossel fuel conversion things, along the Canada/US border, so we can increase our acid rain along with a really dumb plan for increasing electricity supply...

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#16) On June 26, 2008 at 10:31 PM, abitare (99.44) wrote:

ALCON,

Thanks you for the replies and discussion.  

AnomaLee ,

Good reply. Great write up on solar on your blog. I hope everyone gets a chance to read it. I still hate solar stocks. But I like solar.

cubanstockpicker,

I think GM missed out on a huge opportunity. I would like an electric car myself.  

FleaBagger,

I hate the whole shipping sector. I think it is ripe to be taken down hard. There is no shortage of ships and more are being built all the time. Good call on FRO. My DD consisted of looking at Yahoo finance to ensure they have more then 2-4 employees (DRSY or SB). 

zygnoda,

GM market CAPS is so low, some one might make a bid.  

GreenMycon ,

They are building electric cars now and they are going to mass produce cars that run on air compressors in 09 in India. People are building electric cars in their garages. That is what people want.

dwot,

Good to hear from you.  I think you would like the film. Did you get to watch it? 

 

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