Open Letter to Arizona and South Carolina!
March 3, 2011
Voters,
The year 2012 is the time to make serious changes to the way business is being done in Washington, DC. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are most of the problem with the Republican Party.
By introducing unconstitutional legislation, McCain and Graham have moved the party to the “center” by compromising with liberals. Time for a change.
JD Hayworth is going to challenge McCain this year. Let’s hope he wins. The reason we know McCain is scared is because he is moving away from positions he took previously, even with his OWN legislation! Amnesty, Stimulus, etc. the list goes on. Once McCain gets re-elected, he will move back to the left and be what he normally is… a RINO!
This is the year for REAL hope and change!
For Oil Exec, an Electric Car Can Wait
March 3, 2011
New York Times:
There sure is a lot of excitement percolating around plug-in hybrid and electric cars these days. Chevrolet’s Volt and Nissan’s Leaf are the talk of the car world, city governments are installing battery chargers, and the Obama administration has promoted them. Even the TV commercials for the battery chargers are cool.
There are some skeptics, however. And on Thursday I caught up with one of them, William M. Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president for corporate strategic planning, who is definitely not a fan. A reverse skeptic could say, sure, why would ExxonMobil say nice things about a car that would displace gasoline? That’s certainly true, although Exxon Mobil is getting more and more invested in natural gas, which would indirectly help fuel electric and hybrid cars because it is an important fuel stock for the electric utilities that ultimately charge the car batteries.
For Mr. Colton, the argument against the electric car is purely economic. “One word tells you the whole picture, and its starts with the letter B: batteries are not ready for prime time,” he said, noting that the last time he looked, the battery in the Leaf cost $17,000.
By his calculation, batteries cost $800 to $1,000 per kilowatt-hour, and that has to be reduced to $300 to $500 for electric cars to make sense. And the comparison with the internal combustion engine is a no-brainer, at least for him.
“A conventional car uses only about 100 pounds of gasoline to go 400 miles,” he said. “You go 60 miles an hour, 400 miles. You can run the air conditioner and the radio, and refuel in five minutes. Compare that with a battery, a very heavy and very expensive battery that will only take you 100 miles on a good day and it takes 12 hours or 8 hours to refuel. It’s a very problematic purchase.”
What is needed is a breakthrough in battery technology, he said, but he does not see that happening in the next 10 years at least.
So what alternative does Mr. Colton offer to reduce emissions, especially carbon dioxide, which is linked to climate change?
He says that a lot can be done to improve existing technology in transmissions, engines and electronics to improve the internal combustion engine’s performance. He says hybrids like the Prius will make more sense in the future as technologies improve. And there are other more cost-effective ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, he says.
“When you look at mitigation costs for CO2 in electric vehicles, you are talking about hundreds of dollars per ton of CO2. Its very, very expensive because the batteries are so expensive,” he said. “So we say instead of doing that, if you take natural gas and just displace coal at an electric power plant, you can do it for just $20 a ton. Why wouldn’t you do that first?
Since ExxonMobil is the No. 1 natural gas producer in the country, company shareholders would probably agree with him.
Editor’s Note: So how long before we see all the Prius cars in California being turned in for the Cash for Clunkers program? The only people who want them and can afford electric status symbols are rich liberals.
Volt Gets Chilly Review!
March 3, 2011
Detroit Free Press - The Chevrolet Volt will grace the cover of April’s Consumer Reports, but don’t expect to read another car-of-the-year writeup.
“It seems that owning a Volt is an expensive way to be green,” the magazine says after its first few days with the Volt. In cold weather, battery-only mileage was low enough and the Volt’s electric heater weak enough to make reviewers think twice about whether the Volt is worth its $41,000 suggested starting price tag, less tax credits and plus any dealer markup, such as the $5,000 extra Consumer Reports paid.
The magazine’s team got between 23 and 28 miles in battery-only range because of the cold weather. (General Motors says the Volt can go 25 to 50 miles on its battery.) After that, the gasoline generator got about 30 m.p.g., compared to the Environmental Protection Agency rating of 37 m.p.g.
All in all, Consumer Reports figured the Volt would cost about 5.7 cents per mile to run in battery mode and 10 cents per mile using the gas generator, assuming gas is only $3 a gallon. The magazine says the Toyota Prius hybrid costs 6.8 cents per mile to operate, and a 2011 model costs only about $25,000.
The magazine promised it would still conduct a full road test of the Volt, whose awards have included North American Car of the Year and Motor Trend Car of the Year. It also wrote up a couple-week trial of the Nissan Leaf pure electric car, which it said had a better heater than the Volt. Still, the cold made Consumer Reports’ Leaf average about 65 miles of battery range, compared with the Leaf’s 70-mile EPA rating and the up to 100 miles Nissan says some drivers will get on one charge.
“Our initial take is that the Leaf is a fun urban car that works best as a second or third vehicle in a temperate climate,” the magazine said.
The Leaf does not have a built-in generator like the Volt’s, and its pricing starts at $32,780, less tax credits.
Contact Chrissie Thompson: 313-222-8784 or cthompson@freepress.com
Battery-electric cars will struggle after normal buyers replace early adopters
March 1, 2011
Some say electric cars will save the planet from man-made climate change. Others see a need to clean up the exhausts of an increasing number of cars clogging up city centers across the globe. Most agree that oil will run out one day, and some manufacturers have bet the farm that battery-only electric cars will be able to rise to the occasion and provide us with viable personal mobility.
The evidence is mounting that this won’t happen.
According to a new report from Trend Tracker, an automotive research company based in Wiltshire, England, electric cars are unlikely to be able to raise their game to bail out the world’s need for mobility as the oil runs out by, say, 2050. Trend Tracker says car manufacturers’ expensive scramble to produce electric cars with limited ability would be better spent on long-term research to produce electric cars good enough to compete with regular ones.
Business strategy consultancy Roland Berger reckons electric cars will face a crisis by around 2015, when the limited demand created by early adopters becomes more like a mass market, and electric cars have to compete with internal combustion engines and plug-in hybrids on level terms. This will mean manufacturers will have to offer compelling packages of services to make up for the electric cars’ limitations.
With battery-only cars unable to meet range and cost demands that would make them popular among buyers without government subsidy, and fuel cells failing to beat the cost barriers, the possibility of the world running out of oil before a viable replacement for the internal combustion engine emerges is a possibility, says Trend Tracker director Toby Procter.
The planned production of electric cars indicates they will still be a peripheral choice by 2050, with the global market rising to about two billion, with only about 30 million electric vehicles, the report said.
Not ready for prime time
“EV production would need to increase by an average two million units a year over 23 years to effectively electrify the global car market by 2050 when the ‘peak oil’ scenario may have played out. In the medium term, EVs will continue to suffer adverse comparison in terms of price and utility with conventional cars and plug-in hybrids. Suppliers will need to develop more enticing value propositions,” the report said.
The Nissan Leaf, the first of the new EV or battery-only cars, is going on sale now. Range: a claimed 100 miles. The Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric vehicle is also hitting showrooms. Range with gas engine backup: at least 350 miles. Toyota’s Prius gas-electric plug-in hybrid will appear next year. Range: ditto.
All of the important automakers are spending big money readying battery-only and plug-in hybrid cars without any real conviction for which cars will be successful long-term.
The all-electric car falls short of being ready for prime time on many fronts. Range needs to be improved by at least 100 percent. Battery prices need to be shaved at least in half. The problem of depreciation — batteries are unlikely to last much more than eight years — will destroy the value of the first electric vehicles. If battery technology does make a big, unexpected lurch forward, that will be even worse for the economics of the early adopters.
“Cars that look pretty much like ordinary cars, cost twice as much and go a third of the distance, don’t look like cracking the problem,” said Procter in an interview.
Max Blanchet, a partner at Roland Berger’s Paris office, said limitations won’t be a problem until about 2015, because early adopters won’t pay attention to the electric cars’ disadvantages.
“Between 2011-2015, there are huge expectations for electric cars with many players, many fleets, and customers looking for electric cars. In the meantime the (electric car) production of car manufacturers will be slowly ramping up, so for the next three or four years there will be under-capacity and a scarcity of vehicles. The problem comes when manufacturers want to sell EVs as an alternative to thermal (internal combustion engine) vehicles. These buyers will want to see a clear advantage,” Blanchet said.
Compelling packages required
Because the advantage won’t be there, manufacturers will have to offer compelling packages to make up for the fact that they will be too expensive to be sold as products in their own right.
“To be able to compete, the offer (from battery-only manufacturers) must be for complete mobility,” Blanchet said.
This will include what he calls a mobility “ecosystem” combining specific use, targeted customers, tailored products and services like recharging batteries and intelligent navigation. There will be electric taxi fleets with battery replacement stations, last mile-delivery firms, and car-sharing schemes, he said.
An early example of this idea comes from BMW. The German luxury car manufacturer announced that it will unveil its new “BMW i” sub-brand at the Geneva Motor Show next month. The first vehicle will be the i3, known until now as the Megacity, and will be a four-seat electric-only city car. To make this car more appealing, BMW said it will sell a package of “premium mobility” services including Smartphone applications that provide traffic, parking and other real-time information. The i3 will go on sale in 2013.
No shortage of negatives
How soon will battery-only cars be able to compete in the market place on their own qualities?
“2020 is too soon to make EVs competitive. This will be 2030 at the earliest,” said Blanchet.
There are other negatives.
Lithium-ion batteries, which are used in most battery-only cars, are prone to catching fire from overheating or sudden impact. Fast charging is said to be able to get around the problem of short range and the many hours needed to replenish, but this will quickly weaken the battery.
“The use of such fast charging systems has potentially severe negative impacts on battery life, and is not compatible with the capacity of domestic power outlets,” the report said.
Attempts to get around the battery range problem by setting up exchanges for spent batteries have been suggested by Better Place of Palo Alto, Calif., in conjunction with GE of the U.S. and Renault-Nissan. The report believes the case for battery swapping is “economically fragile.”
The Franco-Japanese Renault-Nissan alliance has allocated about $5.5 billion for the development of battery-only cars. The alliance reckons battery-only vehicles will account for 10 percent of global sales by 2020, about twice as much as many other automotive organizations estimate. Roland Berger sees a five percent market share for battery-only vehicles. Other manufacturers expect two percent or less.
Devastating conclusion
The report concludes that the move to battery cars has got ahead of itself, by going to the market before it was ready. It quotes Peter Wells of the Centre of Automotive Industry Research at the Cardiff Business School in England with this devastating conclusion.
“For electric-vehicle sales to grow significantly several things need to happen. Vehicles need to be much lighter, battery technology needs to be cheaper and offer greater performance, urban authorities have to promote zero emission zones, industrial capacity to support the technologies needs to be created, petroleum prices have to rise, renewable energy prices have to fall and consumers have to be re-educated in terms of how they think about personal mobility.
“In the latter regard, we have to break the culture of ‘just in case’ purchasing whereby consumers buy a car for the maximum application, and instead encourage a culture of ‘minimalism’ or ‘just enough’ purchasing where consumers buy a car for their normal everyday needs,” Wells said.
Good luck to manufacturers who try to encourage “minimalism” or “just enough.”
Not too late
It is not too late for car manufacturers to change course and go for a much simpler, cheaper and less ambitious solution. Why not produce a little vehicle that doesn’t attempt to emulate the car with its speed, range and comfort? Why not make something utilitarian which would go about 30 mph down to the shops or around campus, where limited range would make no difference, and which many families could afford. Why not apply the new electric technology to the golf cart? This would be an affordable, unpretentious little utilitarian second car which didn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.
“The technology would be very suited for a golf cart,” said Roland Berger’s Blanchet, “but the car manufacturers are not in that market today. They are selling volume and they will hope that short range mobility will be more than a niche market. They aren’t going to make a car that isn’t a car.”
Neil Winton, European columnist for Autos Insider, is based in Sussex, England. E-mail him at neil.winton@btinternet.com.
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110223/OPINION03/102230301/Battery-electric-cars-will-struggle-after-normal-buyers-replace-early-adopters#ixzz1FOCXMJ25
Can Electric Vehicles Change the Game?
March 1, 2011
February 22, 2011 – National Journal
Tom Kuhn
President of Edison Electric Institute
We face numerous energy policy challenges as a nation, but perhaps none looms larger right now than energy security. The recent and ongoing instability in the Middle East is yet another reminder that the United States remains heavily dependent on foreign nations–not all of them friendly–to meet much of our energy needs. In my view, energy security, along with the move towards cleaner energy, is the number one policy challenge facing the United States.
Can we “kick the oil habit?” That’s been a popular topic in Washington, as well as an elusive goal, for many years. In reality, oil will continue to have an important place in our energy mix. But we do need to dramatically expand efforts to harness our domestic energy resources. The transformation of the nation’s transportation fleet to one fueled in large part by domestically-produced electricity can gradually help wean the United States from its dependence on foreign energy sources.
As one of 15 Consumer Advisory Board members for the Chevy Volt, I’ve had the good fortune to test out one of the cars that will change the way America drives–and where it gets its fuel. The first wave of PEVs already is hitting major US markets, as car manufacturers join utilities in embracing electricity as a significant transportation fuel.
So, what happens next? There is bipartisan support for EVs in Congress, as well as support from the national security community. President Obama has set a goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. How close can we get? What are the biggest hurdles, and what do you see as the biggest potential benefits?
Editor’s Note: I am a citizen not being paid by anyone except those who hire me for IT consulting. The comments section of this article found at: http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2011/02/can-electric-vehicles-change-t.php?comments=expandall#comments are all officers of corporations or organizations to promote electric vehicles. Where will the energy come from? If we can’t burn coal, dam up rivers, build nuclear plants or drill for natural gas and oil how the hell are we supposed to fuel our energy lives? Do I sound mad? You’re damn right I am. While all these people are getting fat on government grants from my tax dollars, I am struggling to make enough money to pay my electric bill. And I can’t even leave this post on their website because I haven’t paid to become a member!!!
Comment from FedUpWithTheEditor is full of It!
March 1, 2011
The person who commented on driving 55 as a sane energy policy is… well, frankly, full of crude! Driving 55 will do very little to reduce the energy consumption in the United States. What we need to do is DRILL! What good is oil when it is left in the ground? If it’s okay to drill in China or Venezuela, then it should be okay to drill here.
Second of all, your assertion that driving 55 is any safer than any other speed is liberal pap. Show me the statistics. In fact, there are more accidents in parking lots where people are going under 5 MPH than there are on the highways.
Your third assertion is also asinine. Read the book “Climate Confusion” by Dr. Roy Spencer and you will see what a small percentage of the air is made of up of carbon dioxide that even doubling it would be negligible. Besides, as a liberal don’t you like plants and trees? After all, they use CO2 to grow and release more oxygen. Seems to me more carbon dioxide, the healthier the plants. The healthier the plants, the more oxygen produced. The world keeps spinning.
Typical of liberals to figure legislation is the only solution. Passing laws does very little to improve our lives. In California we have no cell phones while driving, it’s a law you have to have your lights on if you run your windshield wipers and there are seat belt laws. Does that stop anyone from doing or not doing these things? NO!
So crawl back into your little hole and shut the heck up until you can prove what you are saying is the truth!
Fed Up Editor (and I will always get the last word!)
State of American Energy
January 24, 2011
As promised, here is more information from today’s State of American Energy event held in Washington. First, written materials, videos and the State of American Energy report are available here at EnergyTomorrow.org. Also, the speech delivered by Jack Gerard, API’s President and CEO, to a standing-room only crowd can be found here.
As part of the event, API also released a new study by Wood Mackenzie that assesses the economic impacts of producing more domestic oil and natural gas vs. raising energy taxes. By a wide margin, more jobs are created and more government revenue is generated by allowing the oil and natural gas industry to produce more U.S. energy.
Please contact me if you have any questions.
Jane Van Ryan
Senior Manager, Communications
E: vanryanj@api.org
T: 202-682-8181
API Talks about Higher Energy Prices
January 24, 2011
Editor’s note: Does anyone wonder why energy prices are going up? If they were factored into the infation number…
APR – I’m sending you some new materials about the various EPA proposals that have been making headlines recently.
First, here is a video that provides an overview of three of EPA’s proposals, including the ozone standard, the E15 fuel blend, and the greenhouse gas regulations.
Second, we have an updated briefing paper that outlines our concerns with these proposals. For example, under the EPA’s proposed ozone standards, even Yellowstone National Park would be out of attainment.
And finally, check out the OMB Watch graph in my blog post about last month’s EPA-themed blogger conference call. It shows that, in the first 18 months of the second Bush administration, the EPA proposed 16 significant regulations with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. In the first 18 months of the current administration, EPA has proposed 42 significant regulations.
Jane Van Ryan
API
EPA materials
November 23, 2010
Note: As energy costs go up, including gasoline prices, here are some materials from our beloved EPA with comments from API.
Here is a video that provides an overview of three of EPA’s proposals, including the ozone standard, the E15 fuel blend, and the greenhouse gas regulations.
Second, we have an updated briefing paper that outlines our concerns with these proposals. For example, under the EPA’s proposed ozone standards, even Yellowstone National Park would be out of attainment.
And finally, check out the OMB Watch graph in my blog post about last month’s EPA-themed blogger conference call. It shows that, in the first 18 months of the second Bush administration, the EPA proposed 16 significant regulations with an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. In the first 18 months of the current administration, EPA has proposed 42 significant regulations.
Jane Van Ryan
Senior Manager, Communications
E: vanryanj@api.org
T: 202-682-8181
American Petroleum Institute (API)
California – Stuck on Stupid
November 6, 2010
The state is deeply in debt. Strict regulations and high taxes are chasing businesses out of state. People are following them in order to keep their jobs. What voters don’t seem to realize is the only place government can fund the government is with tax revenue they get from the tax base. Yet it’s shrinking while spending is going up. So what is California’s solution?
Vote to return the same group of people back into office… the ones who got us here in the first place. Jerry Brown should be saying, “Fooled you once, shame on me. Fooled you twice shame on you. Fooled you three times… what are you, stupid?”
After all, the man has failed as Governor, as Mayor of Oakland and now as Attorney General. In his latest role, responsible for enforcing immigration laws, he slams Meg Whitman for having an illegal alien work for her. Huh? Whose fault is that? Now he’s Governor again? Stupid is as stupid does.
Don’t be surprised if we see unemployment skyrocket as our state sinks deeper into debt. But we deserve it for re-electing the same fools who brought us to this place. The rest of the country got the message. It’s a shame California no longer leads the way.
FedUpEditor
