DRich

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

By "expensive", I mean margin expansion. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong, but I just can't see it.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Marketquant, I've been studying Toxco and it's recycle process for about a year now. I'm convinced that it works, but only to a certain point. It's first a very expensive process that doesn't appear to return any more than 80% back to a remanufacturing ready state for raw material. Good, though I'm not convinced that it will ever compete with mining. Even scaled up over a decade of ever increasing supply, I don't see it as economically viable to ROI what investment bankers would view as good risk/reward. Just my opinion.

I believe that other technologies will emerge soon. That's my hope. I would think that a better structured product life cycle chain will develop over the next decade. I'd be happy to trade it as does unfold, even as I don't fully believe it to be the end all for motive, grid, or any other purpose. It would still be big. I'd be more inclined (and have begun) to invest long term in the build-out of CNG infrastructure for HEV's. To me, the infrastructure of Li storage & CNG are about even right now. Both have good opportunities with about equivalent risk of fail to become mainstream. With my limited money I'm going to stick with investing in cheap existing technology and trade the emerging unproven ones.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

Marketquant: At present there are no "slaughterhouses" that can turn a profit (or even exist outside a lab). I've been looking and can only find processes looking to start-up at a minimum of 5 years out. Not an investible scenario, but fun to keep watch for over the horizon. Quite a quandary.

Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable

John,
I'm more & more convinced, as time goes by, that NG is being overlooked for the simple reason that to build-out the infrastructure would cost non-governmental capital outlays and require hiring Americans to install it. We are valued customers but not thought so highly as employees.

Toyota Tests and Rejects Lithium-Ion Batteries for the Prius

I saw a diesel/electric Golf at the Geneva auto show last year that I had been following the development of for about 8 years. I was really excited to se that it was all the way to production phase. Tooling, scheduling, delivery dates (summer/fall 2009). They were even willing to take my order for it right there & then. But Noooooo! Six months before scheduled roll-out it was canceled with the explanation that it was too expensive to produce (margin problems, I guess), yet they had gone all the way through to tooling. You might have the car in the EU, but no way for the US unless it could be built here. Pissed me off.

VW is probably going to a leader in EV's of some sort, but my experience has put me squarely in the "believe it when I see it" and I'm mad enough that it had best be state of the art and competitively priced if & when it does arrive.

How PHEVs and EVs Will Sabotage America's Drive for Energy Independence

Peace, Don. No offense, but reading these comments is frustrating to me sometimes. Seems that some want to nitpick & browbeat John's presentation of the data he so generously has shared. I don't mind debate of another fact based or 'researchable' point of view, but some want to wander off the narrow focus of the subject in order to......I don't know what. Maybe the ego stroking of being 'righter' than the author. The subject at hand is complex & multifaceted in itself. We all know it doesn't exist in vacuum. The perception of world that energy storage to exists in is IMHO not for here. After all someone has to be on the other side of the trade in order for profit to be made.

How PHEVs and EVs Will Sabotage America's Drive for Energy Independence

Don,
It's not to John to justify or reinforce any reason you might entertain to get involved with this kind of investment (or any other) based on his views of socio-economic fundamentals. That is entirely up to you. He has laid out a rather exhaustive, fact based argument that anyone can accept or reject. I thank him for providing the research/data that he has. Doesn't matter if I agree.