creativforce

Tata Nano About to Give Detroit a Run for Its Money

Agility is a big part of safety, I have never felt safe in an American lead sled like a crowne Victoria, because I knew stopping on a dime or dodging an obstacle wasn't going to happen. The Yugo is a poor comparison because it was built to communist quality standards. In case no one has noticed, the quality coming out of Asia generally beats ours.

Battery Wars

Texaco is right.

Battery Wars

Thank you for one of the most interesting articles I have read on the subject. Everyone who has followed the plight of the electric car since the late nineties has wondered "Who Stole the Electric Car?" As an investor in ENER during those heady days of the electric revolution with the EV1 in California, I thought I would soon be rich as ENER ramped up production of the NIMH battery. When Shell (who later sold to Chevron) initially bought into the company, I assumed the huge infusion of cash ENER needed would soon be on the way. As we know this was the beginning of the end. CA mysteriously repealed their zero emissions requirement, and the stock price at ENER went to hell for a decade. Cobasys has been a joke and their leaky batteries have seemed like intentional screw ups. Last year Mercedes had to sue them for failure to deliver and GM who built one of the most remarkable cars of the 20th century (EV1) can't get access to the batteries they helped test and develop.

So now we learn that the NIMH battery revolution failed, not because of oil company interference, and a deep, abiding faith in the profit power of planned obsolescence at GM ... but because Toyota cornered the market on lanthanum? The story just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

It would make more sense if oil money paid everyone involved to keep the technology on ice for a decade...just think of the billion$ the lack of an electric alternative has saved Big Oil until now!!

Lockheed Martin also makes most of their money on war in the middle east, providing the funds to keep EESTOR locked up for another decade or two seems like money well spent to me.

It's not that I want to believe in conspiracies, but any detective will tell you to follow the money. So rather than all these back room dealings we suspect, we now must believe that it all comes down to profound stupidity at GM. Well, I guess that's not too hard to believe either.

Li-ion Batteries: A Speculative Field of Dreams

I was holding ENER stock back when Texaco bought in. I was excited because I thought they were serious about being an energy company, not an oil company. I thought my stock would skyrocket. Duh. Boy did I get burned. And I'm still pissed. Little did I know at the time that the oil companies would succeed at suppressing NIMH battery technology for a decade. The entire world should be pissed. I am beginning to believe that they can't keep the genie in the bottle much longer. But I am extremely suspicious when breakthrough technologies like EEStor and PWTC mysteriously disappear or simply stay hidden. I don't know anything about battery technology, but I do know that oil companies (the greatest concentration of wealth in the world) don't want to lose market share. Don't think the free market will ever bring battery powered cars to consumers because oil money can always trump small start ups. It has to be done with legislation. As California has repeatedly proven, if you have the legislation, the technology will follow.

The Autos and Mentality That Ruined Detroit

The only people who stick up for american car companies are people who never bought a Japanese car. If you think they are too expensive, then buy one with 100,000 miles on it. It will still go another 200,000 with no problems. My '98 chevy conversion van cost me $16,000 in repairs before I sold it with 100,000 miles on it. It almost bankrupted me. So will I be sad if GM goes bankrupt? Enough said.

My U.S. Infrastructure and Employment Plan

Amen again. And Tomas Martin is right ... electric cars are the only answer that makes sense! The Poulsen hybrid is a better retrofit for older cars than a natural gas conversion. For the same price, you can get clean, 95+% efficient electric motors pushing cars.

Cashing In on the Electric Transport Boom

It just goes to show how completely Big Oil can manipulate information. This article is fifty percent wrong. Half the posters have studied enough to know which half is wrong, and half the posters believe what the oil companies are telling them. Yes electric cars may get here eventually, that much is right. But it will only happen because the Japanese are oil customers, not oil merchants. EV1 was a great car, the NIMH battery worked just fine. Chevron controls the NIMH battery and the longer they keep it on a shelf, the more gas they can sell. The Mcain/Palin ticket is accepting gargantuan contributions from oil companies, their employees and their stock holders. Palin comes from a state where citizens don't pay taxes, but instead get kick backs from oil companies each year just for living there. Obama (supposedly) is not an oil puppet. We'll see what happens if he gets elected. Or if he gets assasinated? By the way read Barr McClellans book "Blood, Power and Money" about how Big Oil has manipulated politics in Texas since the 1950's (and how they paid for the Kennedy assasination.) If you think I am paranoid, you must think the Iraq war is about truth, justice and the American way. You must not know about the millions of dollars Cheney and Bush have made in Haliburton stock, and you probably think global warming is a leftwing conspiracy. Those nerdy weather scientists living in Antartica must be acceppting huge amounts of payola to scare us all into voting for Obama.