User 229640

Lithium Ion Batteries and GEVs: False Gods for the New Millennium

John,

biz.yahoo.com/prnews/0...

But your trivial spreadsheet has it all figured out, and Mazda and Itochu are all wrong (as are AeroEnviroment, EnerDel, A123, Energy Conversion Devices, Th1nk, Japan's postal service and Family Mart, ...) ? Perhaps hype might fool a few small companies and government departments, but it is just ridiculous to claim that of the likes of Steven Chu (a Nobel-prize-winning PhD energy physicist, not a bureaucrat), and Mazda and Itochu are all missing the best bet, much less being played for suckers.

So where are the flaws in your reasoning? There are too many to list, but I'll give one example: Your spreadsheet is overly simple. Take this assumption: " and all GEVs will use electricity from utilities that emit the national average of 585 grams of C02 per kWh."

That number is already dropping as NG and zero-emission sources slowly supplant coal. NG, solar and wind have grown rapidly; no new coal generation is being built, and the oldest and dirtiest are being shut down. Project this forward a year or two to when coal-based plants are being rapidly supplanted by zero-emission sources because they must otherwise be refurbished to stay cost-competitive under carbon caps.

Good luck withstanding the "Spanish Inquisition", John.

Lithium-Ion Batteries and Centerfolds, Part II

(1) Large static power storage (ie. to buffer utility-sized wind and solar) will be done by flow batteries, because they scale up so well. Look 'em up.

(2) There is no such thing as "clean coal". It is non-existent technology, nothing but a phrase invented by Big Coal to prevent development of alternatives to filthy coal.