If you are new to electric vehicles, the naming of hybrid and full EV’s can be confusing. For that matter, if you are not new to electric vehicles, the naming of hybrid and full EV’s can be confusing. I recently had a discussion with two Tesla owners who had no idea what a Mild Hybrid was. To make this even more confusing many auto manufacturers make a gas, hybrid, PHEV and/or BEV versions of the same car! For instance the…
Tesla fan boys and some other industry observers claim that plug-in hybrid vehicles are a needlessly complex and expensive technology and more importantly that consumers will not buy PHEV’s because full battery electric’s (BEV’s) are so much better. In this video Volvo US CEO Anders Gustafsson explains there is a bright future for Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles (PHEV), at least in the short run. Volvo will double down on electrification under his leadership and they will promote PHEV’s to most of…
“Grid Parity” is the term used in the energy sector to describe the cost of adding electricity into power distribution systems (high voltage wires – aka ‘The Grid’) as the same for different methods of producing electricity. It is important to note that the cost has to be the true, unsubsidized cost for Grid Parity to be a reality. Coal fired generation is often used as the baseline for Grid Parity calculations as it is the less expensive form of…
The year 2010 was not that long ago. The US housing bubble and subsequent global economic collapse of 2008 resulted in governments pouring billions into the projects to get the economy moving. A notable amount went in wind and solar. In the United States, then President Obama announced $100 Billion “Green Stimulus” as part of a larger $900 Billion total stimulus package including: “…Renewable energy loans: ($10 billion Senate, $8 billion House) – These work like outright grants for various…
We just completed a story on the new 2022 Nissan Pathfinder EV which is really a Nio ES8 which has a fascinating technology called battery swap. The idea is that a semi-permanent kiosk can swap out your drained car battery for a fresh fully charged battery in the same time it would take to fill up as gas/diesel vehicle with old fashioned dino-juice: This isn’t some unproven demonstration either. Nio already has 143 battery swap stations in 58 different cities:…
Now that Mitsubishi is part of the Nissan Renault Alliance it is time to share parts, designs and advance into a brave new all electric world. In fact the new 2022 Nissan Pathfinder EV and Mitsubishi Outlander All EV have battery swap technology. This means their batteries can replaced in THREE MINUTES inside a kiosk smaller than a gas station convenience store. Click to Expand That would be great if it were true. Unfortunately the pictures above are not…
“A huge shock to the system: Our assessment is that global energy demand is set to drop by 5% in 2020, energy-related CO2 emissions by 7%, and energy investment by 18%. The impacts vary by fuel. The estimated falls of 8% in oil demand and 7% in coal use stand in sharp contrast to a slight rise in the contribution of renewables… “IEA World Energy Report So began the latest large scale report on the energy industry. When combing through the…
If you want to understand modern business, in particular EV, new energy and tech companies, you had better understand what a SPAC is. The world of finance used to be relatively simple. There were just three kinds of ownership structures: Sole proprietors One person running a company Partnerships Small group of people running a company Privately held companies Usually a small group of people running a company with many (i.e. 40) shareholders that is not publicly traded so their shares…
In recent months there has been much talk of so called solid state batteries for use in electric vehicles (EV’s). However, most Solid State Battery engineering is not being done by the big automobile manufacturers like VW, Toyota and GM; mostly SSB’s are being developed by small design houses you likely have never hear of like QuantumScape, Fisker and Solid Power. WHAT IS A SOLID STATE BATTERY? When we think of solid state batteries, we think of electronic circuits with…
A new and little known agency of the United States federal government just invested USD$25 million into a Brazilian cobalt and nickel mine. Who is the US DFC? The United States Development Finance Corporation US DFC was formed in December 2019 as a replacement for several agencies including Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and Development Credit Authority (DCA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). As you might expect from the name of these groups, US DFC is…
If you have heard the nonsense put out by blind Tesla fanboys that Range Anxiety is a thing of the past, watch this video to get the real information. I recently had to do a loop from Calgary to Lethbridge, Alberta and back. Because Lethbridge has only 1 charger and it is only a 220 volt tied to the Holiday Inn, I had to go through a small town named Fort Macleod, Alberta which has a very nice set of…
What is the “best” electric vehicle? That is a subjective question for sure, but using mass market proven components combined with a price regular people can actually afford are to of the most important parts of the formula. The Fisker Ocean EV will be the least expensive, highest quality electric drive SUV on the planet. According to the founder, Henrik Fisker, designing your own parts and assembling your own vehicle is an expensive fools game. Using the Volkswagen MEB electric…
Tesla fan boys will tell you that the Model S, 3 and X are the greatest vehicles ever put into production and that “…none of the brain dead dino-juice legacy car companies will ever catch…” (actual quote from a Telsa buddy of mine). In this video we discuss more than a dozen Tesla problems or shortcomings, many of which are quite unexpected. From excessive road noise, to a lack of basic radio management tools (like mute and reordering favorites), to…
It should not have come as a surprise to us that several people have made snide comments about our review of General Motors new Ultium batteries but it did. So let us quickly clarify a few things. There is no suggestion that the GM’s Ultium EV battery packs will leap frog GM or any other company into market domination. Low cost, flexible packaged, high capacity, fast charging, EV battery packs are a necessary but NOT sufficient element for domination. So…
As word spread last week that Tesla is likely to change to hexagonal from the cylindrical batteries it has used for a decade, GM that usurped the whole efficiency debate by showing off their innovative new flat pack batteries they call “Ultium”. They are higher density at a much lower cost than any other companies battery pack and can be charged at a massive 800V providing a 100 miles of range in just 10 minutes. It appears that GM will…
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