Clean Transportation

There are at least 22 Electric car startups (not counting aspiring makers of electric bikes, electric motorcycles, and stranger contraptions) today, each competing to break in as a new manufacturer. I expect that some of them will succeed, and that the traditional car manufacturer who are currently pursuing the PHEV will be relctant to forsake their highly refined ICE technology. Existing carmakers could thus fail to head off outside competition, leaving a niche open for EV-only manufacturers. I'm not trying to say that the internal combustion engine is dead, long live the electric motor (although I wish I were), but I do expect that a growing proportion of the vehicle fleet will be all electric, even as Plug-In Hybrids are gaining ground.

Technology cannot save us Technology will not save us from peak oil, but the invisible hand of economics will.  It's easy to get excited about all the amazing new vehicles the world's car-makers are promising us.  Even if we believe manufacturers' hype, the Cadillac SRX your neighbor bought last week will be on the road for at least a couple decades, and all the fuel saved by your next plug-in hybrid will not make up for the amount it guzzles. I, and many others, believe that the Western World will soon have to cope with much...

I've recently agreed to do a of couple presentations on "Investing In Green Energy" at conferences this October, and so I've decided it's time to update and expand on some graphs I constructed this spring: I created a pair of graphs which give an overview of how different electricity generation technologies compare.  These are not precise graphs with anything resembling scientific accuracy, but I think they're a useful too for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of various technologies.   This is my attempt to do the same for transportation fuels.  Note that I'm really only talking about cars and trucks...

In the last Technology Quarterly, The Economist had a story about the electric busses in 1907 London.  As they tell it, the electric bus had a real chance to beat out the internal combustion engine, and the company only failed because of fraud.  The electric technology was in many ways superior to the internal combustion engines which eventually won out. In fact, many people at the time still considered the horse to be the far superior technology.  These days, the battle is still between the same three fuels: Electric, Petroleum, and biomass (grass and oats for the...

September is starting out as the month of speculation about a massive three day air strike on Iran.  Is Bush ready to attack Iran while our troops are still trying to stabilize both Afghanistan and Iraq?  In February, administration officials were denying it.   The preparations now going on could simply be the stick part of a negotiating strategy; the bad cop to Russia's good cop.  But Bush's chances of successful cooperation with Putin could be better. What if? If Bush does launch a massive three day air strike on Iran, what will that mean for alternative energy stocks?  I...

One of the criticisms I often hear about cleantech is that, as an asset class, it is too risky and volatile for the average investor. That is a misconception Tom attempted to dispel a few months ago with his Blue-Chip Alternative Energy Portfolio. In fact, some of the most interesting work in cleantech and alternative energy is currently being conducted by large companies. A Clean Car Pick Last year, we told you about a report on investing in clean automotive. We have some interesting follow-up information on one of the companies discussed in that report. ...

One of the companies I have followed for some time is Westport Innovations, Inc., (TSX:WPT or WPIVF.PK) out of Vancouver. The technology and product suite allows large diesel trucks to run standard diesels on a 95% natural gas mix, enabling fuel switching as well as significantly improved NOx and PM, as well as CO2 emissions. The company's rapid expansions date from a late 1990s joint venture with Cummins (NYSE:CMI), and Westport has led this market sector since then. I had the opportunity at the recent Greenvest 2007 Conference I chaired in San Francisco to hear...

Too Many Brownies Before Dinner "When you feed your kid six brownies before dinner, you can't expect him to eat the salad, no matter how good it is."  So says Leslie Glustrom, a long term renewable energy advocate.  This is her metaphor for why Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) has been reluctant to pursue Demand Side Management (DSM) and renewable energy projects in Colorado as they have been in Minnesota.  Because Xcel is currently constructing 500 MW of new coal-fired generation, and they are also interested in a 300-350 MW IGCC plant by 2013, they may have little demand for...

An interesting short piece in Wired's Autopia discussing Nissan's 2007 Altima Hybrid. This is interesting because it is available now and at a reasonable price, and so the impact on company sales can be measured in the short term. I'm always wary of announcements involving technologies (let alone mass production) that are years away. This harks back to the idea of bridge, or transition, technologies. Companies that are finding ways to make money from existing technologies while still keeping eye on promising future technologies are worth keeping on the radar.

Two diametrically-opposed stories for this post: Beacon Power and RailPower Tech . The latter is up 134% on its week-ago closing price, while the former is down nearly 22% over the same period. Beacon Power Corp I wrote about Beacon Power a little while ago. The recent drop in share price is due in large part to the fact that Beacon announced, last Friday (Dec. 29), a glitch at one of its testing facilities in Massachusetts. This was followed by an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford downgrading the company from Buy to Hold. Almost immediately, the...

I’ve written a fair bit about cars in the last little while, but a couple of important automotive-related news hit the wire again today ahead of the LA Auto Show’s opening on Friday. Firstly, following Ford’s hybrid vehicle announcement, GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner announced today that his company was going ahead with plans to roll out a plug-in hybrid SUV based on its existing Saturn Vue hybrid model. A plug-in version of the Vue would be about 45% more fuel efficient than an equal-sized truck with similar characteristics. Like Ford (NYSE:F), General Motors (NYSE:GM) has been rapidly loosing...

Ford (NYSE:F) just announced that it was going to unveil a suite of new vehicles based on clean powertrain technologies at the upcoming LA Auto Show. Too little too late? The company, which failed to anticipate the impact of sustained high gas prices on demand for gas-guzzling SUVs, has been haemorrhaging market share over the past 2 years to rivals with greater foresight like Toyota (NYSE:TM). To many observers, the future doesn’t look particularly bright for this icon of the US auto industry. On a related note, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments today on a petition...

A new report by Merril Lynch and the World Resources Institute (WRI), entitled “Alternatives for the clean car evolution��?, provides good background on regulatory and other forces driving the trend toward cleaner cars, as well as 3 ways to play this trend. The report first looks at air quality-related issues and lists 3 things to watch out for in the near term: (1) legal issues surrounding the classification of CO2 as a pollutant in the Clean Air Act, (2) whether governments, especially in Europe but eventually in the US, include road transport in their plans to fight climate...

Unique Mobility Inc (UQM) announced that it has received an order from the Denver Regional Transportation District ("Denver RTD") for UQM® generators and motor controllers to retrofit an additional ten hybrid electric mall shuttle buses. Each 45 foot hybrid electric mall shuttle bus will be retrofitted with a 35 kW UQM® generator and two UQM® power electronic motor controllers to control the operation of the electric propulsion motors currently installed in each bus. Last summer the Company received an order for seven systems that were delivered during the last eight months.

Altair Nanomaterials (ALTI) announced it has completed a safety testing cycle for lithium ion battery products that represents a significant step forward in the effort to develop lithium ion batteries that are safe enough to be used in electric-powered automobiles. Although lithium ion batteries are the predominant power source for cell phones, laptop computers and many other small electronic devices, safety concerns related to the potential for explosion, typically caused by charging malfunctions or extremes of temperature, have so far proved to be a vexing obstacle to using lithium ion batteries to power electric and hybrid electric vehicles...

Energy Conversion Devices Inc (ENER) has now started fleet testing at the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in Diamond Bar, California. A project of Ovonic Hydrogen Systems LLC, a subsidiary of ECD Ovonics, the advanced vehicle is a high-profile test bed designed to prove that hydrogen hybrids can be practical in daily life. The high-tech vehicle also serves to showcase Ovonic® solid metal hydrogen storage technology. Based on a production gasoline-electric hybrid model, it is part of a five year, $7 million multi-vehicle hydrogen hybrid demonstration at AQMD.