Plug-in Vehicles

Part I Arthur Porcari. Ever hear of China based NASDAQ listed Kandi Technologies (KNDI)? If you haven't, you're not alone. No financial writers, no analysts, and no significant institutions or funds are interested.  But they should be.  This series will go into the reasons why. In part II, we'll look at the company's business and history : Kandi is already selling EV mini-cars by the thousands.   Kandi landed a joint venture with three multi-billion dollar Companies for quick-change battery charging, with the first stations opening in November. Owns a mortgage free modern ten...

John Petersen On March 30th, Lux Research released an update on the vehicle electrification market titled "Small Batteries, Big Sales: The Unlikely Winners in the Electric Vehicle Market" that predicts: E-bikes and micro-hybrids carry minimal storage, but compensate with high volume. E-bikes show strong unit sales, as they sustain a 157 GWh storage market totaling $24.3 billion in revenues in 2016. Micro-hybrids benefit from increasingly stringent emissions limits, supporting 41 GWh and $3.1 billion in storage sales. Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) like Toyota's Prius grow steadily while PHEVs and EVs are at the mercy of external factors....

Doug Young Bottom line: Bureaucracy at the homeowner level is providing a major obstacle to China’s ambitious new energy vehicle build-up plan, with new government directives unlikely to fix the problem. A new report is showing just why new energy vehicles are failing to gain any traction among Chinese consumers, despite huge government efforts to promote the technology. The main culprit in this case is the country’s huge bureaucracy, which affects everything from the largest government programs all the way down to something as simple as installing a vehicle charger in an apartment building. In most...

John Petersen The first thing every securities lawyer learns is that technology is a two edged sword. On the leading edge, developers of cheap innovations that ramp rapidly over a few years build thriving businesses that deliver market beating returns for investors. On the bleeding edge, developers of expensive technologies that can't be implemented at relevant scale for years morph into financial black holes that suck the lifeblood out of portfolios and teach a new generation of investors about an insidious market phenomenon the Gartner Group refers to as the hype cycle. The second thing...

Doug Young Tesla launches trade-in program. Bottom line: Tesla and other EV makers is likely to face an uphill road in China for the next year, but prospects could start to improve in mid 2015 as new initiatives gain momentum. Reports on a new trade-in promotion from Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) are recharging talk earlier this month that the high-flying electric vehicle (EV) maker isn’t doing as well as hoped in China, where sales have gotten off to a slow start. This kind of a sluggish start isn’t too unexpected,...

John Petersen Last Friday President Obama and executives from thirteen leading automakers gathered in Washington DC to announce an historic agreement to increase fleet-wide fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks from 27.5 mpg for the 2011 model year to 54.5 mpg for the 2025 model year. While politicians frequently spin superlatives to describe mediocre results, I believe the President's claim that the accord "represents the single most important step we've ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil" is a refreshing example of political understatement. After three decades of demagoguery, debate,...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Tesla will announce a joint venture production facility in Shanghai within the next 1-2 months, and could see its China sales pick up sharply after its more affordable Model 3 reaches the market next year. Just a week after Disney (NYSE: DIS) launched its newest theme park in Shanghai, media are saying that new energy car superstar Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) is also eyeing China’s commercial capital as the location for a new production base costing up to $9 billion. We should note from the start that the potential partner mentioned in the reports, the Shanghai...

Doug Young Chinese local media were trying to accentuate the positive when they reported that China’s new energy vehicle sales rose 10-fold in the first 4 months of this year. (Chinese article) That figure caught my attention, but then I read further into the reports and saw that even after the huge jump just 10,000 new energy vehicles were sold in China in January through April, averaging a meager 2,500 per month. Adding further gloom to the picture, the vast majority of vehicles were purchased by fleet operators of taxis and buses. Within the larger figure, half of all...

*with humble apologies to Charles Darwin John Petersen The Oxford Dictionary defines the adjective 'specious' as: Superficially plausible, but actually wrong; Misleading in appearance, especially misleadingly attractive. The Wiktionary offers a broader definition as: Seemingly well-reasoned or factual, but actually fallacious or insincere; strongly held but false; Having an attractive appearance intended to generate a favorable response; deceptively attractive. Over the last two years I've patiently analyzed the evolving price and performance forecasts of electric vehicle advocates and lithium-ion battery developers. In the process I've shown them to be possible, but unlikely, and...

John Petersen Over the last couple years I've frequently argued that plug-in vehicles are inherently wasteful on a micro-economic and a macro-economic level. Unfortunately complex economic proofs are hard to grasp at a glance and my biggest challenge has been finding a simple proof for a patently obvious truth that can't be distorted by flimsy assumptions or misconstrued with rosy forecasts. I hope today's article will drive a stake through the undead heart of plug-in vehicle efficiency claims. To keep it simple, I'll use the Camry Hybrid from Toyota Motors (TM), the Leaf from Nissan Motors (NSANY.PK)...

By Jeff Siegel Back in 2007, we jumped on a small electric car company called BYD Company (OTCBB: BYDDF). We actually crushed it on that one as we took a position before Warren Buffett announced he was taking a 10% stake in the company. Of course, when we started covering the company, I had no idea Warren Buffett even knew that a Chinese company was making electric cars. The stock had a nice ride, but shortly after Uncle Warren jumped in, the stock soared and got very top heavy. It got way too hot, way too fast. We...

John Petersen I was recently invited to prepare a memorandum on the battery industry for the electric mobility working group of the World Energy Council, a global thought leadership forum established in 1923 that includes 93 national committees representing over 3,000 member organizations including governments, businesses and research institutions. Since my memorandum integrated several themes from this blog and tied them all together, I've decided to publish a lightly edited version for readers. To set the stage for the substantive discussion that follows, I’ll start with an 1883 quote from Thomas Edison: “The storage battery is one...

Doug Young Bottom line: Tesla’s newly announced modest China sales and announcement of a plan for potential local production reflect the uphill road it faces in the Chinese market, which is unlikely to get much easier in the next 2 years. China is fast becoming the land of promising upstart companies that failed to reach their potential, with word that former new energy superstar Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) has posted very ho-hum car sales in a market where it once held out big hopes. The rare China sales figures...

John Petersen Today is the fourth anniversary of my blog on investing in the energy storage and electric vehicle sectors. Over the last four years I've penned 275 Articles and 45 Instablogs on topics ranging from technical minutiae to broad macroeconomic trends. Since most of my work focuses on challenges and risks instead of lofty and optimistic goals, I'm often derided as a curmudgeon who doesn't understand the dream. Truth is I've been a guide in the Valley of Death for over thirty years and while I love panoramic scenery, I can't overlook the dangers of old mine...

Doug Young  Speed bump photo via BigStock After a year of relative calm in which its shares have surged, electric vehicle (EV) aspirant BYD (OTC: BYDDF; HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594) is once embroiled in a couple of mini-scandals involving its labor practices and technology in California. While I doubt that either of these problems will have a long-term impact on the company, they do highlight the many speed bumps that BYD and other Chinese automakers will face as they move into the global marketplace. The risks are...

Tom Konrad CFA Kandi Technologies Vertical Parking Garage Mock-up at 2012 Hangzhou Green Expo. Source: Kandi investor presentation. The Chinese State Council Development Research Center Enterprise Institute, “a leading policy research and consulting institution directly under” China’s State Council, just released a policy whitepaper endorsing business model innovation as the key to China’s goal of rapid electric vehicle (EV) adoption. The policy details the well-known differences between electric and conventional car technology which create barriers to rapid EV adoption: Limited range when compared to gasoline vehicles (100-150km, compared to 400-500km) High cost...