Plug-in Vehicles

John Petersen In June an anonymous blogger at Clean Technica dubbed me the “EV Black Knight,” the mortal enemy of electric cars.  While I was flattered by the tribute, I was deeply offended by the suggestion that I might be foolish enough to impale a lithium-ion battery pack with the burnished broadsword of economics. Seriously, anybody who’s spent any time studying battery safety knows that shockingly bad things can happen when you puncture a lithium-ion battery pack with a conductor and even a full metal jacket wouldn’t be enough to protect a knight errant from...

by Debra Fiakas CFA After the market close Tuesday, AeroVironment, Inc. (AVAV:  Nasdaq) is scheduled to report financial results for the quarter ending October 2015.  Management is holding conference call with investors and analysts directly following the announcement.  It is going to be an interesting call. AeroVironment has some crowing to do.  Hyundai recently tapped the company to provide electric vehicle charging stations at its dealerships for the 2016 Sonata plug-in hybrid model.  Sonata drivers will also have the option to buy the company’s TurboCard charging system or the wall-mounted EVSE-RS charging station.  Hyundai is the...

John Petersen Generation specific cultural references can be treacherous ground for bloggers because the flashback effect is usually limited to readers with long and vivid memories. In this case, however, the lessons of history are so relevant that I'll accept the risk and offer some context for younger readers. In my youth a war wrapped in the liberal ideology of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and fueled by an underlying concern over who would control oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Tonkin was fought in the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. By current standards,...

By Jeff Siegel Back in March, I was speaking at a conference about the future of personal transportation. I discussed how a new generation called the Millennials or Generation Y would ultimately force change in the marketplace and present a real challenge to car makers. You see, there have been a number of studies that have suggested this particular generation  which represents the kinds of numbers that allowed the baby boomers to dictate a lot of our consumer decisions today is less interested in car ownership than previous generations... They prefer public transportation, biking, walking, and car-sharing services...

Doug Young Tesla's China head resigns. Bottom line: The resignation of Tesla’s China president hints the company is getting off to a slow China start. US new energy superstar Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) suffered a setback with the departure of its China president. The news will disappoint the company’s overseas boosters and electric vehicle (EV) fans in general, and hints that this new energy superstar’s drive into China isn’t going as smoothly as hoped. Tesla had extremely high hopes for China created by its charismatic chief Elon Musk. The latest...

by Debra Fiakas CFA   If you are putting together a list of 2013 phenomena, you can put Tesla Motors (TSLA:  Nasdaq) and its Model S electric car near the top.  The stock bounced off a low of $32.11 in early January last year and nearly went into orbit.  TSLA share closed the year 2013 at $150.43, representing a return of 368% from the 52-week low.  Impressive!  The market pundits cannot seem to get enough of Tesla and its founder/CEO Elon Musk.  Yet Tesla is not the only electric car producer that has met with...

by Debra Fiakas CFA The chief executive officer of Car Charging Group (CCGI:  OTC/PK), Michael Farkas, made an appearance at the Marcum Microcap Investment Conference in New York this week.  Farkas used the forum to brag a bit about this company’s practical accomplishments in providing electric vehicle charging stations and services to residential and commercial customers.  Farkas is particularly proud of snapping up the EV charging network of bankrupt ECOtality (ECTYQ:  OTC/PK) at a price he claims was about two pennies on a dollar of ECOtality’s government-funded assets.   Only thinly disguised was his scorn for government investment to...

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  I gave quite a bit of attention a few days ago to US electric vehicle (EV) sensation Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA), so it’s only fair that I follow up by writing about China’s homegrown EV superstar BYD (OTC: BYDDF; HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594), which has just released quarterly results that look quite disappointing. The only things that look slightly encouraging in this latest report are the fact that billionaire investor Warren Buffett continues to hold onto his 10 percent stake in the company, which he bought in 2008, and that BYD remains profitable. But even the...

John Petersen One of the hardest parts of blogging about energy storage and vehicle electrification is the inability of some readers to wrap their minds around large numbers. We throw around numbers like thousand, million, billion and even trillion with surprising alacrity, but many fail to grasp their significance because the underlying realities are too big to comprehend. The other day I stumbled across a website that tracks the national debt and uses the humble second to put incredibly large numbers into perspective: A thousand seconds is 16.6 minutes; A million seconds is 11.6 days; A...

Doug Young Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has remained faithful to Chinese car maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594; OTC:BYDDF), refusing to change his 10 percent holdings in the company despite a rapid tumble as its bet on electric vehicles (EVs) fails to take off. But soon the man known as the Oracle of Omaha may have no choice but to reduce his stake, since BYD has just announced a plan to issue more shares to raise desperately needed cash. Of course Buffett may choose to buy some of those new shares to maintain his stake at 10...

Doug Young  Bottom line: Beijing should promote cutting-edge companies like Tesla that can help advance its new energy agenda, while abandoning ones like Yingli that use old technology to make cheap copycat products. Two green energy stories were in the headlines last week, spotlighting China’s drive to become a global leader in the new technology and also the right and wrong ways to achieve that aim. An item involving US electric vehicle (EV) powerhouse Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) represented the right approach, with reports that the company might near a deal with Beijing to build a manufacturing plant in China....

Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Most plug-in vehicles (both pure electric and plug-in hybrids) come with a "level 1" charging station which allows the vehicle to be charged from a standard household outlet.  If your vehicle is a plug-in hybrid with limited electric range, or you don't drive much, this is likely all you will need.  Otherwise, you will want a "level 2" charging station. If you are a do-it-yourself-er and like to get into the nitty-gritty, you should read the whole article.  If you just want some quick advice about the best charging station for you, skip to the last section,...

*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 On June 22nd Scientific American rolled-out a Web-only article titled "The Dirty Truth about Plug-in Hybrids, Made Interactive" that summarizes a January 2008 report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and shows why plug-in vehicles in the U.S. will, on average, be just a little bit dirtier than gasoline HEVs. You read that right – dirtier, not cleaner! I first raised the issue in an August 2009 article titled PHEVs and EVs, Plugging Into a Lump of Coal, where I estimated that plug-in vehicles would be about 25% cleaner than HEVs, but the marginal cost...

Tom Konrad I asked Art Porcari for a paragraph about what Kandi Technologies' (KNDI) recent press release meant for the company to be included in this article. He managed to keep it to a page, but it was too much for an article about ten stocks.  I thought I'd share his thoughts here.   In its Q3, 2011 10Q filing Kandi (KNDI) stated: “On August 14, 2011, a team is formally formed in Hangzhou by Development Research Center of the State Council, Society of Automotive Engineers of China (SAEC), and Zhejiang University to...