Plug-in Vehicles

by Debra Fiakas CFA CarCharging Group, Inc. (CCGI:  OTC) producers electric car charging stations.  It partners with property owners such as shopping malls or parking garages to operating the charging stations and collect fees from electric car owners.  At the end of September 2013, the last time the company reported financial results. CarCharging had eighty-seven strategic partnerships with a gaggle of private and public entities such as Walgreens, Icon Parking, the City of Miami Beach, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.    A mobile app helps car owners find locations by city or zip code. CarCharging...

Doug Young How do you say in Chinese? This week had US electric car maker Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) officially driving into China despite its failure to resolve a trademark dispute, meaning it has no official Chinese name as it enters the market. All of the world’s top car makers now manufacture in China. But that’s a very expensive business, and other companies have been chasing more niche-oriented spaces in the market. Online car information provider Autohome (NYSE: ATHM) is one of those, and successfully sold investors...

Tom Konrad CFA A recent financing transaction dramatically changes the outlook for heavy-duty electric vehicle company Balqon (BLQN.OB). Last summer, I mentioned Balqon Corporation (BLQN.OB) as one of ten electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid vehicle stocks as part of my Best Peak Oil Investments series.  At the time, I thought that Balqon's short-haul electric trucks were a better fit for EV technology than electric cars, but that Balqon's constant need for investor funds made the common stock a bad investment because of probable dilution.  Overall, I thought the stock was worth watching, in case the funding...

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)...

Doug Young Geely recently signaled its committment to EVs by forming a joint venture with Kandi Technologies, the maker of the Coco EV above.  Photo by Tom Harrison. After making increasing noises about its intent to develop electric vehicles (EVs), domestic automaker Geely (HKEx: 175) is getting serious about the effort by moving one of its top executives into a new role overseeing its EV sales. Meantime, rival EV maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594, OTC:BYDDF) has gotten its own new boost in the space with...

Part IV - KNDI's Stock Valuation Arthur Porcari. This is the last installment in a four-part series on Kandi Technologies (KNDI).  Part I was an introduction, Part II took a look at Kandi's Business, and Part III looked at the company's financial condition. What’s With The Stock Price? KNDI, like most US traded China stocks is currently trading approximately 50% below its January high for the year, and 60% below its 2008 all time high. Unlike most, it's numbers are growing dramatically. Perhaps not too a-symptomatic when one considers how little Wall Street knows about this...

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...

John Petersen In my second quarter update I deleted China Ritar Power (CRTP.PK) from my energy storage tracking list because of its decision to terminate its SEC registration during a period when China-based companies with US listings were bogged down in a dense fog of suspicion. Since then the carnage in the energy storage sector has been far worse than I expected and it's time to permanently remove the companies highlighted in pink from my energy storage and vehicle electrification tracking list for the reasons described below. Current Culls In March of this year...

Tom Konrad CFA The Kandi KD501 Mini-EV to be leased in Hangzhou. Photo by Marc Chang. Ever since July, when I wrote about Kandi Technologies' (NASD:KNDI) deal to sell 20,000 mini-electric vehicles (EVs) to a leasing program in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, the company’s detractors have been harping on the fact that this deal was simply a “Letter of Intent” (LOI) and not legally binding.   This morning, Kandi put those concerns to rest, with a signed sales contract for 5,000 mini-EVs to be delivered in between now and the end...

John Petersen Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." So when the editor of Batteries International asked if I could present my analysis of plug-in vehicles in two pages and prove my numbers in a way that any open-minded adult could follow, understand and verify with an Internet search engine, I jumped at the challenge. The article was published yesterday in their Winter Edition. Since the numbers have profound implications for the energy storage sector and an expected flurry of ill-conceived electric vehicle projects like the planned Tesla Motors...

Tom Konrad CFA Stop debating the viability of electric cars, and work on fixing our broken transportation paradigm. My friend and colleague John Petersen has it in for the electric car.  Recently he wrote a summary of his anti-electric car views, entitled "It's Time to Kill the Electric Car, Drive a Stake Through its Heart and Burn the Corpse."  Did I mention he also has a flair for the dramatic?  Many electric vehicle (EV) advocates, or "EVangelists," as he calls them, have tried to refute his arguments.  One of the more coherent...

By Jeff Siegel While I've long been an outspoken supporter of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), as well as a huge fan of both Elon Musk and the Model S, it is the company's smaller version of the Model S that gets me most excited. The bottom line is that cost will be the determining factor for most Americans considering electric cars. After all, you'd be hard-pressed to find many folks who wouldn't love to own a Model S. But at around $75,000, few can afford it. Of course, the vision of Tesla is not one based solely around supplying high-end...

By Jeff Siegel On the 30th of April, everything is going to change... Why? Because Elon Musk says so. OK, maybe he didn't actually say that, but he did recently reveal that on April 30th, he'll be making a major announcement about a new product that is NOT an electric car. Most analysts have suggested that the announcement is regarding the release of what could ultimately be a game-changer for the solar industry  a game-changer that, if it delivers the way the Tesla Model S has delivered on performance, design, and efficiency, could catapult Tesla (NASD:TSLA) into one of...

By Jeff Siegel If you don't believe that folks are waiting impatiently for Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) to slip up, look no further than today's action on the stock. After the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was selling fewer cars and offering new incentives, the stock tanked 6 percent. Of course, as it turned out, the decline in sales was only in the U.S. And it didn't take long for super genius Elon Musk to tweet the following message: Credit Suisse analyst Daniel Galves followed up on the piece, noting that...

John Petersen An English proverb teaches us to hope for the best but plan for the worst. With the imminent introduction of a variety of plug-in vehicles that will begin hitting showroom floors in the next few months, the phobia du jour is range anxiety, an entirely rational terror that an EV will get you to your destination in eco-chic style but only get you home with the help of a tow-truck. Sadly, most people who extol the virtues of electric drive are incurable optimists that have little or no regard for the risks inherent in complex systems...

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...