Plug-in Vehicles

Jeff Siegel September 25: Toyota (NYSE:TM) Scraps Electric Car 2012 Toyota Prius photographed in Washington, D.C., USA.. (Photo credit: IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons) Claiming the company misread the market, Toyota (NYSE:TM) is scrapping its plans for a global roll-out of an electric mini-car called the eQ. To be honest, I'm not particularly surprised. Toyota has not been very aggressive, or interested really, in pursuing the electric vehicle (EV) market. And I get it. When it comes to delivering a superior conventional hybrid vehicle, Toyota still runs...

Part III - Financial Condition Arthur Porcari. This is part three of a four-part series on Kandi Technologies (KNDI).  Part I was an introduction, Part II took a look at Kandi's Business, and Part IV will look at the company's stock price, forecast and bottom line. KNDI recently completed another excellent quarter with an 80% Year Over Year Increase in Revenues and 425% Gain in Net Income. For the six months, Revenues grew 91.5% to $18,166,224 and Net income advanced 383.5% from $(356,525) in the first half last year to $1,010,782. Full year 2009 results...

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...

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...

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...

Doug Young The BYD gas-powered S6 SUV debuted in Chile last month. Image Credit BYD. Struggling electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594, OTC:BYDDF) got a major boost last week when Beijing announced an innovative new plan to stimulate an anemic industry whose sales have failed to take off despite generous government support. The plan this time around looks much smarter than previous ones by focusing on big customers. Unlike previous campaigns that focused mostly on consumers, this new campaign takes aim at Chinese cities and mass buyers...

Tom Konrad CFA Once again, John Petersen  has gone too far with his petrol-head arguments against Electric Vehicles (EVs.) In a recent article fetchingly titled, Why The Electric Vehicle House of Cards Must Fall, he argues that because "the incremental cost of vehicle electrification an up-front capital investment of $190 for each equivalent barrel of oil saved." Since the oil price currently barely tops $100, he considers this (to put it mildly) a bad investment.  He concludes, Electric drive proponents are selling a house of cards based on fundamentally flawed assumptions and glittering...

John Petersen Thanks to a recent comment from JLBR, I've found a new hero in Dr. Peter Z. Grossman, an economics professor from Butler University who cogently argues that government attempts to force alternative energy technologies into an R&D model that was created for the Manhattan Project and refined for the Space Program will always result in commercial disaster because "the goal of the Apollo Program was the demonstration of engineering prowess while any alternative energy technology must succeed in the marketplace." In a recent article titled "The Apollo Fallacy and its Effect on U.S. Energy Policy" Dr....

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...

By Jeff Siegel Audi wants to save internal combustion from its ultimate demise. This makes about as much sense as saving the typewriter. Despite the fact that such a demise is likely many decades away anyway, the quest to “save the internal combustion engine” will ultimately result in a complete waste of time, effort and money. But that's not stopping Audi. Apparently, the German auto maker has been busy developing e-diesel, which is a transportation fuel that only requires two raw materials: water and carbon dioxide. On the surface, this may sound promising. Especially after reading what Reiner...

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...

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 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...

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...

Doug Young Electric vehicle maker BYD (HKEx: 1211; Shenzhen: 002594; OTC:BYDDF) has been zipping in and out of the headlines this past week, including its latest announcement that it will open a manufacturing plant in Brazil to service the BRICS country and the broader Latin American market. The company’s EV business, a major factor that attracted billionaire investor Warren Buffett as a major backer, also got good news from Beijing this week with word of a major government drive to boost new energy vehicle buying. Despite those positive moves, the company still has yet to received its...

John Petersen A few days ago Alex Planes published an extraordinary article on The Motley Fool titled the "Real Costs of Alternative Energy" that summarized direct US subsidies for our principal energy sources, restated annual energy consumption from each of those sources using equivalent barrels of oil as a standard measure, and calculated the direct Federal subsidy per unit of useful energy consumed. The following table condenses and reorders the data from the lowest to the highest direct Federal subsidy per unit of useful energy consumed. As I pondered Mr. Planes' work and methodology, the...