There are big dreams and goals for electric car adoption in California, around the U.S. and around the world. California’s goals are something like 1 million plug-in EV’s by 2025 which seems to me to be achievable, unless this dalliance with fuel cell vehicles causes the state to undermine battery…
Allegations have resurfaced that Anti-Fracking activists in Europe are on Russia’s payroll, according to a NY Times news article. That article focuses on the anti-fracking protest focused on Pungesti Romania, which I’ve covered in-depth last winter. The claim is that if the anti-frackers are successful in banning fracking, they’re…
At the just-concluded OPEC meeting, the oil-powers-that-be decided to maintain OPEC’s production level of 30 million barrels per day, despite oil price declines over the last year. For the people who remain stuck on fossil oil as The Transportation Fuel, this is a good thing because it means gasoline prices…
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk penned a blog post yesterday claiming that Tesla’s management didn’t trick Nevada or any other state in the Gigafactory negotations. Instead, Musk says Tesla’s policy is to create win-win solutions where the other party takes no risk, with Tesla Motors bearing all the risk. Why?…
Yesterday, Lightning Motorcycle CEO Richard Hatfield delivered the very first Lightning LS-218 electric superbike. Over eight years in development, the LS-218 is the fastest electric motorcycle in production and perhaps the fastest motorcycle of any kind in production. The company has followed a strategy for several years of innovation through…
Florida Power and Light (FPL) is taking delivery of the third of three Siemens ultra-high-efficiency natural gas turbines for FPL’s Port Everglades Next Generation Clean Energy Center. The Siemens SGT6-8000H gas turbines and Siemens SST6-5000 steam turbine at the site are the core of FPL’s modernization of the Clean Energy Center.…
Last winter saw an intense fight in Romania over Chevron’s plan to drill exploratory hydraulic fracking wells near Pungesti. It’s now possible, according to Romania Prime Minister Victor Ponta, that it will all be for naught, that there are no natural gas riches to be had in Romania’s shale region.…
Barely detectable levels of Cesium-134 have been detected in the Pacific Ocean within 100 miles of the U.S. West Coast. Despite the so-called radioactive plume having nearly reached the coast, we shouldn’t be afraid (yet) that the Pacific Ocean is being absolutely fried with nuclear radiation from Fukushima. The results…
I like to outright own my cars, driving them for many years, preferably not driving very much, all to make the best return-on-investment on each car. But I, and many electric car buyers, say that at this stage of the electric vehicle market it’s better to lease, rather than buy. …
Ky. Sen. Mitch McConnell, and the rest of the Republican Party, won big in yesterday’s elections. In large measure it’s been the Democrats who have pushed for things like renewable energy and electric cars, with the Republicans fighting these ideas tooth and nail. The Republican stance is two-fold, first they’re…
Breitbart.com wants us to think that Great Britain is going to freeze to death this winter because chasing after green energy sources has meant shuttering that country’s coal fired power plants. Without the guaranteed electricity of coal, GB is going to run out of electricity, and all heck will break…
The Sierra Club has just unveiled a “quiz” that tries to help you know which electric car to buy. While it’s a good idea, and the questions make sense, the answers they give aren’t very good. Even so it’s worth going to http://content.sierraclub.org/evguide/pick-a-plugin and seeing what suggestions they have. There’s an idea…
A few days ago Daimler announced it had sold its entire stake in Tesla Motors, and now Toyota has sold “some” of its Tesla stake. That’s Tesla’s two major corporate backers, both the Daimler and Toyota investments were critical to Tesla’s survival to this point, exiting their relationships with Tesla…
Last April I suggested an agreement between Tesla Motors and New York State was in effect a capitulation by Tesla, and that the company had lost its argument over its preferred model of selling cars directly to customers. The ebb-and-flow of events since have made it unclear whether that’s indeed…
In the electric car field we’re worried about public perception of electric car safety. Despite the fact there’s over 200,000 gasoline car fires per year in the U.S. alone, causing hundreds of fatalities and property damage costs, there is inordinately outsized attention paid to the very small number of electric…
