Solar power isn’t dead in the Trump Administration. Instead, the Dept of Energy announced last week that the 2020 SunShot cost reduction goals were met, and therefore the focus of the Solar Energy Technologies Office would shift to longer-term goals such as Grid Reliability and Energy Storage. “With the impressive…
Nissan today announced details, availability and pricing of the 2018 Nissan Leaf, curiously stressing that the Leaf is not an electric car (despite the electric drive train). Instead, the company stressed driver assist features like ProPILOT (lane keeping), ProPILOT Park (parking assist) as a way to appeal to drivers by…
In July 1979 the USA was gripped by the second of the 1970’s fake oil crises. OPEC decided to give us a second lesson of its power to control the American populace by shutting down oil deliveries. In the midst of that “crisis”, Carter gave this speech demonstrating why he…
The Trump Administration is having its Katrina-moment this week. Katrina being the hurricane that struck New Orleans during the Bush32 Administration, and became the poster-child for both horrible government policy and the cost of ignoring the effects of climate change. We’ll leave the government policy issues to other people who…
The SeekingAlpha website isn’t exactly known for highly accurate investing prognostication. We should therefore take the suggestion that Tesla Motors is doomed because of the Gigafactory with a suitably large chunk of salt. According to conventional thinking, the Gigafactory (Gigafactories, actually) is what will propel Tesla Motors into a huge…
Traffic congestion is one of the negative sides of the car-dominated transportation system. The road system wasn’t built to handle the amount of traffic currently on the roads. Building more roads is not the solution since traveling in that direction simply leads to more sprawl because of geometrical requirements placed…
The expectations on Tesla about the Model 3 are so high that Elon Musk has had to downplay the company to keep the stock from getting over-hyped. Well, I assume that’s what he’s doing when he says Tesla is probably overvalued. There’s the possibility of irrational exuberance carrying people away…
Today California Governor Jerry Brown thumbed his nose in the direction of President Trump, and signed legislation extending California’s Cap-and-Trade program and defining certain non-vehicular emissions as air pollutants and toxic air contaminants. Well, he didn’t actually thumb his nose, but by taking this step California is taking a…
Solar- and Wind- based electricity is clean and renewable, offering a great solution for both Climate and Fossil Fuel Availability problems. But both sources are intermittent, meaning they don’t provide 24 hours a day, and therefore adopting renewable electricity in a big way requires changes in the electricity production/consumption system.…
Over the weekend, at the Midwest Renewable Energy Association fair in Custer Wisconsin, one JB Straubel, the CTO of Tesla Motors, gave a talk. According to a report by Electrek, Straubel said that Tesla Motors is “talking with” other automakers about the Supercharger network. Clearly the current situation with three…
Today, TheStreet posted a really messed up Chevy Bolt EV review reminding me of the big learning I got from writing my book, Range Confidence: Charge Fast, Drive Far in your Electric Car (see link in sidebar). The author of that Chevy Bolt EV review got what sounds like a…
The news about Tesla Motors regularly repeats a complaint about the cash burn rate, the fact that Tesla routinely runs at a loss, is propped up by investors, and eventually the house of cards will come crashing down. There’s some truth to this – the company showed a profit in…
Buried in the middle of Honda’s announcement of the Honda Clarity Electric lease price ($269/month in case you’re interested) is a sign that CHAdeMO’s prominence is crumbling. Over the last several years we’ve had an unfortunate schism in electric car DC fast charging, with some automakers pushing for CHAdeMO, Tesla…
I think there may be overly high expectations of what solar panels can do. I came across a project idea to develop a product that can be added to any car, using solar panels to somehow reduce gasoline consumption. The project write-up did not propose a given solution, but instead asked…
The Tesla Model S P100D is supposedly the best electric vehicle, offering luxury and capabilities competitive with gasoline cars. It’s such a good car that Tesla has a large market share in the luxury car segment. You’d think nobody but Tesla can equal what Tesla has done. Especially not someone…
