Toyota this week doubled down on fuel cell electric vehicles, and further distanced itself from battery electric vehicles. The company unveiled a “customer portal” through which people can “request” a Toyota Mirai, and the same day Craig Scott, national alternative fuel vehicle manager at Toyota, was interviewed for Forbes.com saying battery…
In the iPhone age we’re not repairing things or building things from scratch any longer. Manufacturers build us preconfigured gizmos and do their best to make them opaque boxes we can’t open or hack on. That would put us at the mercy of the manufacturers, and leave dumbing down society to…
I’m excited that the solar power field is moving towards mass scale adoption. The cost for solar power is falling rapidly, and the installation rate is rising quickly. The quicker this happens the more likely it is to change the energy mix enough to change the path of climate change. However,…
Whether Tesla Motors will fly or flail has always seemed to me uncertain. The goals Tesla Motors is out to achieve are big, very big, nothing shorter than ending fossil fuel consumption. Which of course will be incredibly hard, and has meant a chorus of naysayers singing about the impossibility of…
It never rains in southern California in the summer – isn’t there a song which says that? Having lived in California for 25 years, it’s true, summertime is one long period of blue sunny skies every day and no rain. It actually gets a bit boring having fabulous weather day…
Another day another environmental disaster gifted to us by the fossil fuel industry. Maybe. In the wee hours of Monday morning, a pair of barges collided near the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel. One of the barges was carrying a million gallons of Naptha, which caught on fire and an undetermined…
Dangerous cargo’s, including crude oil, are being transported by rail around the U.S. This last week an oil train derailed in a remote part of Eastern Montana, and while it fortunately didn’t go boom it could have done so. A few months ago another oil train derailed near Galena Illinois, and…
Today Tesla Motors held a press conference to announce a reshuffling of Model S features. This includes a new top-end battery pack, new fastest 0-60 time (ludicrous mode), a new low end price, and the promise of even faster top speed when the Roadster 3.0 arrives in about 4 years. Battery…
It appears there’s been two oil train derailments in Montana over the last couple days. Several of the rail cars tipped over, with a few in each train leaking crude oil, but fortunately no explosions this time. Maybe it means future oil train derailments won’t cause explosions and therefore the…
We have to consider this – because, any failure of a grid connected energy storage system risks the whole project going down in flames. Just as happened with the handful of electric car fires, an energy storage system fire could become the target of ire by certain political types and poison…
This week the two top stories of the Intersolar US 2015 trade show were – Tesla Motors CTO JB Straubl giving the Keynote address, giving the Solar industry fair warning the Solar City / Tesla Motors duo was planning to shake things up – and that in the previous 12…
Last week “scores of concerned Baltimore residents” protested the dangers of exploding oil trains. Protesters note that oil trains follow a winding route through Baltimore that puts large swaths of Baltimore within the danger zone. In my neck of the woods the Phillips 66 refinery in San Luis Obispo is seeking to start…
While electric vehicle adoption in Europe is strong, it’s not evenly spread across the continent or even just among the EU countries. Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Germany, they (and some other countries) all have strong stories of electric vehicle adoption. A look at charging station maps (see my list of smartphone…
Since at least the 1980’s the Oil Industry, ExxonMobil in particular, has colluded to fund climate change denial while behind closed doors they clearly knew about the problem and the potential for government policy to negatively impact their business. That’s the line which should have led my post the other…
On Wednesday, in addition to revealing plans to develop wireless charging using the Kia Soul EV, and to expand its availability into Oregon and Washington State, Kia Motors unveiled details of the 2016 Kia Soul EV. The major changes are the introduction of a new trim level, at a…
