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…
What’s the driving force of the economy? That is, what is it that gives value to our money? Yes, the value of money is based on agreements such as international money exchanges through FOREX desks, but what’s the underlying force giving value to money? Let me suggest that it is…
December 7 is one of those days that are supposed to live in Infamy, because of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that day in 1941. In school we are taught Japan’s intention was to ensure the U.S. didn’t enter the war, but that instead they woke a sleeping giant and…
As we’ve established over the last couple posts, Tesla Motors urgently requires a doubling of the worlds lithium-ion battery production capacity. To do so, the company has turned to Panasonic (the agreement isn’t finalized) to build a huge battery factory – somewhere. At the same time, Tesla (and Panasonic) have…
World oil supplies – of the easy-to-get oil, anyway, are at their peak. Our appetite for oil products has led the oil companies to drill for oil in all kinds of places. Of course they drilled the easiest-to-tap fields first, because those gave the best return on investment (dollars spent…
Is the Peak Oil worry a bunch of fluff, and it won’t happen? Maybe it’ll be like the Y2K crisis that had a bunch of us worried in the late 1990’s, but never amounted to anything? A recent paper by researchers at Stanford U and UC Berkeley suggest Peak Oil…
If “we” never “run out” of Oil, should we still be adopting electric cars? I found this discussion on one of the electric vehicle forums (see link below) and, well, my stand is that we should not only adopt electric vehicles, but to rethink our whole transportation system. In my…
You don’t think of the head honcho of a major corporation like General Motors (GM) doing something altruistic like changing the company’s vehicle strategy just to save the polar bears. The GM shareholders hope their CEO will be making choices that improve the bottom line, and aim the company into…
A group of researchers at the U of Michigan and Ford Motor have concluded there is sufficient resources of lithium for the next 90 years, enough to supply a large-scale global fleet of electric vehicles through at least 2100. Lithium is a key element in electric vehicle batteries though by…
