Gas 2.0 |
- Ultra Quick Battery Charge System Developed: 50% Full in 3 Minutes
- Report: Nissan LEAF’s Battery Costs a Staggeringly Cheap $375/kWh to Produce
- Truckers Want DOT To Regulate Their Industry, Not EPA
- Ford Doubles Number Of E85 Capable Cars
- French Government Will Order 50,000 Electric Vehicles for Its Fleets
| Ultra Quick Battery Charge System Developed: 50% Full in 3 Minutes Posted: 05 May 2010 11:19 AM PDT
The Nikkei newspaper (subs. req’d) says that a Japanese company has built a quick charge system that can take a battery from zero charge to 50% full in about 3 minutes. JFE Engineering Corp, based in Yokohama, says that the system will go on sale later this year and has the capability to charge 5 times faster than other such quick charge products. Even though one station costs about $63,000, that’s roughly 40% less than the competition. |
| Report: Nissan LEAF’s Battery Costs a Staggeringly Cheap $375/kWh to Produce Posted: 05 May 2010 09:46 AM PDT
In the world of electric car pricing, the battery rules. It is the single most expensive piece of equipment on the car, with every other piece of power/drive equipment in EVs being fairly robust and old technology at this point, and, therefore, relatively inexpensive. So, when Nissan announced their very affordable price for the LEAF last month, the we all wondered how they did it and assumed they were taking a massive loss… With a 24 kWh battery, $32,780 seemed incredibly low. But since then Nissan has said that the LEAF would be profitable from day one. If a report in the Times Online from last month is to be believed, the key to the LEAF’s profitability may just lie in some secret sauce Nissan has developed for making lithium-ion batteries at incredibly low prices. |
| Truckers Want DOT To Regulate Their Industry, Not EPA Posted: 05 May 2010 08:46 AM PDT
The trucking industry has undoubtedly been hit hard by the recession. First, high fuel prices gobbled up their profits in the highly-competitive field when diesel prices surged to $4 a gallon. Then as the recession set in, people bought less and thus there was less cargo to go around. That means less work. Now, just as the economy seems ready to turn a corner, truckers have a new challenge to overcome; the Environmental Protection Agency. Two truck organizations, the American Truck Dealers Association and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association penned a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking his agency to regulate the trucking industry, not the EPA. But why? |
| Ford Doubles Number Of E85 Capable Cars Posted: 05 May 2010 08:39 AM PDT
But that hasn’t stopped Ford from sticking to its pledge it made in 2006 to double its offering of E85 capable cars (85% ethanol/15% gasoline). Now if we could only get politicians to stick to their campaign promises. (more…) |
| French Government Will Order 50,000 Electric Vehicles for Its Fleets Posted: 05 May 2010 08:35 AM PDT
The objective of a government is to lead, though the exact definition of “leading” has always been up for subjective interpretation. Whether that means leading in an Orwellian sense, by controlling every aspect of your life, or by simply providing the bare necessities to stave off anarchy, government is essential on at least some level. Personally, I think if the government expects the citizenry to act responsibly, they should lead by example. So I give big props to the French government, something I rarely do. The French government has announced that it will purchase an astounding 50,000 electric vehicles for government fleet use over the next few years. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. |
Just five short years ago, it seemed like our dependency on foreign oil could be solved by a simple fuel known as ethanol. We’d been putting a small percentage of it in our gasoline for years, and Brazil has been running 100% ethanol in their cars for even longer. Then the biofuels argument got complicated by claims that ethanol might not be all that much cleaner than gasoline, and the effects of transforming farmland to fuel land could have an apocalyptic effect on nations already on the verge of famine. So ethanol has quietly slipped to the sidelines as electric and hybrid cars lead the way.
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