Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Tesla Raises $226 Million in IPO, Stock Gains 40% on First Day

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 04:05 PM PDT

The first day of trading for the first American auto manufacturer to go public since Ford did in 1956 ended with a bang. After selling 13.3 million shares at 17 bucks a pop for a $226 million haul, Tesla’s stock surged steadily over the day to close up more than 40% at $23.89 per share. This is made even more impressive by the fact that the rest of the market sunk drastically. In fact, Tesla was the largest gainer on the NASDAQ today.

Not bad for a company that has yet to turn a profit and doesn’t even have any hope to do so until 2012, when its Model S “family sedan” goes on sale for $50,000.

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There is No Easy Way Off of Oil; It Will Require Sacrifice

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 11:08 AM PDT

Over the decades, America has heard, time and again, that our dependence on oil is a problem both for the environment and national security. Presidents as far back as Dwight Eisenhower have made remarks about weening the country off of oil, but we still haven’t come up with the collective cajones to do so. There is a reason for this; us Americans love our cheap energy. It lets us live a lifestyle that is foreign to most of the rest of the world.

Any politician so much as suggesting a gas tax increase can look forward to a thrashing at the next election, and as we know, most politicians are more concerned with keeping their job than making any effective changes to this country. That is why we still have (relatively) cheap gas. David Frum over at CNN put it quite plainly though; if we want to get off of oil, it ain’t gonna be easy.

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Report: Chevy Volt is More Straight Hybrid Than We Knew

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 11:03 AM PDT

HybridCars.com is claiming exclusive access to information that has, to this point, been left to the wild rumors of the internet: The Chevy Volt’s engine may actually directly power the car’s wheels during some kinds of driving.

If this is true, it would be big news for a car and a company that, up ’til now have gone to great lengths to brand and market the vehicle in a new category—the Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV)—while simultaneously distancing the Volt from the more widely used moniker, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)… all of which was done to avoid branding the Volt in the hybrid category and associate it with pure electric vehicles.

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Will Walkable Neighborhoods Lead to More Walking?

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:18 AM PDT


It took mankind thousands of years to domesticate horses, and even after we had tamed the beasts, many people still relied upon their own two feet to travel where they needed. Armies of men marched thousands of miles to wage war, and many of the greatest explorers had nothing but their legs to take them through uncharted lands. And in the span of just two centuries, mankind, it seems, has forgotten how to walk.

Ok, that last part might be a bit of a stretch. Cities are growing, and many city dwellers walk day in and day out. But many Americans don’t really have a choice when it comes to walking. The lack of sidewalks and distance from basic amenities mean cars or buses are the only real choices. If we build more walkable neighborhoods though, will more people start walking?

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Competition or Collaboration; How Can EV’s Succeed?

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:15 AM PDT


I was never much of an athlete growing up, but I loved the thrill of competition. And I have no problem admitting that my overall combined sports record probably has a lot more losses than wins on it. Yet I always felt competition drove me to work harder to get better… even if I lost most of the time.

If you look at today’s industry, competition is still a driving factor in many success stories, and usually it is the best companies with the best products that win. But a panel of EV “experts” told the Automotive News Europe Congress that electric vehicles will only succeed through collaboration. Sounds a little too friendly to me.

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T.25 City Car Unveiled By Gordon Murray

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:11 AM PDT

For a while there, it seemed like there would be no limit on how big cars could get. Trucks and SUV’s had replaced minivans in most family garages, and it was starting to looking like we’d return to the old days where land yachts dominated the highways. Now though, car trends are tending to get smaller… and smaller. How small can we go?

Gordon Murray Designs think we can get very small. Yesterday the design firm lifted the veil its T.25 city car. Weighing in at just 1,212 pounds, the featherweight car is powered by a paltry 51 horsepower engine. But at 62 mpg, is the fuel efficiency worth the trade off in size?

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Monday, June 28, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Fisker Misses Deadline, Won’t Start Selling Karma Plug-in Hybrids Until 2011

Posted: 28 Jun 2010 11:02 AM PDT

Last September, when the US Department of Energy announced Fisker would be getting a half billion dollars in stimulus loans to bring their vision of a plug-in future to reality, both DOE and Fisker said that the company’s first electric car — the plug-in hybrid Karma supercar — would be hitting showrooms this summer.

But even with a huge influx of money (they’ve got almost a billion dollars in capitalization right now), it seems that Fisker won’t be meeting that intended goal and has now shifted their onsale date for the Karma to sometime in the “first three months” of 2011. Is this a bad omen for the future, or simply a hiccup along the way?

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