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I think $25-33K purchase price range is too high for the LEAF. In essence, it is an electrified Versa, which goes for 13K-16.5K. Is the body + power electronics + electric motor really that expensive? Prius, which LEAF buyers will likely cross-shop, starts at $22.4K-27.7K. LEAF will likely have...

The article mentions quick charge socket being capable of 50 kW. Is plug design proprietary?

My guess would be that electricity makes up a relatively small portion of upstream (exploration and production) energy costs. On the other hand, implications of 7.5 kWh/gallon refinery consumption are quite significant. As noted, an EV can travel 30 miles on this amount of electricity. A...

Roadster with experimental NASA steering system?. Looks pretty common as far as Manhattan parking jobs are concerned. I hope he got away without scratches and dings ...

Ok, ok, I'm going to watch some Monty Python tonight... :wink:

Lot of "whining" about Mini E home charging unit installation in this Wired article. Did any Roadster owners experience "red tape" issues with HPC installation? Well, there is IEC 62196 (Mennekes) for the European part of the world. Also, I thought that committee was supposed to vote on...

We haven't yet discussed that Dow (a major U.S. chemical company) is moving into battery production "full steam ahead:" 1. Received $161M loan from DOE to build a battery manufacturing plant in Michigan 2. Acquired Kokam America's assets, makers of high capacity lithium polymer batteries...

Green Car Congress: Sion Power Receives $800K DOE Grant to Enhance Lithium Sulfur Batteries Interestingly, LiS chemisty offers both high energy and high power density. Biggest problem, again, is cycle life. With this in mind, I wonder if they should rather focus on cheap...

He sure holds some interesting views: people must be moved from disaster-prone areas, electricity markets deregulated, water supply privatized ... oh my.

Indeed. However why then is Tesla Motors corporate logo displayed so prominently?

Or supposedly pro-plug-in crowd. Note Witzenburg's ABG article

Amprius Cui's technology moving from lab to manufacturing Interestinly, Tesla is part of the team.

GCC has a scoop on those batteries

It seems common with all high energy density technologies. You can have either superior energy OR power density. Tesla managed to achieve good balance, but such solution is not cheap. Part of technology evolution maybe finding the right balance between two sources of energy with different...

I wonder if Jacob William will reply. We could be witnessing a new era of interaction between "natural" and "artificial" intelligence :smile:

Altairnano Batteries Make Proterra A Magic Bus Some interesting numbers there; calculations I did for hydrogen fuel cell buses (for Vancouver Winder Olympics) work out to around $4-5M a piece. Add to it infrastructure, hydrogen and extra insurance of course :cool: Proterra should approach...

The manly men drive XM1124 :wink:

BP prepares output of new biofuels - algae diesel and butanol - starting in 2010 - Autoblog Green

Romm on Obama's progress so far One year after his election, Obama on verge of audaciously fulfilling his promise as the green FDR « Climate Progress

SUN PWR

I think it's time to rename the thread to "Toyota Says: electric cars not practical (unless Toyota makes them so)"

AFAIK, this property was common to all metal-air chemistries for a while making such devices more "fuel cells" than "batteries" and limiting practicality (the infrastructure dilemma). However, very recently breakthroughs started to happen. In Europe ReVolt and BASF have joined forces this summer...

Excerpt from an article published by SAE in March, 2001: 8 years later Mr. Burns is out of his job and ExxonMobil keep singing the same old tune. I consider this a good development as the Big Buns are now signaling withdrawal of their support for Hydrogen Highway boondoggle.

I touched upon this grant in Candidates, Loans and Bailout thread. These are Zinc-Air batteries and research is lead by Cody Friesen of ASU (and co-founder of Fluidic Energy). Hopefully we'll see Lithium Air research covered in the next iteration: Berkeley-based PolyPlus is a good candidate and...

A comprehensive study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that average installed cost of solar photovoltaic systems declined by more than 30% from 1998 to 2008. An interesting observation:

So a technology partner (NLV Solar), who was supposed to outfit Quant with thin-coat invisible solar panels with unheard of 38% solar energy conversion efficiency turned out to be a fraud. Closer examination of Koenigsegg's Quant press release reveals NLV Solar was also supposed to provide the...

Interestingly, the 71 kWh pack they mention is comprised of 192 Kokam 100 Ah modules and expected to provide around 230 mile range. I wonder why ... Also, are we looking at a potential replacement for the Roadster? A larger sports car might be more popular.

I don't recall seeing any outlets on top of Haleakala, so you wouldn't start with a full pack anyway :)

Next month? How about tomorrow?

DoE's new ARPA-E "venture arm" has awarded $150 million in grants yesterday, to be followed by a second wave in late Fall. Envia Systems is one of the recipients in Energy Storage. They are aiming to develop next generation Li-ion batteries using nano-silicon-carbon composite anodes and...

Well, for scenario like yours instead of dumping excess regen energy I thought it would be possible to adjust standard mode to charge up to say 79.5%. This way extra .5% of battery pack would be available to absorb regen energy when starting downhill after unplugging the car. From your...

Is there an ability to adjust percentage of charge in performance or range modes?

What I find bizarre are "conclusions" such as one quoted above. What if Balqon Nautilus was involved instead of Roadster?

Apparently, Ms. Rawsthorn finds McLaren MP4-12C "foxie" enough as well as the Concorde. Some musings on what makes design "good" or "bad": Are we missing something here?

Hmm, perhaps turning on the cabin heater or AC either manually by driver or automatically by car when battery is "full" and regen braking is in place? On the other hand, short of very specific situations like Roadster being towed (and on) or driving downhill immediately after charging full, such...

Sharp Develops Solar Cell with Conversion Efficiency of 35.8% Sharp Develops Solar Cell with World's Highest Conversion Efficiency of 35.8% Solar panel efficiencies are starting to approach those of industrial power plants, except you can put these on your roof and fuel is "free." Very...

Toshiba Launches DMFC-based charger in Japan Toshiba : News Release 22 Oct, 2009 So Toshiba has finally released a DMFC-based portable electronics charger in a limited (3,000 units) offering in Japan via shop1048.jp direct-order website Notable characteristics: Output: DC5V-400mA, 2W...

From ABG this morning The title of the post is very upsetting. Not sure why Sam went for it; his material is usually better than cheap sensationalism like that.

Honda's soul-searching issues aside, what I really don't understand is their outright hostility to EVs. Yet another Honda president is talking about "thinking outside the box," but where is the evidence of it? The quirky U3-X or the dinky UV-N or the pie-in-sky hydrogen fuel cell NSX, which even...

Funny he would say that. Perhaps he confused pounds and kilograms. I wonder what the weight of Clarity's battery is, for last I checked she weighed in at hefty 3,582 lbs vs Roadster's 2,723. Can't be all the lightweight hydrogen gear, right? 0-60 mph acceleration is heart-stopping 10 sec ;)

Well, GM clearly wants all new charge infrastructure to be J1772 standard compliant, however they are not in position to use more assertive language like must or will. DoE, on the other hand, is. At least to the extent of projects they fund. Then, there is always a possibility that some entity...

He did so in the beginning, when proactively addressing one of hydrogen fuel cells weakest points, which is cost. The message seemed to be "both technologies have enough similarities that R&D dollars help both advance." However, he was very quick to draw the line on application side playing into...

GM’s Fastlane Blog hosted a webchat today with EPRI’s Mark Duvall and GM’s Britta Gross on Electric Infrastructure. I missed it, but somebody else asked a question I had:

So Zenn's core business, to paraphrase words you used earlier, is now fully "EEStor hype maintenance." In July they got a cool $9M to do it. Good for Ian Clifford, but what about wider implications? I am a bit concerned about public perception about cleantech, when this setup eventually...

In addition, due to at least factor of 3 better energy efficiency than gasser, an EV needs to store at least 3 times less energy on board to go the same distance.

FWIW, BYD Website lists domestic outlet as 10A @ 220V (under Specifications). Range is prominently featured on manufacturer's website, while full recharge time from domestic outlet is not, so I would treat the latter as suspect. Interestingly, the interviewer asks Rebecca Wang to confirm range...

Green Car Congress: Researchers Double Activity of Platinum Catalyst in Methanol Fuel Cells by Using Surface Steps This seems like a case of more sensible use of U.S. government's hydrogen funding. Toyota's involvement is also quite interesting. Heretofore I have not seen examples of their...

Peak Oil Markets: Price dynamics at the end of the oil age I will echo a Deutche Bank study titled "The Peak Oil Market: Price dynamics at the end of the oil age" mentioned by Alfred in...

2010 Fuel Economy guide has now been released and Tesla Roadster is no longer mentioned. Neither is Tesla listed as make.

Congrats, Darryl! Would love to see cool new upcoming tech like http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/battery-discussion/2948-lithium-air-batteries.html or http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/energy-environment/3201-direct-methanol-fuel-cells.html covered.