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Arctic Leaf

Car buyers go shopping for better mileage

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With the price of oil down from about $115 to $63 since last June, the impression has been created that the auto world is once again in the hands of the oil industry, and that the gasoline engine is here to stay.

But this week at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Conference, there was the distinct impression that alternatives to the gasoline engine are moving up so fast that within another five years we may see big changes. Bloomberg Business wrote that the result is “Future transport is likely to look a lot different than what the major oil companies are fueling now. Instead of biofuels such as ethanol and green diesel making the internal-combustion engine fit into a world with greenhouse gas limits, wholesale new solutions are coming fast.”

“Where we are is in an age of plenty,” Michael Liebreich, BNEF’s founder, told Bloomberg. “We have cheap oil, cheap gas, cheap renewables. You do have an abundance of supply in a way you haven’t had for decades. We also are in an age of competition.”

The biggest piece of news is that gasoline consumption has leveled off over the last decade and now is lower than it was in 2006. This is a remarkable development that no one knows quite how to explain. Part of it may be the lingering recession. Fleet mileage improvement has definitely made a difference, improving from 24.5 in 2001 to 31.6 today, a dramatic surge of 29 percent in 13 years. The Age of the Hummer is over, and people are being more selective in shopping for better mileage, even as the vehicles improve.

But Bloomberg Energy sees alternatively fueled vehicles also making headway in a way that is just becoming visible. Electric car sales have quintupled over the last four years, although they did start at a very low base. But battery prices are coming down as rapidly as solar-panel prices, which means that they soon will be in a range where the average American can afford them. Tesla’s 2017 debut of the Model 3, priced in the $35,000 range, is going to be a real turning point, if everything goes right.

Also coming along rapidly is the hydrogen car, which the Japanese auto industry has chosen as its alternative to gasoline. Toyota and Honda are just beginning to market their models in Japan, and BNEF anticipates there will be 4,200 on the road in Japan by 2018. But California is another big potential market, and sales are scheduled to begin there sometime late this year. The California Legislature has responded by expanding the Hydrogen Highway initiated by former government Arnold Schwarzenegger, making it easier for drivers to refuel.

Of course, all these predictions are taking place on a world scale, and there the progress may be even more rapid than in the United States. One thing Tesla discovered in its relatively abortive attempt to crack the Chinese market is that China already has a thriving electric-car industry. The cars, moreover, are not scaled-down versions of powerful sports cars but slow-moving vehicles that have been designed from the ground up.

In an article in Forbes last week, Jack Perkowski outlined what he called “China’s other electric vehicle industry:”

While the global automotive giants struggle to find a winning formula for electric vehicles, approximately 100 manufacturers in China have already identified a large potential market undiscovered by the traditional players. The common problems faced by EV automakers — high cost, driving range, and the availability of charging stations — are not issues for these manufacturers because their target customers are satisfied with low-speed and limited range EVs, as long as they provide affordable transportation. In 2014, 400,000 so-called ‘low-speed’ EVs were sold in China, compared to only 84,000 conventional all electric and hybrid electric vehicles.

To get a glimpse of the size of China’s potential market, consider this: China is already the world’s largest vehicle market, accounting for 25 percent of all vehicles manufactured globally. Yet there is only 1 vehicle per 10 people in China, whereas in the United States there are 8 for every 10 – more than one vehicle for every person of driving age. China also has another huge market for other electric vehicles. It has sold 90 million motorcycles and 120 million electric bicycles.

Estimates are that China now has a million such low-speed EVs on the road now and might reach 3 million by 2020. These cars can do about 48 miles per hour and are used for short runs around town in smaller cities, so range is not a problem. They are doing wonders for air pollution. Manufacture only began in 2006, and already some provincial governments are starting to write requirements that they be preferred to the older gasoline types.
Surprisingly, the only government entity that has been slow to embrace the low-speed EVs is the national government in Beijing. The Central Government has not counted these EVs is their official automotive statistics and is only now starting to write regulations on how crash-worthy they must be and on what roads they will be allowed to travel.

Perkowski concludes: “Low-speed EVs may not fit the stereotype of today’s modern passenger car, but in China, where incomes remain low for a large part of the country’s population, affordability often trumps those values held dear in more developed countries.”

Could China’s low-speed EVs find a market in the United States? It’s certainly possible. In any case, the anti-gasoline revolution may be coming in ways we did not anticipate.

Arctic Leaf

Alternative fuels and vehicles: Good news on all fronts

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If we’re going to replace the gasoline in our tanks, we’re going to need help from all kinds of directions. None of the alternatives is likely to do the whole job by itself, but every little bit helps.

That’s why it’s so encouraging that there was good news on all fronts this week, and why each little success gets us closer to having legitimate alternatives to take the place of gasoline.

Here’s a sampling of some of the news:

Batteries. A team at Stanford University announced it had developed a high-performance battery out of aluminum. This is important because aluminum is much cheaper than lithium, the current favorite among battery-makers. Aluminum has been used to make batteries, but the problem has always been keeping the voltage high after repeated charging and recharging. Now the Stanford team believes is has found the answer.

“We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames,” said Hongjie Dai, professor of chemistry who headed the team. “People have tried different kinds of materials for the cathode. We accidentally discovered that a simple solution is to use graphite, which is basically carbon. In our study, we identified a few types of graphite material that give us very good performance.”

This raises the question of whether Elon Musk can substitute aluminum batteries in his Gigafactory, a work in progress that is set to build lithium batteries for the new Tesla.

Hydrogen. Hydrogen cars are clean, producing only warm water for exhaust. But the problem is getting the hydrogen. The only known methods to date have been electrolysis of water, which is expensive and energy intensive, and “reforming” natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide and makes hydrogen just another fossil fuel. But now a team of scientists at Virginia Tech has come up with a catalyst the can make hydrogen quickly and cheaply from biomass.

“Researchers from Virginia Tech have developed a way to drastically cut the time and money necessary to produce hydrogen fuel,” reports The Christian Science Monitor. “By using discarded corn cobs, stalks, and husks, they have improved on previous methods deemed too inefficient by energy experts. Their research, which was funded in part by Shell, was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

Using genetic algorithms, Percival Zhang and Joe Rollin developed an “enzymatic pathway” that speeds up the reduction of hydrogen from biomass. By including two simple plant sugars, glucose and xylose, they were able to increase the rate of hydrogen production while emitting an “extremely low amount” of carbon dioxide.

“Cost effective and productive in volume, this method could breathe new life into the hydrogen car,” says the CSM.

Biofuels. And speaking of enzymes, another team of researchers working for the Department of Energy has come up with a bacterium that efficiently breaks down biomass without pretreatment. The team has been using the system to extract ethanol from switchgrass, a fast-growing weed that has long been a favorite of biofuels enthusiasts. The strategy, called consolidated bioprocessing, uses the Caldicullulosiruptor beseii bacteria to split cellulose and then ferments it into ethanol. The strategy eliminates the very expensive pretreatment that requires heat and more enzymes. Several facilities are now trying to break down cellulose and convert it into ethanol, but this one-stop process would be a huge saving.

EVs. A study at the Stockholm Environment Institute says that electric vehicles may be coming into their own much faster than everyone thought. This is because the price of batteries is coming down faster than anticipated. EV batteries now cost approximately $300 per kilowatt-hour. They weren’t expected to fall much lower than that over the next five years. But the authors Bjorn Nykvist and Mans Nilsson say that recent developments have brought the price down as low as $150 per kilowatt-hour, which could make electric vehicles appealing for a much wider range of customers. Since the batteries normally make up at least half the price of the vehicle, it could reduce costs significantly. Or manufacturers might use the new low price to load up on batteries, increasing the range of the electric vehicle. Either way, the package becomes more attractive.

And that doesn’t even include the possibility that the aluminum battery developed at Stanford could be making batteries more efficient and lowering prices even further.

There’s a tremendous synergy going on in these fields, as researchers pursue numerous pathways in exploring alternative vehicles. One way or another, it means that alternatives to foreign oil are soon going to be making their way into the customer’s field of vision very soon.

Arctic Leaf

Is Tesla really all that disruptive?

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Elon Musk’s dream of revolutionizing the auto industry seemed to lose some of its luster last week as the fledgling electric car company ran into a few roadblocks in getting its new models into consumer hands.

The $35,000 Model X is scheduled to be leaking out to a few early customers late this year. Then full-scale production will begin in 2016. But already there is talk of delays and missed deadlines, so there might be an asterisk attached to those numbers soon.

The ultimate goal is selling 50,000 Model X’s by 2017, which still seems way over the horizon. A lot of those sales were supposed to come from China, and that’s developing into a problem. Musk was in China last week talking things over with Zhao Kuiming, head of Tesla’s China sales division, but Musk has already decided to “reboot.” It appears that Chinese buyers are still spooked by the lack of recharging stations, even though there have been a few grand openings around Beijing. Tesla was hoping to sell between 4,000 and 8,000 models in China in 2015, but only 120 cars were sold in January. Musk has cut the China staff from 600 to 420 and is recalculating just what can be expected from the Middle Kingdom. The tastes of the few Chinese millionaires who could be counted on to purchase the Tesla as a status symbol aren’t going to get him very far.

All this has spooked investors as well. They’ve driven the price of Tesla stock down nearly 20 percent since the start of the year. Once the highest flyer on the market, Tesla peaked at $293 a share last September, but it’s been a long descent ever since. Prices lingered around $180 per share last week. Even then, Tesla is trading at 232 times its expected earnings for 2015. The average stock on the NASDAQ, where it trades, is 21 times earnings. All this has lifted the short interest on Tesla stock to 27 percent of floating shares. The average on the NASDAQ, once again, is only 5 percent.

Nevertheless, all this could turn around quickly. Tesla already has 20,000 pre-orders on the Model X, and there is every reason to think its release could revolutionize the industry, much as Musk says. As it is emerging, the Tesla is going to be a device much more attuned to electronics and Silicon Valley as it is to Detroit and the auto industry. Musk is already introducing over-the-air (OTA) updates of the car’s software in a model, much more like an iPad than a Ford Focus. All those features you see advertised by the major automakers — rearview cameras, automatic emergency braking — will be standard in the Tesla. Musk is already talking about an automatic driving feature that will allow drivers to guide the car hands-free on Interstate highways. Of course, there are lots of state regulations that will have to be satisfied before this feature can go into effect. California, Nevada, Michigan, Florida and Washington, D.C., already have laws allowing driverless vehicles driving, but it’s unclear how Tesla’s system will be judged under these statutes.

Also decided at the state level is the question of whether Tesla can sell directly to customers or must work through established car dealerships. These laws are generally put into effect at the behest of local dealers to prevent the major auto companies from setting up their own shops. But Tesla has run afoul of the law in many states. The company just won a major victory when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came down in favor of Tesla. Georgia has also opened its doors to direct sales at five stores. But West Virginia has gone in the opposite direction, banning sales of Tesla altogether. There probably aren’t that many potential Tesla customers in West Virginia anyway.

Perhaps the unkindest cut came from Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins, who wrote a piece titled “Tesla: Just Another Car Company.” If you wanted to insult Elon Musk, you could hardly do better. “Elon Musk has proved that a market exists for electric cars, despite their many inconveniences, especially if they come wrapped in taxpayer subsidies,” Jenkins wrote. “But he hasn’t proved he can make a profit.”

Jenkins sees the Tesla operating in a niche market, in which a small percentage of customers are willing to ignore the problems in order to be “green.” Once this niche is filled, however, the market will thin out quickly. “Uber is disruptive,” he writes. “Tesla isn’t. Tesla is disruptive mostly of a driver’s confidence that he’s going to reach his destination without needing a tow.”

Yet this perspective is probably too negative of Tesla, and electric cars in general. There are people whose driving needs it fits perfectly. “I own a Tesla. It is beyond spectacular,” wrote one of the commenters to Jenkins’ piece. “The car has Di Minimus maintenance as there is nothing to break.” “That is why I bought a Tesla,” says another. “At 270 miles to start with, range anxiety is not my problem, yet. I rarely drive over 100 miles in any given day, and if I needed to, my Chevy Tahoe is still in the garage.” I have friends in Baltimore who bought a Nissan Leaf as a second car to tool around the city and love it.

So Tesla may just be filling a niche, but it is still a sizable one. Infrastructures can change a lot faster than we anticipate, especially where there is a demand for it. Tesla’s stock may be overvalued and due for another nosedive. But the company is still making big changes in the way we power our cars.

Landon Hall

10 people who turned anger into solutions for high gas prices

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So we’ve heard from Americans who say high gas prices have disrupted their lives and their work. Let’s shift to the people who are more than mad as hell. They’re mad enough to turn their energy into action.

Among these 10 ideas, what’s the most practical for your life?

 

“I just ditched my old 1998 Volvo S70 for a used Prius, and it is so much more fun to fill a 10-gallon tank than an 18-gallon one. And have it last more than a week of heavy Los Angeles commuting. It’s still new to me, so I still kind of giggle every time I fill up the tank. I’m thrilled to put the money I save toward better things.”
— Jennifer

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“We save a lot of money in the summer because my wife takes the bus to the south side of Madison to go to work, and I pick her up in the afternoon, about 4 miles south of our home. If I was to take her to work and pick her up, it would be 48 miles round-trip, morning and afternoon. The bus is cheaper.”
— Laverne F., Madison, Wisconsin

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“As gasoline was so high for so long, I made a bio-diesel processor from a old electric water heater and made my own fuel for the oil furnace and my old 1984 GMC van with a diesel engine. I still received 21 mpg. Begging for grease was the hard part.”
— Willis W.

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“I wish I had a good story for you, but my wife and I drive a plug-in Chevy Volt. We hardly ever stop at a gas station, except perhaps once every 6 weeks or while on an occasional trip. When we top the tank, it seldom takes more than 5 1/2 gallons, i.e. less than $20 worth of premium fuel. The main reason that we stop at gas stations these days is to get an automatic car wash.”
— David and Barbara G., Gaithersburg, Maryland

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“Still wondering how to convert my 99 Ford Expedition to NG?”
— Gary S., Laguna Woods, California

(We’re checking around to find a SoCal CNG conversion business. Will update later.)

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“I have not visited a gas station since September 2014, when I took delivery of my Tesla. However, I still pay for my daughter’s gasoline, suffer the financial cost, and contribute to the oil industry’s wanton environmental degradation. Savings at the pump could help me fund her college education.”
— Dr. George

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“Go electric. I did and am receiving my Tesla next week. No more gas at all.”
— Bob

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“Today we bought a 2014 Ford Focus, a flex-fuel vehicle which enables us to use E85 for fuel. A small contribution to energy independence.”
— David

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“We need a blender pump [for ethanol] in every station.”
— Melvin M.

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“I top off my cars with E85 when I can. I fill up once a month with a discount at Kroger. I am really pushing to get Kroger to provide ETHANOL pumps and shop at the same place!”
— Gerard R., Stone Mountain, Georgia

 

Incidentally, here’s a handy guide to flex-fuel vehicles on the market.

Arctic Leaf

Toyota, California go for hydrogen

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California, the home of Elon Musk and his Tesla venture, is about to embark on another technological initiative as well — a car driven entirely by hydrogen.

In late February Toyota began producing and selling the Mirai (the name means “future”), a hydrogen-powered vehicle that will be available in Tokyo this year and go on sale in the U.S. in December. Always conscious of its history and ready to make amends, Toyota made the announcement five years to the day after it testified before Congress about a sudden accelerator problem that caused the company a great deal of embarrassment and led to a recall. “Every Feb. 24, we at Toyota take the opportunity to reflect on the recall crisis, doing everything we can to ensure its lessons do not fade from memory,” company CEO Akio Toyoda said. “For us, that date marks a new start.”

To say that Toyota is being cautious in entering the hydrogen car market would be an understatement. The Mirai won’t even be mass-produced but is being hand-crafted by Japanese workers who are turning out three cars per day. The model will sell for $57,000 in Tokyo and is not designed to take off like a rocket. The company only plans to sell 2,000 individual models in Japan this year. “The Mirai program, especially once all the research and development costs are factored in, is clearly unprofitable at this point, and even selling a few thousand units at $57,500 each is not going to turn the tide,” the Motley Fool’s Alexander MacLennan wrote. “But the Mirai is not about short-term profits; it’s about long-term market advantage through brand acceptance and technological development resulting in better vehicles.” Even Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe got into the act, saying we are headed into a “hydrogen era.”

Right now Toyota’s main rival as an alternative to gasoline will be Elon Musk’s all-electric Tesla Model 3. Musk is not taking the challenge lightly. He has called the hydrogen car “an extremely silly idea” and mocked its fuel cells as “fool cells.”

But Musk might have reason to worry. The Mirai will offer drivers a range of 300 miles and take only three minutes to fill its tank. Tesla’s Model 3, due out in 2017, will offer only a 265-mile range and consume 40 minutes to offer an 80 percent recharge of its batteries. (Ideally, EVs should be recharged overnight.) Of course, the big test will be the availability of refueling stations, and here electric vehicles have a big head start. Tesla already has 393 Supercharging stations nationwide and is building them out as fast as possible.

There are only a dozen hydrogen stations now, all of them in California, as a result of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “hydrogen highway” initiative of 2004. But California has seized the gauntlet again and is promising to spend another $20 million in building out the Hydrogen Highway with 28 new stations in the next few years. The Mirai will be initially aimed exclusively at California and its requirements for zero-pollution vehicles, then try to expand to the East Coast as well. Hyundai’s hydrogen-powered Tucson is already being sold in California.

Where Toyota and Tesla have found agreement is in opening up their patents to rivals to try to promote the technology. Musk famously made his EV patents available last year, and now Toyota is doing the same with its hydrogen research. The obvious aim is to get other manufacturers involved in order to increase the demand for fuel outlets. “We think this is a different way to look at the market and collaborate and hopefully with this get a lot more people coming into the game,” Nihar Patel, Toyota’s vice president of North American business strategy, told Forbes.

Still, the switch to hydrogen vehicles has some challenges ahead. Musk’s main criticism — echoed by many others — is that hydrogen fuel is too difficult to handle and transport. Hydrogen is, after all, the smallest molecule and leaks through everything. One of its biggest critics is Joseph Romm, who worked in the Clinton administration promoting the technology and finally became so disillusioned that he wrote a book critical of the technology called The Hype About Hydrogen. Romm is now a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress and heads the Climate Progress blog. Another problem with hydrogen, of course, is that it is not available as a free resource but must be manufactured from other resources, principally natural gas. This, of course, requires costs and energy.

Still, hydrogen vehicles have the advantage of producing no air pollution (its exhaust is water vapor) and will be able to reduce the release of carbon into the atmosphere, since the CO2 is easily captured in the reforming process. Overall, hydrogen is likely to be a big plus for the environment.

It also offers car buyers what may be the most important factor in reducing our foreign oil dependence — free choice. It hardly matters if electric vehicles prove to be more popular than hydrogen vehicles or vice versa. The important thing is that they will both be available as alternatives to gasoline-powered cars. They could also open up the door to other alternative fuels: compressed natural gas, E85, and the dark horse of them all, methanol manufactured from natural gas. All these alternatives cannot help but make a dent in our current dependence on foreign oil.

Arctic Leaf

Tesla hits some speed bumps

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Tesla’s stock was down around $200 again after its fourth-quarter report disclosed that neither its sales nor profits had met analysts’ expectations. At the same time, the company went into what one analyst called its “insane mode” as founder Elon Musk predicted that by 2025 the company’s market capitalization would reach $700 billion, matching the current value of Apple.

Analysts were scratching their heads as Musk’s vision seemed utterly at odds with the difficulties that are starting to pile up with Tesla’s ability to meet current goals. The company’s 2014 revenues rose to $3.2 billion, up from $2 billion the year before. However, expenses continued to mount, and losses widened from $74 million to $294 million last year. For the fourth quarter, Tesla delivered only 9,834 of the 12,000 cars it had predicted. Musk blamed the winter weather and customers’ holiday travel for the shortfall. A bigger disappointment has been sales in China, where Tesla sold only 120 cars in January. Musk has supposedly messed up by insisting that the cars be sold only by dealers, whereas the Chinese want anyone to sell them. He also says that concerns about home chargers and the lack of public charging stations have made it extremely difficult to crack China’s notoriously tough market. Musk now says that the company is now not counting on any sales in China to help it reach its goals.

But those goals are wildly ambitious. Musk told analysts that Tesla is anticipating a 30 percent increase in revenues per year for the next 10 years, which is the pace needed to put Tesla’s market value on par with Apple’s. “That would imply sales volume of well over 5 million vehicles per year,” Edward Niedermeyer wrote in Bloomberg View. “That would have Tesla surpassing the 2014 sales of such familiar names as Nissan, Honda and Fiat-Chrysler – at highly significant profit margins – within a decade.” Needless to say, Niedermeyer and many others find this prospect unlikely.

But Tesla isn’t standing still. It announced last week that it will produce a battery for home electricity storage. This will fold nicely with its partnership with SunCity, run by Musk’s cousin. People who install solar panels on their roofs will welcome a battery system that allows them to store electricity for times when the sun doesn’t shine. Just as solar seems to function best when distributed across a wide variety of users, so energy storage may ultimately work best when it is distributed over a wide variety of users.

Whether Tesla will be able to survive all this, however, is still an open question. The main threat to Musk’s vision seems to be coming now, not from predictable delays and bumps in the road, but from healthy competition from experienced automakers. Chevrolet has announced the Bolt, a successor to the Volt, which will be swinging right in Tesla’s wheelhouse – the $30,000 market for electric vehicles that can travel 200 miles or more on one charge.

General Motors has moved the introduction date up to 2017 (the same as the Tesla 3) and seems deadly serious about entering the EV market. “The Bolt EV concept is a game-changing electric vehicle designed for attainability, not exclusivity,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. “Chevrolet believes electrification is a pillar of future transportation and needs to be affordable for a wider segment of customers.”

Besides the Bolt, GM will have an improved version of the Volt, plus the $75,000 Cadillac ELR, a plug-in model. Daniel Miller of Motley Fool isn’t terribly impressed with any of these efforts, noting that the ELR has already had little success competing with Tesla’s Model S in the luxury-car category. “Because of that premium, first-mover brand image that Tesla created with its Model S, it’s hard to imagine how the Bolt will steal much of Tesla’s Gen 3 market in 2017, even if it is price-competitive,” Miller writes.

But if Tesla really has something to worry about, it’s the rumors that Apple, its Silicon Valley rival and the world’s largest company, is preparing a secret plan to enter the car market as well. Just this week it was revealed that Apple has a secret project employing 1,000 people to come up with some kind of concept car that will rival the Tesla Model 3.

“Apple has batted around the idea of developing a car for years,” reported Adam Satariano and Tim Higgins of Bloomberg Business. “Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, said in 2012 court testimony that executives discussed building a car even before it released the iPhone in 2007. Mickey Drexler, an Apple board member and head of J Crew Group Inc., also said in 2012 that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had wanted to build a car.”

Apple has worked on batteries for the iPhone and iPad and also has a supply chain that could easily be applied to vehicles. “The mapping system it debuted in 2012 can be used for navigation. Last year, Apple also introduced CarPlay, a software system that integrates iTunes, mapping, messaging and other applications for use by automakers,” Satariano and Higgins wrote. Of course, that’s a long way from turning out thousands of vehicles, but Apple has invaded other businesses before. It basically knew nothing about the music business when it started on iTunes, and had no experience with telephones when it invented the smartphone.

In any case, even if Tesla finds itself in competition with much larger established companies – something Musk predicted at the start – it is revolutionizing the field of automobiles by making the electric car seem practical. Although Musk’s dream may prove to be overblown, he has certainly advanced the search for alternatives to the internal combustion engine.

Arctic Leaf

Alternative and renewable fuels: There is life after cheap gas!

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usatoday_gaspricesSome environmentalists believe that if you invest in and develop alternative replacement fuels (e.g., ethanol, methanol, natural gas, etc.) innovation and investment with respect to the development of fuel from renewables will diminish significantly. They believe it will take much longer to secure a sustainable environment for America.

Some of my best friends are environmentalists. Most times, I share their views. I clearly share their views about the negative impact of gasoline on the environment and GHG emissions.

I am proud of my environmental credentials and my best friends. But fair is fair — there is historical and current evidence that environmental critics are often using hyperbole and exaggeration inimical to the public interest. At this juncture in the nation’s history, the development of a comprehensive strategy linking increased use of alternative replacement fuels to the development and increased use of renewables is feasible and of critical importance to the quality of the environment, the incomes of the consumer, the economy of the nation, and reduced dependence on imported oil.

There you go again say the critics. Where’s the beef? And is it kosher?

Gasoline prices are at their lowest in years. Today’s prices convert gasoline — based on prices six months ago, a year ago, two years ago — into, in effect, what many call a new product. But is it akin to the results of a disruptive technology? Gas at $3 to near $5 a gallon is different, particularly for those who live at the margin in society. Yet, while there are anecdotes suggesting that low gas prices have muted incentives and desire for alternative fuels, the phenomena will likely be temporary. Evidence indicates that new ethanol producers (e.g., corn growers who have begun to blend their products or ethanol producers who sell directly to retailers) have entered the market, hoping to keep ethanol costs visibly below gasoline. Other blenders appear to be using a new concoction of gasoline — assumedly free of chemical supplements and cheaper than conventional gasoline — to lower the cost of ethanol blends like E85.

Perhaps as important, apparently many ethanol producers, blenders and suppliers view the decline in gas prices as temporary. Getting used to low prices at the gas pump, some surmise, will drive the popularity of alternative replacement fuels as soon as gasoline, as is likely, begins the return to higher prices. Smart investors (who have some staying power), using a version of Pascal’s religious bet, will consider sticking with replacement fuels and will push to open up local, gas-only markets. The odds seem reasonable.

Now amidst the falling price of gasoline, General Motors did something many experts would not have predicted recently. Despite gas being at under $2 in many areas of the nation and still continuing to decrease, GM, with a flourish, announced plans, according to EPIC (Energy Policy Information Agency), to “release its first mass-market battery electric vehicle. The Chevy Bolt…will have a reported 200 mile range and a purchase price that is over $10,000 below the current asking price of the Volt.It will be about $30,000 after federal EV tax incentives. Historically, although they were often startups, the recent behavior of General Motor concerning electric vehicles was reflected in the early pharmaceutical industry, in the medical device industry, and yes, even in the automobile industry etc.

GM’s Bolt is the company’s biggest bet on electric innovation to date. To get to the Bolt, GM researched Tesla and made a $240 million investment in one of its transmissions plan.

Maybe not as media visible as GM’s announcement, Blume Distillation LLC just doubled its Series B capitalization with a million-dollar capital infusion from a clean tech seed and venture capital fund. Tom Harvey, its vice president, indicated Blume’s Distillation system can be flexibly designed and sized to feedstock availability, anywhere from 250,000 gallons per year to 5 MMgy. According to Harvey, the system is focused on carbohydrate and sugar waste streams from bottling plants, food processors and organic streams from landfill operations, as well as purpose-grown crops.

The relatively rapid fall in gas prices does not mean the end of efforts to increase use of alternative replacement fuels or renewables. Price declines are not to be confused with disruptive technology. Despite perceptions, no real changes in product occurred. Gas is still basically gas. The change in prices relates to the increased production capacity generated by fracking, falling global and U.S. demand, the increasing value of the dollar, the desire of the Saudis to secure increased market share and the assumed unwillingness of U.S. producers to give up market share.

Investment and innovation will continue with respect to alcohol-based alternative replacement and renewable fuels. Increasing research in and development of both should be part of an energetic public and private sector’s response to the need for a new coordinated fuel strategy. Making them compete in a win-lose situation is unnecessary. Indeed, the recent expanded realization by environmentalists critical of alternative replacement fuels that the choices are not “either/or” but are “when/how much/by whom,” suggesting the creation of a broad coalition of environmental, business and public sector leaders concerned with improving the environment, America’s security and the economy. The new coalition would be buttressed by the fact that Americans, now getting used to low gas prices, will, when prices rise (as they will), look at cheaper alternative replacement fuels more favorably than in the past, and may provide increasing political support for an even playing field in the marketplace and within Congress. It would also be buttressed by the fact that increasing numbers of Americans understand that waiting for renewable fuels able to meet broad market appeal and an array of household incomes could be a long wait and could negatively affect national objectives concerning the health and well-being of all Americans. Even if renewable fuels significantly expand their market penetration, their impact will be marginal, in light of the numbers of older internal combustion cars now in existence. Let’s move beyond a win-lose “muddling through” set of inconsistent policies and behavior concerning alternative replacement fuels and renewables and develop an overall coordinated approach linking the two. Isaiah was not an environmentalist, a businessman nor an academic. But his admonition to us all to come and reason together stands tall today.

Landon Hall

Now you can watch PUMP the Movie on Amazon

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PUMP has landed on Amazon, so viewers now have multiple ways to watch this terrific documentary in the comfort of their homes. Or the comfort of their offices, commuter trains or coffee shops. Wherever they feel comfortable, really.

PUMP is available for download onto your favorite digital device, or for viewing on Amazon’s video streaming service. The cost for purchase is $12.99 ($13.99 for high-definition). To rent it for seven days, the cost is $4.99 ($5.99 HD).

Visit the PUMP link on Amazon to learn more. If you’ve seen the movie already, post a review!

As Chris Meloni points out, it’s important to search for the right flick: It’s PUMP the Movie, not something else. But if you want to watch that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie too, go for it.

PUMP, narrated by Jason Bateman, chronicles the story of oil and how it came to be virtually our only choice for a transportation fuel. The film shows how we can use a multitude of domestically produced fuels, like ethanol, methanol and compressed natural gas, to reduce oil consumption. Displacing a portion of the oil we guzzle will strength the economy, improve national security, reduce pollution’s impact on health, and protect the environment. There’s also cool stuff about Tesla and race cars.

PUMP also is available through Apple’s iTunes store. If the big screen is the way you’d prefer to see this important film (and hey, why wouldn’t you, with such great work by filmmakers Josh and Rebecca Tickell), there are several upcoming screenings on campuses and other venues around the country, including Arizona State University, UCLA and the Utah Film Center in Moab. You can also organize your own screening!

Visit PumpTheMovie.com for more information.

If you haven’t experienced the convenience and visual quality of Amazon’s video service, check it out. Not only can you download content onto your laptop, tablet or phone, you can add it at home using certain TVs, Blu-Ray players, gaming consoles and other devices. As Business Insider writes, Amazon is nearly as popular as Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix, PUMP is coming to that service soon. Check back for a date.

Fuel Freedom Staff

Hydrogen-powered cars steal some sex appeal in Detroit

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Visitors to the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week likely were awe-struck, along with critics, at the sight of the new high-powered Acura NSX and the Ford GT.

But this might be the show where hydrogen-powered vehicles finally graduated from the drawing board to the public consciousness.

Much buzz was created in the Motor City when Honda unveiled its FCV (for fuel-cell vehicle) concept car, which is expected to go on sale in the United States in 2016. The car is an answer to Toyota’s Mirai FCV, which is expected to be available in the U.S. later this year (Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe became the first person in the world to get one last week.)

The cars join the Hyundai Tucson and the Mercedes F-Cell in the hydrogen ranks. Hyundai reportedly has decided to lower the price of its vehicle (said to be about $139,000) to increase its competitiveness with its rivals.

Cost could be a big issue with consumers: The Mirai costs about $62,000, roughly the same as the Honda FCV.

Refueling access is another issue: There are only 13 hydrogen stations in the U.S., 11 of them in California. But the state is investing more than $46 million to build 28 new stations.

FCVs combine hydrogen, from a tank or cell, with oxygen that powers an electric motor. The key benefit is the short refueling time: Honda said its FCV could be fueled in about 3 minutes (at about 10,00 pounds per square inch). The vehicle has a range of roughly 300 miles, an improvement over the 240 achieved by Honda’s first-generation fuel-cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity. The Mirai also has about a 300-mile range.

One person unimpressed with all the attention hydrogen-powered cars were getting in Detroit was Tesla founder Elon Musk. As MLive reported:

“I just think they’re extremely silly,” he told reporters at Automotive News’ annual World Congress.

Musk argued that hydrogen acts as an energy storage unit, not a source of it, making it impractical for powering vehicles. He called drawing hydrogen from water “an extremely inefficient” process.

“If you’re going to pick an energy storage mechanism, hydrogen is just an extremely dumb one to pick,” Musk said.

Toyota is undaunted, saying it will share the 5,680 patents that went into its hydrogen fuel cells. Musk announced last year that Tesla would make its patents available to other carmakers.

Time reported:

“Hopefully by sharing these patents with others, these new fuel systems can be refined and improved,” said Toyota Senior Vice President Bob Carter, “to attract a larger market of buyers.”

The Mirai is starting with a small batch of 700 vehicles in 2014 with the goal of growing to tens of thousands by the 2020s. “We believe hydrogen electric will be the primary fuel for the next 100 years,” Carter said.

(Photo: Honda FCV, via Honda.com)

Arctic Leaf

Tesla going full speed ahead, but it has competition

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Shrugging off any concern about falling gas prices, Tesla is planning to have its medium-priced Model III on the road by 2017. If it meets with anything like the reception of the 2014 Model S, Tesla will be in good shape.

Auto reviewers were ecstatic about the Model S, saying it put Tesla in a class by itself. As Ali Aslani wrote on MasterHerald.com:

If you think electric cars are slow and wretched creatures, you obviously haven’t seen the 2014 Tesla Model S. This vehicle is a beast on wheels that will make you forget half your life’s problems, until you look down at the dash and remember that you cannot pull up to a gas station for refueling, once you run out.

That refueling is becoming less and less common, however, as Tesla’s battery technology has pushed the range for its vehicles to 400 km, or 250 miles. It’s enough for a good commute to work. And recharging stations are becoming more common as Tesla and other auto manufacturers push to have them installed.

What really turns on car enthusiasts, however, is the acceleration possible with an electric motor. Alex Kerston posted a video on CarThrottle.com, in which a user who normally drives a Lamborghini Aventador has just ridden in the 691-hp Model S P85D:

The acceleration is ridiculous. I daily drive an Aventador and I thought I got used to fast acceleration. But no. … As a passenger, you do not get a chance to get ready for it at all. My internal organs were glued to the back of my body. … after about a dozen of those 0-60 accelerations, I felt like I had to puke – probably the first time I’ve felt this way in many years.

The question is, is this the kind of performance ordinary drivers are looking for? The Model III will weigh 1,000 pounds more than the Model S and therefore won’t be in the same class as the roadsters. But at $35,000 to $50,000, it will still be in the higher class of buyers. With all the inconveniences of recharging and being a first mover in the electric field, it will be a wonder if the Tesla standard model will be able to reach the 500,000 sales mark at which the company is aiming.

Meanwhile, other auto manufacturers are not standing still. Last week, Volkswagen, the largest auto company in the world, reportedly bought a stake in the Silicon Valley battery manufacturer QuantumScape, which gives VW access to a technology that could potentially deliver far more range that Tesla’s 400 km. QuantumScape’s solid-state batteries also carry a smaller risk of fire than the lithium-ion batteries used in many electric vehicles, including Tesla’s. Hybrid technology leader Toyota has been developing comparable technology since at least 2010, and EV leader Nissan has been promising similar developments. By the time Tesla comes to market with its lithium-ion-driven Model III, it could end up looking downright conservative in its technology.

Volkswagen’s investment in solid-state batteries is especially interesting, since at one point it was actually copying Tesla’s approach to EV battery technology. In 2009 and 2010, Volkswagen was working with Tesla co-founder Marin Eberhard on Tesla’s cylindrical-style lithium batteries but rejected the technology as too complex when it brought the e-Golf to market. Now Volkswagen is looking to leapfrog Tesla into solid-state technology.

Volkswagen Group is planning a short-term offensive against Tesla. It will bring out the $100,000 electric R8 sports car to compete with the Model S. Also in the works is the forthcoming Q8 crossover coupe. Both cars will be produced by VW’s Audi subsidiary.

Other manufacturers are taking aim at Tesla’s share of the $100,000 electric sports-car market. BMW is likely to add more products to its electric “I” brand and has unveiled an electric powertrain that it’s calling the “Tesla killer.” Porsche, also owned by Volkswagen Group, is said to be planning an electric version of a smaller sedan, code-named the Pajun. Former Tesla investor Mercedes-Benz is also working on an electric version of its flagship S-Class vehicles.

The takeaway is that powerful electric vehicles with a suitable range are no longer going to be a luxury item. If Tesla is successful in breaking through with the Model III, it’s going to be followed quickly by competitors in the same class and perhaps with a different technology.