Clean Transportation

John Petersen On December 14th the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences issued a new report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy titled "Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies – Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles." The press release headline announcing the report proclaims, "PLUG-IN HYBRID VEHICLE COSTS LIKELY TO REMAIN HIGH, BENEFITS MODEST FOR DECADES." In other words, grid-enabled vehicles, or GEVs, are nowhere near ready for prime time and investors that buy into the GEV hype can look forward to decades of pain and suffering. Serious investors who want to understand the electric vehicle...

John Petersen The second quarter was a turbulent period for investors in the energy storage and vehicle electrification sectors. Johnson Controls (JCI), C&D Technologies (CHHP.PK) and the enchanted, mystical, gravity defying Tesla Motors (TSLA) were up a little. Everybody else was down as fear, loathing and uncertainty ran rampant and the congenital birth defects of EVs and batteries to power them proved to be insurmountable obstacles for all but St. Elon of Palo Alto, the patron saint of expensive toys. While the second quarter wasn't pleasant for most of the companies I track, I draw some comfort...

Arotech Corporation (ARTX) announced today that a test drive conducted with its all-electric hybrid bus using commercially available zinc demonstrated performance similar to that achieved with the proprietary dendritic zinc used to date. Corroborating lab results, the bus achieved a range of 133 miles on a simulated city-cycle drive, similar to the range achieved a year ago in a similar test with the proprietary zinc. The system's efficiency has been improved as well.

Stocks may be expensive now, but they won't be forever.  Five Peak Oil plays to buy when they're cheap again: Two busses, two rails, and an ETF. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Two weeks ago, I told you why I feel that the market is more likely to head down than up from here (it's been flat since then.)  I've been selling covered calls on my holdings, several of which have been called away.  I plan to sit on the cash until the market has fallen at least 10%, after which I may start selling cash covered puts, but I...

Neal Dikeman For those of you interested in the sector under the sector in electric vehicles, the guts of Li Ion battery technology, the week just got more interesting than an overpriced, over hyped Tesla (TSLA) IPO. Check out a very quiet unnanouncement in A123's SEC filings noting a multi-year supply deal with ConocoPhillips' Cpreme, the emerging leader in anode materials for Li On batteries.  The technology is a processing technology to make high performance graphite based powders out of plain old petroleum coke materials, that has the potential to be very low cost at scale.  A123 has...

Why is Detroit Obsessed with PHEVs?

by Clean Energy Intel Companies with significant exposure to the market for natural gas transportation have obviously received a lot of attention recently following the announcement last week of a co-marketing agreement for LNG transportation between oil major Shell (RDS-A) and Westport (WPRT), a provider of natural gas engine technology. This makes the release of Pike's new annual global sales forecasts for natural gas vehicles particularly timely and worth a look. According to Pike Research, there are currently 12.6 million natrual gas vehicles (NGVs) in the world. These are mainly located in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa....

Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) has long been one of my favorite energy efficiency picks, with an added bonus coming from their joint venture with Saft to produce batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.  They have also shown some energy saving innovation making parts for auto interiors. Building EfficiencyEfficient buildings are much more complex than simply replacing inefficient HVAC and lighting with more efficient versions.  Quite often, the most cost effective measures come from using systems more efficiently.  As an analogy to the home, look at any list of quick tips for energy saving around...

In the last Technology Quarterly, The Economist had a story about the electric busses in 1907 London.  As they tell it, the electric bus had a real chance to beat out the internal combustion engine, and the company only failed because of fraud.  The electric technology was in many ways superior to the internal combustion engines which eventually won out. In fact, many people at the time still considered the horse to be the far superior technology.  These days, the battle is still between the same three fuels: Electric, Petroleum, and biomass (grass and oats for the...

by Clean Energy Intel Nissan Leaf (Left) & Landglider at the 2009 Tokyo Motor Show. Image source: Wikipedia / Tennen-Gas Nissan and its sister company Renault have clearly made a commitment to 'advanced-drive' autos. The facts speak for themselves:     Nissan put the Leaf on the streets in December of 2010 - the first mass-produced, battery electric vehicle. Sales reached 15,000 units worldwide by September of this year.     Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn has said he expects sales of BEVs to make up 10% of the sales of new light-duty vehicles by 2020....

Tom Konrad CFA My Ten Electric Vehicle (EV) Stocks article drew considerable attention and comments, including suggestions for stocks that did not make the ten.  Here are my takes on the EV stocks suggested by readers. All of these companies do have something to do with electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), but many were omitted from the original list because EV and HEV exposure was quite small as a fraction of total revenue.  This matters because, even when a small segment of a company is growing rapidly, it can have very little effect on...

Altair Nanomaterials (ALTI) announced that its battery research and development team successfully completed a testing program for lithium ion battery cells containing Altairnano's nano-structured lithium titanate electrode materials. "The test results demonstrated that the performance of these lithium ion battery cells exceed the system-level power requirements set forth by the U.S. Council for Automotive Research FreedomCAR Energy Storage System Performance Goals for hybrid electric vehicle (HEVs), as well as those requirements published by major U.S. automakers," said Evan House, Ph.D., Program Director, Altairnano's Advanced Materials & Power Systems business unit. These batteries demonstrate a useable state-of-charge...

Unique Mobility Inc (UQM) announced today that it has received an order for two UQM® generators that will provide generated power for two additional "Spinner" hybrid electric unmanned ground combat vehicles being built by a team led by the National Robotics Engineering Consortium, a unit of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. The UQM® generators will be integrated with a small diesel engine to generate the power required by the two additional unmanned ground combat vehicles (UGCV's) which are propelled by high torque wheel-mounted UQM® propulsion motors.

As part of a general portfolio cleanup, I recently considered selling my stake in UQM Technologies, Inc. (AMEX:UQM), a manufacturer of electric motors for hybrid and electric vehicles.  I chose to keep the stock because they seem to have sufficient cash on hand to fund several years' operations.  I'm glad I did, because the stock is up 76% since Monday, with no recent news. But there's a rumor that Chrysler will be using a UQM product in one of its planned electric cars.  If that rumor is true, the stock's rise is probably justified.  I like the company either...

Lexus announced today that its dealers have received more than 9,000 pre-sold orders for the 2006 RX 400h luxury gas-electric hybrid SUV through August month-end. The RX 400h provides a powerful new performance dimension to the traditional hybrid advantages of high mileage and low emissions.

Cobasys announced today that they will provide their advanced NiMHax® Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery systems for GM's 2007 Saturn VUE Green Line SUV which will be made available to consumers in the summer of 2006. Cobasys is a joint venture partnership between Energy Conversion Devices Inc (ENER) and Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation (CVX) ENER gapped up this morning on this news and has been trading nicely for the last couple of months. However, it has run into upside resistance at the 52 week high. The stock is...