Clean Transportation

Over the past few days (and continuing this week), Tom has been writing about about what he sold recently. Lately, I have been thinking about what I could buy with the cash I have sitting around, seeing as many alt energy stocks look like bargains compared to where they were trading at just a few short months ago. Over the weekend, I looked again into a stock I wrote about in May, Railpower Tech (RLPPF.PK or P.TO). I got a couple of requests for updates on this one so I decided to write about it. Railpower makes hybrid...

John Petersen On Monday of this week the Electrification Coalition, a newly organized industrial lobby that styles itself as a "nonpartisan, not-for-profit group of business leaders committed to promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security dangers caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum" released a 170 page policy paper titled, "Electrification Roadmap, Revolutionizing Transportation and Achieving Energy Security." Like most industrial lobbies jostling for position at the Federal trough, the coalition's core membership includes a baker's dozen...

John Petersen I've written several articles over the last year that explain why idle elimination is a crucial first step in the global effort to increase fuel efficiency and curb CO2 emissions. For readers who are new to my blog, or confused by a torrent of news stories and analysts reports that wax poetic on the expected benefits, costs and challenges of gee-whiz vehicles that are "coming soon to a showroom near you," altenergymag.com describes stop-start systems, or micro-hybrids, as follows: "These are conventional vehicles powered either by gasoline or diesel engines in which the 12-volt starter...

Portec Rail Products (PRPX) released  fourth quarter results on Thursday, comfortably beating analyst expectations.  The stock promptly dropped 18% to just below $5, continuing a two-week decline from around $7.50. I'm baffled.  Although the rail freight industry is a victim of falling oil prices (which means they lose market share to trucking) and the overall drop-off of the transportation industry, this is not news. Portec has several things going for it.  The company has a strong balance sheet, with current assets exceeding total liabilities, and strong cash flow from operations.  Total revenue is down slightly from last...

John Petersen Last Tuesday a reader sent me a copy of "Ending the ICE Age," a new industry overview from Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich on the future of plug-in vehicles, which the newly organized Electrification Coalition has christened grid enabled vehicles, or GEVs. After spending several hours studying the report I concluded that Mr. Milunovich has found the true religion of the new millennium while I'm still an unwashed pagan, or worse yet a heretic. The grim reality is that when you look at American energy policy as a faith-based initiative,...

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...

The logic behind Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) is that they combine the best characteristics of a Electric Vehicles (EVs), most importantly efficiency, which brings with it much lower operating costs and lower net emissions and no tailpipe emissions, with the benefits of a liquid fuel vehicle, mainly the range available with energy-dense liquid fuels. But how important is range to car buyers?  PHEV advocates say that 80% of all daily car use is less than 50 miles, which is easily achievable with today's electric vehicle (EV) technology.  The freeway-capable EVs being developed today have a range between 100 and...

John Petersen A123 Systems filed another amendment to the registration statement for its proposed IPO on August 19th. With this amendment, A123 is much clearer on its anticipated Federal funding than it was in earlier filings. In addition to discussing the recent DOE announcement that they'll receive $249.1 million in ARRA battery manufacturing grants, they've reduced their estimate of the ATVM guaranteed loans that they'll be eligible for from $1 billion in their July filing to $235 million in the current filing. This most recent number is specific enough to indicate that it reflects ongoing negotiations rather than...

John Petersen Last week I stumbled across a link that led to a 2010 report from the National Research Council titled "Hidden Costs of Energy, Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use." This free 506-page book takes a life-cycle approach – from fuel extraction to energy production, distribution, and use to disposal of waste products – and attempts to quantify the health, climate and other unpriced damages that arise from the use of various energy sources for electricity, transportation and heat. After studying the NRC's discussion of the unpriced health effects, other nonclimate damages and greenhouse gas...

Investors act in irrational, but predictably irrational, ways.    That is the basic tenet of Behavioral Economics.  (Looking for references, I came across an interesting book by that title, by the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.)   For me, these predictable irrationalities provide ways to profit from the mistakes of others in the market, so long as I do not fall into the same (or other) cognitive traps which cause the market opportunities in the first place.  I describe one such technique in this article. Applications to Policy Design In addition to those...

John Petersen A couple days ago Lux Research published a new report titled “Every Last Drop: Micro‐ And Mild Hybrids Drive a Huge Market for Fuel‐Efficient Vehicles” that focuses on rapidly growing markets for micro-hybrid vehicles and their battery systems. During 2011, automakers sold an estimated 5,000,000 micro-hybrids worldwide, mainly in Europe. By 2017, Lux forecasts global micro-hybrid sales of 39,000,000 cars a year and a $6.3 billion annual market for their battery systems, which represents an across the board average of $161 per vehicle compared to an auto industry average of less than $60 per...

ZAP (ZAPZ) announced today that, based on interest generated at the San Francisco International Auto Show last week, it has received a 100-unit block purchase order from a U.S. automotive dealer. ZAP will not announce the name of the dealer until the cars are ready to be sold to the general public, but is in discussion with a number of government and corporate fleets as well as automotive wholesale dealers for purchase orders of 100 or more cars, up to 15,000, by December 31, 2004 due to U.S. small manufacturers limitations.

SatCon Technology Corporation (SATC) announced that it has been awarded a Phase I SBIR contract with the U. S. Army to develop an Integrated Starter/Generator (ISG) for hybrid powertrain military vehicles. SatCon's Applied Technology division is currently developing DC/DC converters (pulse power and battery chargers), starter generators, auxiliary power units, and main generators for hybrid electric vehicles for U. S. Army advanced technology vehicles. This award expands SatCon's portfolio of vehicle power technologies with the development of an integrated starter/generator based on advanced permanent magnet machinery design concepts.

Tom Konrad CFA Tesla Motors (TSLA) is not the only electric vehicle (EV) stock.  Here are nine other public companies helping to replace petroleum with electricity in our cars and trucks. Early in this series on the Best Peak Oil Investments, I put together an in-depth comparison of alternative fuels.  I concluded that the best prospect for displacing oil in the long term is electricity supplemented by biofuels.  Vehicle Electrification is likely to come to dominate the transportation sector because only renewable electricity can supply energy on the scale that we currently use for transportation with limited...

Tom Konrad, CFA Portec Rail Products (PRPX) agreed to be acquired by L. B. Foster Company (FSTR) on February 17. At least four law firms have started class action suits against the Portec board.  Here is why not to join any of them. Portec Rail Products has been a longtime favorite of mine.  It's profitable, and delivers valuable services to the rail and rail transit industries.  This article goes into a lot more detail as to why I like Portec.  In large part because of the acquisition, Portec is the best performing of my Ten Clean Energy...