Clean Transportation

ZAP (ZAPZ) unveiled a hydrogen fuel cell powered pickup as well as a new lithium battery technology at the Consumer Electronics Show. ZAP is forming a new division of the Company to focus on advanced energy technologies alongside its efforts to market advanced transportation. ZAP's fuel cell technology partner, Anuvu Incorporated, converted the Nissan Frontier 4-door pick-up truck on display at CES. An innovative hybrid fuel cell system powers the vehicle on hydrogen and electricity.

Tom Konrad CFA The 2013 Lamborghini Aventador will incorporate Maxwell ultracapcitors. (Photo credit: Autoviva.com via Flickr  ) The headline was good: Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (NASD:MXWL) beat analysts’ third quarter (Q3 2012) earnings estimates by 10 cents on improved cost control and revenues in-line with analyst expectations (up 7%).  The good news stopped there, however, and investors are in a panic this morning (the stock is down $1.48 to $6.13 as I write) about some worrying comments made in the earnings call (transcript here.) Worries About the Chinese Hybrid Bus Market Revenue growth has...

ZAP (ZAPZ) unveiled today ZAP® Portable Energy(TM), a new rechargeable lithium-ion battery and power storage technology for low-voltage electronics like cell phones, handheld computers and more. "The battery technology to power electric cars is here and ZAP Portable Energy is proof that the technology is maturing at a rapid rate," said ZAP CEO Steve Schneider. "This mobile power source is a breakthrough product that can serve the needs of more than 80 percent of the handheld electronics market. This and other battery advances in mobile electronics are creating the economies of scale necessary to commercialize advanced electric car...

The Motley Fool finally had something good to say about an alternative energy stock. It just so happens to be for one I purchased earlier this morning. Don't look now, but Energy Conversion Devices might just prove to be that rare bird an alternative energy play with actual products and a reasonable chance of living up to lofty investor expectations. ... It would appear to me that hybrid vehicle batteries are the biggest near-term opportunity. Although the company didn't specify the customers, it has acknowledged receiving production orders for battery packs. They say that...

Sean Kidney Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE:TM) will close mid-next week on what will be the world’s first green bond backed by auto loans – electric vehicle and hybrid car loans to be specific. And what a kickstart for that market, at $1.75 billion. According to a report in International Financing Review (IFR), the bond will be in multiple tranches, each at a different ratings level: A2 tranche, A3 and A4 (Moody’s ratings). First thing to know: they told the media a week ago it would be a US$774.675 million bond. Rumour has it that initial investor interest...

Arotech Corporation (ARTX) announced today that its Electric Fuel subsidiary is one of the founders of the recently formed Zinc Energy Storage Technology (ZEST) Consortium. Launched in March 2005, the Consortium's declared aim is to enable the market for zinc-energy storage technology to realize its full potential. The Consortium will initially focus on the electric vehicle market in Asia. In preparation for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, which China in its successful bid to the International Olympic Committee declared would be a "Green Olympics," China has committed to employing 1,000 environmentally clean buses for transportation of...

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,...

John Petersen Last Friday President Obama and executives from thirteen leading automakers gathered in Washington DC to announce an historic agreement to increase fleet-wide fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks from 27.5 mpg for the 2011 model year to 54.5 mpg for the 2025 model year. While politicians frequently spin superlatives to describe mediocre results, I believe the President's claim that the accord "represents the single most important step we've ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil" is a refreshing example of political understatement. After three decades of demagoguery, debate,...

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...

Unique Mobility Inc (UQM) announced that two low-floor, hybrid electric transit buses manufactured by Hybrid Bus Technologies, LLC, Denver, Colorado, that are fueled by clean burning natural gas, have been delivered to Los Angeles International Airport ("LAX") and will be placed in service to transport passengers within the airport. The hybrid electric transit buses are each powered by two 100kW UQM® propulsion systems and a 100kW UQM® generator. The hybrid electric transit buses are an updated design of the 45-foot, low floor bus that has been transporting 63,500 passengers daily across the 1.3-mile long 16th Street pedestrian mall in...

John Petersen Today is the third anniversary of my blog on investing in energy storage. While the last three years have been profoundly troubled by a market crash, a slow recovery and more ups and downs than a roller coaster, energy storage has been surging to prominence as investors realize that batteries, products we all love to hate, are a critical enabling technology for wind and solar power, efficient transportation, the smart grid and hundreds of other applications that make life more pleasant. With each passing day it's increasingly clear that energy storage is an investment mega-trend that...

John Petersen On August 28th, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Postal Service published the results of a feasibility study titled, "Electrification of Delivery Vehicles." While the feasibility study reaches a foregone conclusion and recommends the purchase of a 3,000 unit demonstration fleet, I was surprised by the high level of Federal subsidies the Inspector General thought necessary to bring EVs within Postal Service capital investment policies. I was even more surprised by the conclusion that the tipping point in the economic analysis was revenue from ancillary vehicle to grid, or V2G, services. The...

Unique Mobility Inc (UQM) announced today that it has received an order from Delphi Corporation (DPH) for UQM(R) motors and motor controllers to drive an electric air conditioning compressor for a hybrid electric vehicle. "We are pleased that Delphi has selected UQM(R) hardware for their electric air conditioning program. The electrification of under-the-hood auxiliaries, such as air conditioning, provides efficiency, packaging and performance advantages over conventional belt-driven systems, which can contribute to improved fuel economy in an automobile. Our proprietary motors are ideally-suited for these applications, which we believe represent a significant opportunity for our company in both...

Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc (QTWW) announced the delivery of five hydrogen-fueled Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles to the City of Santa Ana, California. This is part of a larger South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) program to develop and demonstrate 30 hydrogen hybrid vehicles to fleets in Southern California. The formal delivery took place during a ceremony held today at the City of Santa Ana's vehicle fleet yard. In March 2004, the AQMD awarded Quantum a contract to engineer a state-of-the-art OEM caliber hydrogen fuel system, perform accelerated long-term durability testing, including crash testing. The complete...

A couple of weeks ago, we received an inquiry from a reader asking us to look into potential beneficiaries of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)'s high-speed rail (HSR) provisions. This sounded like something our readers would want to read about so I decided to do it. In a nutshell, here are the two main component's of ARRA's HSR approach: $8 billion for for HSR corridors and other intercity passenger rail service (unclear at this point how much will go into each, although the companies discussed below can benefit from both) The rules around state issuance...