Clean Transportation

By Jeff Siegel I learned today that sales of Honda's natural gas Civic tanked 65% in 2014. I didn't even know they were still trying to sell those things! I actually remember a few years ago, attending a car show and talking to a Honda rep who was pushing this thing. I didn't have the heart to tell him he was barking up the wrong tree when he tried to sell me on all the benefits. What benefits? Inferior fuel economy, a clunky ride, and no infrastructure? Sure, there was the special fueling unit that could be installed in...

John Petersen Last month Ricardo PLC (RCDOF.PK) published a report titled "GB Rail Diesel Powertrain Efficiency Improvements" that it prepared for Great Britain's Department for Transport. While most of the fuel efficiency technologies Ricardo evaluated for the report were mechanical systems, its analysis of the fuel efficiency benefits of stop-start and hybrid systems for locomotives offered an intriguing view of a cost-effective vehicle electrification opportunity that can be implemented at relevant scale within a few years. The two types of locomotive systems Ricardo evaluated for the report were simple stop-start idle elimination and full hybridization. The following table...

John Petersen October has been a fun month for me as JD Power and Associates rained on the electric vehicle parade with a new report "Green Drive 2020; More Hope than Reality?" that forecast a 1.8% global market penetration rate for cars with plugs in 2020; Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) announced a design win in the automotive stop-start market; Pike Research issued a new report on power systems for hybrid locomotives; Nanomarkets LLC reported that lead-carbon batteries will be a leading contender in the $1 billion wind-power storage market; Lux Research began advertising an upcoming webinar to introduce their...

John Petersen Since June of 2009 I've been a voice in the wilderness proclaiming that stop-start idle elimination will become a dominant automotive fuel efficiency technology by mid-decade and represent a tremendous business opportunity for established lead-acid battery manufacturers like Johnson Controls (JCI) and Exide Technologies (XIDE) and emerging energy storage technology developers like Maxwell Technologies (MXWL), Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and A123 Systems (AONE). In the process I've suffered more than a little abuse, scorn, derision and ridicule from EVangelicals who think it makes sense to propel up to 5,300 pounds of metal at highway...

I took a small position today in Railpower Tech (RPWRF.PK or P.TO) at C$0.46. Tom briefly discussed Railpower last November in an article on rail stocks. I don't want to dwell too much on how I view the macro picture for rail, but suffices to say that a combination of increasing fuel prices and concerns about climate change is re-kindling interest in this sector in a significant way across North America (in other regions of the world, mainly Europe, the interest never really vanished in the first place). Tack on top of that the potential for material savings in...

MiX Telematics' (NASD:MIXT) fleet management solutions significantly increase road safety and reduce fuel consumption. MiX is well positioned to take advantage of continued rapid growth in the global mobile asset management industry, yet its stock is a much better value than its peers.

John Petersen Before moving to Switzerland in 1998 I lived and worked in Houston, Texas, a place that teaches you the importance of keeping an eye on long-term weather forecasts, particularly during hurricane season. Most of the time it turns out to be wasted effort because Mother Nature is fickle and highly unpredictable, but when it's important it's really important. The same logic holds for investments in energy storage and electric vehicle technologies. You have to keep a close eye on the industrial and regulatory climate and be ready to change your plans when conditions change. For...

John Petersen In their 1969 bestseller "The Peter Principle" Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull quoted a Latin-American student named Caesare Innocente who lamented, "Professor Peter, I'm afraid that what I want to know is not answered by all my studying. I don't know whether the world is run by smart men who are, how you Americans say, putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." After watching the events of the last few weeks, I think most of my regular readers would agree that the imbeciles are clearly steering the ship. Last March I went...

John Petersen Last week the American Chemical Society published a white paper in Environmental Science & Technology from a team of researchers at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Transportation Research titled "Environmental Implication of Electric Vehicles in China." This white paper concludes that: Implementing electric vehicles in China will increase national CO2, SO2 and NOX emissions; and Gasoline HEVs are more environmentally friendly, more commercially mature, and less cost-intensive. The following graph comes from page 4 of the white paper and compares the relative fleet wide CO2 emissions for gasoline ICEs,...

Two diametrically-opposed stories for this post: Beacon Power and RailPower Tech . The latter is up 134% on its week-ago closing price, while the former is down nearly 22% over the same period. Beacon Power Corp I wrote about Beacon Power a little while ago. The recent drop in share price is due in large part to the fact that Beacon announced, last Friday (Dec. 29), a glitch at one of its testing facilities in Massachusetts. This was followed by an analyst at Merriman Curhan Ford downgrading the company from Buy to Hold. Almost immediately, the...

Tom Konrad, Ph.D. CFA Should reduced liquidity at New Flyer Industries concern investors? New Flyer Industries (NFI-UN.TO, NFYIF.PK) is one of my largest single clean energy investments. The company describes itself as the "leader in the heavy-duty bus market for the US and Canada."  This is why I first brought it to the attention of readers in April 2008, as a company likely to benefit from peak oil. Increasing the fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet can reduce our consumption of oil in North America, but not at a pace sufficient to both accommodate declining oil supplies...

Bottom line: Traditional car makers will suffer from weak sales growth and plunging margins in China in 2015 and into 2016, while EV makers will start the new year slow but could see improvement by the end of 2015. A flurry of headlines this week are sending ominous signals for the car industry in the year ahead, with both traditional and new energy vehicle makers likely to face an uphill road as China’s economy slows. The problem could be compounded as big new capacity comes online from many major automakers that have invested billions of dollars on expansion over...

John Petersen On March 4, 2011 the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory published a comprehensive review of "Electrochemical Energy Storage Technologies for Green Grid" that is a must-read for serious investors who want to understand the technical and economic intricacies of the energy storage sector. It explains why storage is a key enabling technology for wind and solar power, the smart grid, efficient transportation and a legion of high-technology manufacturing and service enterprises that can't survive without reliable power. It also explains why energy storage is an investment mega-trend that will endure for decades. While I normally try to...

CO2 reduction and fuel savings are not the only reasons to own a Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV.)  There is real value in the ability to plug in to the electric grid which is not captured by price projections. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA There will be gas lines. Alternative energy saw its first flowering during the 1970's and 1980's, fueled by the OPEC oil embargo and late oil shocks which followed the peaking of domestic United States oil production.  Demand exceeded supply, and domestic price controls meant that the market could not balance supply and demand; instead gas was...

Enova Systems Inc (ENVA)announced today that it has entered into a development and sales agreement with China's First Auto Works (FAW) for parallel hybrid drive systems for their hybrid buses. FAW signed a two-phase development agreement with Enova for hybrid-electric motors and power controllers for its newest hybrid buses. Enova is working with both FAW and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) of Texas to integrate and validate the new Enova parallel hybrid drive system for these buses.

by Debra Fiakas CFA Casting about for alternatives to burning fossil fuels for energy, hydrogen is a logical candidate.  It is the most abundant chemical on the planet and the energy density of compressed hydrogen is about 5.6 milli-joules per liter.  This compares to 32.4 mj/l for gasoline and 4.3 mj/l for a lithium ion battery.  That is where the romance ends and the realities of hydrogen begin.  Hydrogen poses a safety risks, particularly in transportation and distribution.  Hydrogen gas leaking into the air may spontaneously ignite.  Extremely low temperatures will turn it into a liquid, but that...