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Nissan sell its 100,000th electric car

Smeagol

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Good news for those of us excited about new technology breaking the oligopoly gasoline holds over personal transportation. If there's no competition, suppliers can charge anything they want. Extra problematic if the product is one we absolutely need for our survival. More so if the price is controlled by an international anti-trust cartel. More bothersome if the entire global supply is allowed to be purchased in advance then price-gouged by a futures commodities market. Horrendously troubling if one of the major regions where the commodity is produced is populated by people who view us, it's consumers, as The Great Satan and some of them are mortally committed to fight to the death against that which they consider evil, us. Tragic that we have an entire segment of population who see freedom from this as a communist plot to stop capitalism and/or due to political team pride refuse to embrace freedom over an ideological sparing match they'd see themselves as losing with environmentalists.

The more units sold, the more market forces will improve the product and he more prices will fall. Congratulations Nissan!

“The age of the mainstream zero-emission vehicle is here,” said Renault-Nissan Alliance Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “We expect demand to keep growing as the charging infrastructure develops – and we remain 100-percent committed to zero-emission technology for the long term
.”



Renault-Nissan Sells Its 100,000th All-Electric Car - HybridCars.com
 
good. we need to pull out all the stops and build more grid capacity right now. if it can't be accomplished privately, we do part of it publicly. my preference is nukes and renewables.
 
I would gladly buy an all-electric vehicle for my next car if the re-charge time was not hours (12-24) long, and the range was more than about 60-100 miles depending on speed and use of radio and a/c or heater.

For me - the hybrid design seems FAR more "real-world" friendly, but I am glad the all-electric is moving forward.

A hybrid natural gas/electric design would be super cool.
 
good. we need to pull out all the stops and build more grid capacity right now. if it can't be accomplished privately, we do part of it publicly. my preference is nukes and renewables.

I also support greater efficiency on what we have now such as white residential roofing in sunnier climates that use a lot of electricity on air conditioning. I also think solar and wind home electrical production should be considered, not to replace but to supplement power grid needs. If the technology is out there, has a market and is being used; the technology will be driven to improve and prices will drop.
 
I would gladly buy an all-electric vehicle for my next car if the re-charge time was not hours (12-24) long, and the range was more than about 60-100 miles depending on speed and use of radio and a/c or heater.

For me - the hybrid design seems FAR more "real-world" friendly, but I am glad the all-electric is moving forward.

A hybrid natural gas/electric design would be super cool.



Better Batteries: Northwestern University News
 
I think that the technology is certainly imperfect at this point but it's positive for the shareholders to see this milestone and to know that this car isn't going to see the same demise as others before it.
 
I would gladly buy an all-electric vehicle for my next car if the re-charge time was not hours (12-24) long, and the range was more than about 60-100 miles depending on speed and use of radio and a/c or heater.

For me - the hybrid design seems FAR more "real-world" friendly, but I am glad the all-electric is moving forward.

A hybrid natural gas/electric design would be super cool.
Teslas meet those requirements but a still a little expensive for us common folk. :-/
 
I would gladly buy an all-electric vehicle for my next car if the re-charge time was not hours (12-24) long, and the range was more than about 60-100 miles depending on speed and use of radio and a/c or heater.

For me - the hybrid design seems FAR more "real-world" friendly, but I am glad the all-electric is moving forward.

A hybrid natural gas/electric design would be super cool.

Hybrid vehicles still fall to the fundamental inefficiencies of internal combustion engines. All-electric is the way of the future. Just need to get those pesky batteries worked out better.
 
Good news for those of us excited about new technology breaking the oligopoly gasoline holds over personal transportation. If there's no competition, suppliers can charge anything they want. Extra problematic if the product is one we absolutely need for our survival. More so if the price is controlled by an international anti-trust cartel. More bothersome if the entire global supply is allowed to be purchased in advance then price-gouged by a futures commodities market. Horrendously troubling if one of the major regions where the commodity is produced is populated by people who view us, it's consumers, as The Great Satan and some of them are mortally committed to fight to the death against that which they consider evil, us. Tragic that we have an entire segment of population who see freedom from this as a communist plot to stop capitalism and/or due to political team pride refuse to embrace freedom over an ideological sparing match they'd see themselves as losing with environmentalists.

The more units sold, the more market forces will improve the product and he more prices will fall. Congratulations Nissan!

“The age of the mainstream zero-emission vehicle is here,” said Renault-Nissan Alliance Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn. “We expect demand to keep growing as the charging infrastructure develops – and we remain 100-percent committed to zero-emission technology for the long term
.”



Renault-Nissan Sells Its 100,000th All-Electric Car - HybridCars.com

I'm also a believer in the imminent arrival of mass-commercialized electric vehicles, though I think Tesla offers a better model for the way forward. That being said I think not enough thought is given to how we will increase our power generation and how we will keep electricity costs low to ensure maximum use.
 
I'm also a believer in the imminent arrival of mass-commercialized electric vehicles, though I think Tesla offers a better model for the way forward. That being said I think not enough thought is given to how we will increase our power generation and how we will keep electricity costs low to ensure maximum use.

I agree electric vehicles are about to get huge. Tesla is the current best offering but it is costly compared to cars like the Nissan Leaf. At the same time I'm of te opinion one of the significant factors driving the expanse of electrc cars is the fact that different companies are creating their own electric cars. Competition makes everyone better and drives down costs. Plus, there's a game changing battery(ies) about to hit and after that; SUVs, trucks. RVs, vans thanks to their better capacity per charge plus they recharge in minutes, not hours.
 
I agree electric vehicles are about to get huge. Tesla is the current best offering but it is costly compared to cars like the Nissan Leaf. At the same time I'm of te opinion one of the significant factors driving the expanse of electrc cars is the fact that different companies are creating their own electric cars. Competition makes everyone better and drives down costs. Plus, there's a game changing battery(ies) about to hit and after that; SUVs, trucks. RVs, vans thanks to their better capacity per charge plus they recharge in minutes, not hours.

Mostly agreed. I've test driven a Model-S sport twice before, and my family has looked at it as a possible replacement car in the near future but it's not in the mass market range. However I think that it, not the Leaf, is the vein of things to come in terms of being a fully electric long distance vehicle. I'm hopeful that major battery technology evolutions are around the corner, but I'm a little skeptical simply because we've been waiting for a revolution in battery tech for a long time.
 
100,000 coal burning cars, the most anti-green fuel there is. There is no such thing as zero emission cars. That's be like arguing no gun has ever killed anyone, because it wasn't the gun, but the bullet. Electric cars are the dirtiest of all because of how the electricity to charge them is obtained.
 
100,000 coal burning cars, the most anti-green fuel there is. There is no such thing as zero emission cars. That's be like arguing no gun has ever killed anyone, because it wasn't the gun, but the bullet. Electric cars are the dirtiest of all because of how the electricity to charge them is obtained.

So what - you're suggesting any and all research, development, and production of vehicles that might help us wean our way off of using fossil fuels is a waste of time?
 
100,000 coal burning cars, the most anti-green fuel there is. There is no such thing as zero emission cars. That's be like arguing no gun has ever killed anyone, because it wasn't the gun, but the bullet. Electric cars are the dirtiest of all because of how the electricity to charge them is obtained.

For me its less about environmentalism and more about reducing if not ending Middle Eastern entaglement, control over America by dictators and defunding terrorism as well as crimes against humanity.

Coal is presently the American fuel of freedom. Plus it's the logical stepping stone on the way to hydrogen fueled automotive technology, which is green, as they both have electricity as their foundation. Meanwhile, although electricity is primarily coal generated in the US, American electricity is not exclusively coal fueled. There's also nuclear and hydro. And even though solar and wind aren't quite there yet, electric cars will likely encourage and drive expansion and efficiency innovations renewables.
 
Plus, there's a game changing battery(ies) about to hit and after that; SUVs, trucks. RVs, vans thanks to their better capacity per charge plus they recharge in minutes, not hours.

Any info on the new batteries?
 
Any info on the new batteries?

Without having the opportunity to look it up at this time:

- One of the major US automakers, I think GM, is getting behind a new battery technology that I recall will increase electric car battery range 5 fold.

- The Northwestern Universty battery, cited above, reportedly will get 10 times the range and recharge 10 times as fast as today's lithium ion batteries. Once they get some wear it goes down to 5 times the range, which is still amazing and woud get a compact like the Nissan Leaf 1,000 mile range between charge-ups and would go down to 500 miles over time. The Chevy Volt would get a 500 mile range at first then get down to 250 miles over time; probably better since with that range it wouldn't need to carry the weight of an inboard gasoline generator. I woud also imagine larger cars woud use it giving SUVs, vans and trucks the ability to go electric. The US department of Energy has given Northwestern an huge grant into the hundreds of millions, to get their battery developed. I'm not sure what that means in terms of practicality except I think its now far less likely for oil interests to buy out the patent rights, declare it "not ready yet" and shelve it indefinitely. The professor at North Western who led the research has started a private company. The news of the battery first broke in November of 2011, which projected it should be on the market in 3 to 5 years.

- There's talk of setting up rapid battery exchange stations around the country. My guesss is they won't be needed, at least not for long as I expect batteries to constantly improve. A lot of new technology is very quickly outdated because new and better alternatives come out so soon. For example, the DVD player only lasted a hot minute replaced by blu-ray. Most people probably never heard of them but there were 2 very good audio media there were supposed to be the next big thing called minidiscs and digital audio tape. Both were made obsolete by MP3 players before they took off.

- Even Rush Limbaugh, who is friends with former GM CEO Bob Lutz, is hinting he expects its "possible for electric cars to take off 20 years from now." Significant since Limbaugh has been one of electric car technology's most vocal opponents in his opposition to the global warming community. I personally think it could be a face saving move but erring on the side of later rather than sooner in order to maintain his almost always right 98.7% of the time rankings.
 
Why the excitement about elec cars, I don't get it. The bottom line is....














The Environment: Think that electric car the green lobby wants to hustle drivers into is really cleaner than a gasoline-powered vehicle? Think again. Electric cars, says a researcher, are dirty cars.

In an article cleverly headlined "Unclean At Any Speed," Ozzie Zehner says that while he at one time was convinced electric cars "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence," he now admits "I was wrong."

Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, a prestigious publication with peer-reviewed articles aimed at electrical and electronics engineers, Zehner says there's more to determining if an electric is clean than analyzing "only the charging of the car."

While acknowledging that charging is "an important factor indeed," he argues that "a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life cycle, from its construction through its operation and on to its eventual retirement at the junkyard."

When those factors are taken into account, Zehner says, "moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars starts to appear tantamount to shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another."

The factors include the "many lightweight materials that are needed to offset the weight of electric cars' heavy batteries but are energy-intensive to produce and process" and "the magnets in the motors of some electric vehicles" that "contain rare earth metals."

Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, adds: "Curiously, these metals are not as rare as their name might suggest. They are, however, sprinkled thinly across the globe, making their extraction uneconomical in most places."

We would add that the extraction of rare earths is a rather nasty process as well.

Zehner says that "materials used in batteries are no less burdensome to the environment," and the used batteries themselves release toxic chemicals if "handled improperly."

He also cites a Norwegian study that looked at all aspects the cars, from construction to disposal, and found that "electric vehicles consistently perform worse or on par with modern internal combustion engine vehicles, despite virtually zero direct emissions during operation."


Read More At Investor's Business Daily: Electric Cars Aren't So Different Environmentally Than Gasoline Cars - Investors.com
 
Why the excitement about elec cars, I don't get it. The bottom line is....














The Environment: Think that electric car the green lobby wants to hustle drivers into is really cleaner than a gasoline-powered vehicle? Think again. Electric cars, says a researcher, are dirty cars.

In an article cleverly headlined "Unclean At Any Speed," Ozzie Zehner says that while he at one time was convinced electric cars "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence," he now admits "I was wrong."

Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, a prestigious publication with peer-reviewed articles aimed at electrical and electronics engineers, Zehner says there's more to determining if an electric is clean than analyzing "only the charging of the car."

While acknowledging that charging is "an important factor indeed," he argues that "a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life cycle, from its construction through its operation and on to its eventual retirement at the junkyard."

When those factors are taken into account, Zehner says, "moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars starts to appear tantamount to shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another."

The factors include the "many lightweight materials that are needed to offset the weight of electric cars' heavy batteries but are energy-intensive to produce and process" and "the magnets in the motors of some electric vehicles" that "contain rare earth metals."

Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, adds: "Curiously, these metals are not as rare as their name might suggest. They are, however, sprinkled thinly across the globe, making their extraction uneconomical in most places."

We would add that the extraction of rare earths is a rather nasty process as well.

Zehner says that "materials used in batteries are no less burdensome to the environment," and the used batteries themselves release toxic chemicals if "handled improperly."

He also cites a Norwegian study that looked at all aspects the cars, from construction to disposal, and found that "electric vehicles consistently perform worse or on par with modern internal combustion engine vehicles, despite virtually zero direct emissions during operation."


Read More At Investor's Business Daily: Electric Cars Aren't So Different Environmentally Than Gasoline Cars - Investors.com

I use to be on the domestic drilling bandwagon but after 9/11 I began an intensive study on middle eastern sociology and discovered 9/11 was motivated by and funded by American oil addiction involving a geopolitical region that is very volitile and has major anti-Americanism in the popular mindset. Then I actually became even more supportive of domestic drilling falling for the false notion that if we drilled domestically, it would replace our use of petroleum from middle eastern suppliers. However, shortly after that, I discovered just how far advanced electric cars had come and disturbingly, there were concerted efforts that had been made to suppress their development by those who stood to lose trillions of dollars if oil had any significant completion. Meanwhile courageous Americans were being killed and having their limbs blown off in order to preserve the status quo and the insanely wealthy's gravy train. Not long after that, I learned about the oil futures market and how there is no such thing as our own oil, as its sold on the global market. If a US refinery is willing to pay 100 a barrel and China is willing to pay 110 a barrel, it will be sold to China regardless if came from the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela or or Iran.

All that needs to happen, in my humble opinion, is for the pumped to be primed on electric cars. The drop in the bucket tax credit people get for buying a plug-in is nothing compared to the costs of the War on Terror, where sadly we are funded BOTH our side and the enemy because of oil and in some cases direct funding. There's no secret the Pakistani Military was protecting Osama Bin Laden. Guess who funds the Pakistsni Military? Look on your check stub the next time you get paid; its you.

A monopoly having absolute control over a vital American commodity is not healthy in the best of circumstances. Oil holds a monopoly over American personal transportation. And it's not in the best of circumstances. An international anti-trust cartel engages in what would be criminal activity if OPEC were in America. Even though most of our oil now comes from Canada (it actually fluctuates between Canada, the Mid East, etc. depending on who is cheapest at the moment), OPEC sets the global price including what Canada charges. Oil is funding brutal dictatorships. Oil is funding nuclear proliferation. Oil is indirectly responsible for North Korea's nuclear program. The oil futures market allows wealthy investors to buy oil worldwide before its pumped out of the ground then resells it to the refineries at a greater mark up than what even OPEC charges, taking even more money out of the budgets of American families struggling to make ends meet. Electric cars, by the way cost the equivalent of $1 a gallon to recharge seen on your electric bill.

I know electric cars are not as cost effective to operate as gasoline cars but its only temporary. The first cell phones costs way more than they do now too. Once on the market, every years model is better than the previous. Meanwhile market forces continually drive research to bring down costs and improve the product.
 
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100,000 coal burning cars, the most anti-green fuel there is. There is no such thing as zero emission cars. That's be like arguing no gun has ever killed anyone, because it wasn't the gun, but the bullet. Electric cars are the dirtiest of all because of how the electricity to charge them is obtained.
Coal is less than half our power production and getting lower every year. EPA regulations on coal plants can be retroactive to old electric plants but that's not really realistic for old cars and trucks.

Electricity production and use is also much more efficient than IC engines and always will be. Even using oil for electricity production would be more efficient than burning gasoline or diesel in cars - and cleaner, too. Not that I prefer that. I think using oil for transportation is ignorant and short-sighted.
 
Why the excitement about elec cars, I don't get it.


It's called making the rights steps in the right direction. Might not be 100% perfect yet, but at least it's something.

Anything we can do to gain energy independence is the right direction to go.

Think of it this way - before man could walk on the moon, what had to happen first?
 
Without having the opportunity to look it up at this time:

- One of the major US automakers, I think GM, is getting behind a new battery technology that I recall will increase electric car battery range 5 fold.

- The Northwestern Universty battery, cited above, reportedly will get 10 times the range and recharge 10 times as fast as today's lithium ion batteries. Once they get some wear it goes down to 5 times the range, which is still amazing and woud get a compact like the Nissan Leaf 1,000 mile range between charge-ups and would go down to 500 miles over time. The Chevy Volt would get a 500 mile range at first then get down to 250 miles over time; probably better since with that range it wouldn't need to carry the weight of an inboard gasoline generator. I woud also imagine larger cars woud use it giving SUVs, vans and trucks the ability to go electric. The US department of Energy has given Northwestern an huge grant into the hundreds of millions, to get their battery developed. I'm not sure what that means in terms of practicality except I think its now far less likely for oil interests to buy out the patent rights, declare it "not ready yet" and shelve it indefinitely. The professor at North Western who led the research has started a private company. The news of the battery first broke in November of 2011, which projected it should be on the market in 3 to 5 years.

- There's talk of setting up rapid battery exchange stations around the country. My guesss is they won't be needed, at least not for long as I expect batteries to constantly improve. A lot of new technology is very quickly outdated because new and better alternatives come out so soon. For example, the DVD player only lasted a hot minute replaced by blu-ray. Most people probably never heard of them but there were 2 very good audio media there were supposed to be the next big thing called minidiscs and digital audio tape. Both were made obsolete by MP3 players before they took off.

- Even Rush Limbaugh, who is friends with former GM CEO Bob Lutz, is hinting he expects its "possible for electric cars to take off 20 years from now." Significant since Limbaugh has been one of electric car technology's most vocal opponents in his opposition to the global warming community. I personally think it could be a face saving move but erring on the side of later rather than sooner in order to maintain his almost always right 98.7% of the time rankings.

Thanks for the info, but you should realize that Rush Limbaugh isn't an opponent of electric cars. He just doesn't want to be an unwilling proponent. Neither do I, for that matter. If the battery technology you mentioned is on the horizon, I can't imagine there not being huge amounts of private investment $$ to support it.
 
Thanks for the info, but you should realize that Rush Limbaugh isn't an opponent of electric cars. He just doesn't want to be an unwilling proponent. Neither do I, for that matter. If the battery technology you mentioned is on the horizon, I can't imagine there not being huge amounts of private investment $$ to support it.

The problem is in the past there have been other promising technologies. I can think of one in particular, where a new battery innovation had been developed. Through a series of technology suppression moves, the oil industry ended up owning the patent rights on this battery and subsequently refused to allow any car company to use it. If the Department of Energy plays a role in its development, its less likely this sort of thing can happen again.

Its not uncommon for the government to partner with academia in offering research grants. For example, the University of South Florida was given federal money to develop advanced rescue robots. These robots were called upon in the aftermath of 9/11 and saved about a dozen people's lives. There is federal money used to find cures and treatments for diseases. The defense department to NASA pays outside researchers to help come up with new technologies. I think there is more than a strong argument that there is an important national security reason to fund research that lessens our dependency on the Middle East and reduces our trickle-down funding of terrorists and homicidal dictatorships. The only thing that makes electric car R&D different is in my opinion, the right's disdain for global warming claims.
 
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The problem is in the past there have been other promising technologies. I can think of one in particular, where a new battery innovation had been developed. Through a series of technology suppression moves, the oil industry ended up owning the patent rights on this battery and subsequently refused to allow any car company to use it. If the Department of Energy plays a role in its development, its less likely this sort of thing can happen again.

Its not uncommon for the government to partner with academia in offering research grants. For example, the University of South Florida was given federal money to develop advanced rescue robots. These robots were called upon in the aftermath of 9/11 and saved about a dozen people's lives. There is federal money used to find cures and treatments for diseases. The defense department to NASA pays outside researchers to help come up with new technologies. I think there is more than a strong argument that there is an important national security reason to fund research that lessens our dependency on the Middle East and reduces our trickle-down funding of terrorists and homicidal dictatorships. The only thing that makes electric car R&D different is in my opinion, the right's disdain for global warming claims.

Not to be a pain, but can you point me in the direction of this technology suppression? Electric cars haven't caught on because batteries aren't good for high-power portable applications. If what you're saying is true, that means that the oil industry is purposely suppressing a technology that would be HUGELY beneficial to society in all sorts of applications, which means they don't want to make money. I don't buy it...
 
Not to be a pain, but can you point me in the direction of this technology suppression? Electric cars haven't caught on because batteries aren't good for high-power portable applications. If what you're saying is true, that means that the oil industry is purposely suppressing a technology that would be HUGELY beneficial to society in all sorts of applications, which means they don't want to make money. I don't buy it...

Two Cents per Mile: Home

Who Killed the Electric Car? on Vimeo

Check this one out too. Not exactly an answer to who is responsible for suppression but a comprehensive overview of the oil problem. It's a 5 part series. Here's part 1. Biggest influencer That changed my mind on domestic drilling to alternatives was this documentary.

Addicted To Oil Part 1 - YouTube
 
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