Yet one more reason why we need more rich people

More bad news for the Chevy Volt:

The sales figures for the Chevy Volt are down, raising red flags throughout the auto industry—especially during a time were Volt production has been ramped up.

A new study by CNW marketing, a private research firm that focuses its research on consumer motivations and decisions in automotive purchases, has been released showing that the potential buyers that GM is counting on are rapidly losing interest in the Volt. In March, 21% of Early Adapters said they were “very likely” to consider buying a Volt, while 38.1% said they were “likely” to do the same. Those numbers slipped to 14.6% saying “very likely” in July and 31.1% “likely.” Among EV Enthusiasts, reports the CNW study, the number of those likely or very likely to consider Volt fell from a combined 71% to 51% during the same four month timetable.

And those figures represent that of the true believers, gang - only 3% of mainstream car-buyers, i.e., us, you and pretty much everyone else you know, would consider buying a Volt.

The article tries to spin some positive out of this dismal news (it's an eco-blog) but is reduced to coming up with things like the following:

Chevy officials defend the Volt’s high price tag by pointing to the complexity of the dual gas electric hybrid drivetrain. The Volt is capable of traveling 35 miles on battery power alone.

Nothing like trying to justify the price of your car by touting just how damn complex it is. And for all that complexity... only 35 miles?



Here's the deal: At 47-48,000 large (up front - that tax credit doesn't get back to you until later) buying you a serious case of "range anxiety", the Volt is reminding us more and more of this:

$4,000 for that thing and all it did was make phone calls.



Look, maybe they'll get it figured out. Maybe they'll figure out the lithium ion/China thing. Maybe they'll figure out a safe and cheap way of disposing of the batteries. Maybe they'll get the cost of the battery down. Maybe they'll figure out how to mass generate electricity without using coal, gas or oil which is the dirty yet not-so-little secret EV enthusiasts have difficulty acknowledging (hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we could generate electricity from electricity?) Maybe. But the fact remains, they just aren't there yet.

Chevy just better hope there is a recurring supply of rich, smug liberals that are willing to subsidize the technology because they are nowhere near being competitive in the open market.

Terrific: China's going green on us

Let's talk energy independence, shall we?

So, let's get this straight: electric car batteries which last between 3-8 years, cost $10,000 a copy and are difficult to dispose of because what they contain. Additionally, the lithium needed for the batteries and which the Chinese have most of will run out in less than 40 years.

Well, at least we have a willing trading partner in China for this lithium, right?

Ehhh...

Prices of some rare earth metals have doubled in just three weeks amid heavy stockpiling in China that has raised fears over global supplies.

China produces more than 90 per cent of the world’s rare earths, 17 elements used in hybrid cars, fluorescent lights and many high-tech applications.

A recent crackdown by Beijing on rare earth mines and restrictions on exports have caused chaos in some of these markets.

Japan and the US, the world’s biggest importers of rare earths, have repeatedly voiced concerns to China, while complaints from industrial users of rare earths have been growing. Last year, China cut their exports by 40 per cent and temporarily banned exports to Japan during a political dispute.

Rare earth prices have already been rising sharply this year, but the recent sharp price increase has puzzled Chinese analysts, who blamed it largely on hoarding by companies who expect prices to rise further.

Chinese officials said environmental concerns were the main driver behind a restructuring on the industry, which will close illegal mines and reduce output and ultimately put such state-owned miners as Minmetals, Chinalco and Baotou at the helm of the rare earth sector.

Isn't that rich? Green technology imperiled because of environmental concerns. Don't believe for a moment, however, that the Chi-comms have embraced any sort of come-to-Gaia moment, rather they have come to the conclusion that with ours and Europe's ill-considered, head-long plunge into electric cars, choo-choo trains, solar panels and wind turbines, they can set themselves up rather nicely as a one-nation rare earth cartel because lord knows, we aren't going to mine for any rare earths here.

And you thought that having to deal with OPEC was a bitch.

The more time passes and the more transpires with respect to its unfolding, the more underwhelmed we become with green/electric technology.

Not getting what we're paying for...

...and being sold a bill of goods in the process.



More bad news on the green technology front. Turns out those electric cars you aren't quite ready to shell out $41,000 for aren't quite as green as people would like you to think.

ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found.


An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.

The British study, which is the first analysis of the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric cars.

The study was commissioned by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, which is jointly funded by the British government and the car industry. It found that a mid-size electric car would produce 23.1 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime, compared with 24 tonnes for a similar petrol car. Emissions from manufacturing electric cars are at least 50 per cent higher because batteries are made from materials such as lithium, copper and refined silicon, which require much energy to be processed.

Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few years. Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2 from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol car. Disposal also produces double the emissions because of the energy consumed in recovering and recycling metals in the battery. The study also took into account carbon emitted to generate the grid electricity consumed.

Greg Archer, director of Low CVP, said the industry should state the full lifecycle emissions of cars rather than just tailpipe emissions, to avoid misleading consumers. He said that drivers wanting to minimise emissions could be better off buying a small, efficient petrol or diesel car. “People have to match the technology to their particular needs,” he said.

As is the case here stateside, the Brits will not be deterred by mere numbers as they are charging head long into their own electric car subsidization program and are spending $66 million over the next year giving up to 8,600 buyers of electric cars $7,700 towards the sticker price.


But more on those pesky lithium-ion batteries. Captain Ed provides some fun facts regarding the batteries:

Average life span of lithium ion battery: 3 - 8 years.

Replacement cost of a battery for a Nissan Leaf: about $10,000.

Think that might put a dent in the resale market of electric cars? And think that the lithium contained in the batteries might pose some environmental disposal problems?

85 percent: the percentage of known lithium reserves in Bolivia, Chile and China.

80 percent: the percentage of known large-flake graphite reserves, also needed in battery production, that are in China.

Please remember this next time you hear someone telling you we need to go electric to end our dependency on foreign sources of energy.

2050: the year that Argonne National Laboratory estimates we will essentially run out of lithium.

That's less than 40 years, folks. Doesn't sound like a real attractive long-range solution, now does it? Luckily, we keep finding more and more of that black, sticky stuff in the ground so it's a money-back guarantee that "peak lithium" will arrive before "peak oil".

And finally, think of where it is that we will be getting that electrical energy from once we all start plugging our cars into bed every evening and once both here and back during a trip up to L.A. and 3 or 4 times here and back during a trip to Vegas and...

Oil, natural gas and coal are all on the political class's hit list so it's going to be wind turbines and solar farms?

The car(s) of the future marketed on the backs of urban hipster beta-males

Our blog buddy, Harrison, while noting the dismal sales figures thus far for the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, shared this advert for Esflow, Nissan's electric sports concept-car:

The driver of the Esflow is called Daniel. Daniel, an Esflow owner, works in tech, but lives for the weekend. On Friday night after work, he gets behind the wheels of his Esflow which instantly links with his pocket PDA and determines the fastest route to his girlfriend's home. Finding street side parking is a synch as the Nissan Esflow Concept's compact dimensions allow it to slip in to the narrowest of spaces. On Saturday he drives to a popular club to exhibit his DJ skills and his friends are impressed by his cool EV sports car.

(italics, ours)

If he can't figure that out on his own, he will, no doubt, be requiring other "routing" assistance when it comes to his girlfriend.

They haven't even rolled one of these off the assembly line and already their drivers are smug, self-satisfied little twits.

Saturday at the auto show

Saturday we spun on down to the San Diego Auto Show which was being held at the convention center. With the opportunity to check out some cool wheels we were also very interested to see how our tax dollars were being spent, particularly at the General Motors displays.

Long story short, heavy on the Camaro, Corvette and their SUVs.

Here’s a nice look at the Camaro at one of GM’s central displays.




And here’s the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid.

You know, for $54,000, we better be getting more that 22 highway and 21 city.
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It gets better.

For a mere $59,000, you can roll off the lot in an ethanol-burning Tahoe getting 21 highway and 15 in the city.


And while we’re on a green theme, here’s the Fisker, available in the fall of this year. Fisker you will recall is an automotive company backed by Al Gore which received a $529 million U.S. government loan to manufacture in Finland this little hybrid gem upon which you are affixing your gaze.

Copy price: $89,000.

Hey, no one said going green was going to be cheap. Or ethical. Or sensical.






Jeep had a cool little obstacle course set up.





The man on the left is off-road legend and El Cajon native, Ivan “Iron Man” Stewart. The guy just emanates a rugged, western dudesmanship. People young and old alike were coming up to Stewart, chatting, taking pictures with him and getting his autograph.

Take a good long look...

Bailout Nation forked over $12.5 billion to Chrysler to keep them afloat and to remake their image which included $70 million in grants back in August for electric car R&D. So, how’s that working out?

There will be no electric car named Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep. At least for the forseable future. Chrysler's new owner, Fiat SpA, has pulled the plug on Chrysler's plans to build and market EV vehicles, and even hybrid vehicles.

The decision by Fiat SEO Sergio Marchionne is a major voltage reduction for Chrysler. It is also a direct slap in the face of US taxpayers, who gave Chrysler a $12.5 Billion bail-out package, in part to help float Chrysler's plans for its ENVI program to develop and market fuel efficient electric cars. In addition, the Department of Energy gave Chrysler another $70 million in grants in August for this program.

Will Fiat return the money? Unlikely.

Fiat's decision kills the Dodge Circuit (pictured), a two-seater all electric sports car that Chrysler introduced to great fanfare at the Detroit Auto Show earlier this year. Chrysler announced in September 2008 that it was developing three EV models, and hoped to get them into production by 2010.

That's not happening now.

There is a possibility the new Fiat-Chrysler will pursue electric or hybrid vehicle production, but it is unlikely. Marcchione doesn't think much of electric cars. Reuters reports he told reporters and analysts that electric cars would only represent "one to two percent" of Chrysler's sales by 2014. The implication is that spending millions on R & D just isn't worth it.

What a telling indictment of electric cars that all that money spent on R&D – money that isn’t even theirs – and electric cars still aren’t worth it.

Because feeling good about yourself is really all that matters

A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.

It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

"If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

On the bright side of things, at least the demise (for now) of cap and trade will mean we will still have coal-fired plants in which to fire up and which will provide electricity to our death-trap smug-mobiles.

But if cap and trade does manage to resuscitate and effectively kill the coal industry, where is that electricity going to come from? Oh, that’s right. We’ve always got wind and solar power. Unfortunately, those two alternative energies are set with massive inherent drawbacks in their current stage of development.

T. Boone Pickens is sitting on 687 400-feet tall wind turbines as he scratched his plans to “plant” these things out in west Texas. His problem? Getting the power generated to the grid. You see, the fact of the matter with places that are really windy and really sunny (see also: hot), is that no one lives there and right now, the storage and transmission technology is not where it needs to be to in order for wind and solar to be market-competitive. And did we mention that these wind turbine farms have a tendency to make mincemeat of flocks of birds and that solar farms require a massive amount of water, something else in scant supply in hotter climes, in order to keep the panels clean.

Our push for electric power also pushes us further into the hands of some unsavory characters. Half the world’s proven lithium reserves reside in Bolivia whose leftist President is a Hugo Chavez ally.

Hey, we thought this whole alternative energy movement was, in part, so we didn’t have to do business with the planet’s jerk-offs. Sounds like we’re exchanging petrol-dictators for litho-dictators.

We continue charging down the government-mandated green revolution road pursuing these outlandish energy alternatives that aren’t ready for prime-time, do not produce a good return on investment and may in fact be more harmful to the environment than our traditional sources of energy and in the case of ethanol, wreak havoc with the world’s food supplies and prices.

It’s to the point where we are almost forced to cheer for these 300 page amendments that get snuck into bills like cap and trade as these back room deals and concessions signal that the proposed legislation is watered-down to the point of a net zero effect.

Since no one is really interested in the oil reserves setting beneath our feet or nuclear energy, a combination that is real energy indepence, this is all we got.