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Can Consumers Be Confident About the Chevy Volt’s Ignitable Battery Pack?

December 14, 2011 by Jim Pierobon
with 433 views
1

Just as more brands of hybrid and electric vehicles are gaining real momentum in the U.S., questions raised by the Chevy Volt’s ignitable batter pack pose serious challenges to General Motors and perhaps the entire auto sector. What to make of it? This is one of the Chevy Volt crash tests in mid-2011. CREDIT: Insurance Institute for... [read more]

This Week in Energy: Badnews For Biofuels, NYT Against Keystone XL, Peak Oil News

October 6, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 253 views
0

This Week in Energy is a weekly round-up of news making headlines in the world of energy. Most of these stories are posted throughout the week to our Energy Ticker page.NRC Report to Congress: Cellulosic Biofuel Mandates Unlikely to Be Met A congressionally requested study by the National Research Council — an arm of the National... [read more]

Will a SmartGrid and GM’s Volt Stimulate the Electric Vehicle Industry?

August 11, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 263 views
1

I remember my first trip to Bentonville, Arkansas to visit the WalMart corporate headquarters. As I looked at the offices of all the vendors who sell to WalMart, I remember thinking “being the world’s biggest retailer has its advantages.” So it is with the development of the electric car (EV). We root for companies like Tesla but, to move the market in a substantive way, you need to be big. [read more]

How American Ingenuity Can Reduce Our Pain at the Gas Pump: Part 2

April 21, 2011 by Simon Mui
with 153 views
1

In this blog (Part 2 of 2),  I take a swing at describing ways that electric-drive vehicles can help reduce our pain at the gasoline pump, benefit our economy, and clean up our air. Yesterday, Secretary LaHood of the U.S. Department of Energy spoke at the Electric-Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) Conference and the progress... [read more]

PEV Sales: Don't Panic...Yet

April 17, 2011 by James Greenberger
with 335 views
10

We must recognize that the skeptics are to some extent right. A few thousand PEV’s will make little difference to American energy security or to the environment. Vehicle electrification only makes sense if it includes a significant portion of the national automotive fleet. PEV’s must be made attractive to mainstream consumers if our massive national investment in them is to be justified. [read more]

Will Range Anxiety Impact Electric Car Sales?

March 28, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 240 views
4

I have always liked the concept of electric cars. I could imagine a future in which fleets of electric cars are being charged by electricity from clean sources, and where the impact of peak oil won’t be especially burdensome. In a story I did last year covering a newly-released report on electric cars, the advantages of electric cars... [read more]

ABB and GM team up to study after-Volt battery uses

September 21, 2010 by Tyler Hamilton
with 838 views
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For at least a couple of years now there’s been talk about what to do with battery packs after they’ve served their useful life, say, 10 years, in an electric car. The reason being that the batteries, while they may lose their punch after a decade of use in a car, still have useful storage capacity that collectively can be used for... [read more]

Global warming? Don’t blame the electric car

January 21, 2010 by Big Gav
with 153 views
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The SMH has an article on the chief of GM's Volt initiative who, bizarrely, is a climate skeptic - but thinks electric cars are inevitable anyway because of peak oil - Global warming? Don’t blame the car. Senior General Motors executive Bob Lutz has slammed scientists and environmentalists, saying global warming has little to do with... [read more]

An (almost) affordable electric car

December 8, 2009 by Marc Gunther
with 411 views
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The other day, I took a spin around your nation’s capital in what is being touted as the first affordable electric car that will find its way onto America’s roads. Not, it’s not the Chevy Volt, the Nissan Leaf, an import from BYD or Tata or a down-scaled Tesla. It’s the Coda, the product of a southern California startup with an unusual... [read more]

GM exec: Volt not yet cost competitive

October 27, 2009 by Big Gav
with 135 views
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CNet has an article on the economics of GM's Volt hybrid car, noting the price of the battery pack needs to fall for the upfront cost to be comparable to legacy model cars using internal combustion engines only - GM exec: Volt not yet cost competitiveGM plans to manufacture the battery pack for the Volt, which is scheduled for release... [read more]

The Demise of MPG

August 28, 2009 by Geoffrey Styles
with 53 views
1

Even before the advent of partially- or fully-electric cars, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the old fuel economy metric of miles per gallon isn't as useful for measuring energy consumption in vehicles as when it was first codified in the original Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard in the 1970s. That is due in part to... [read more]

GM’s 230MPG claim

August 11, 2009 by Lou Grinzo
with 84 views
4

Well, it looks like I finally got one right. Yesterday(LEAF or Volt), I predicted that the mysterious 230 number in GM’s ad campaign would turn out to be the MPG rating for the Volt, and it is.[1] One site quoted a blog analysis that goes like this: Mike Duoba from Argonne National Lab devised a method to determine the MPG of an EREV... [read more]

LEAF or Volt

August 10, 2009 by Lou Grinzo
with 99 views
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Autobloggreen is asking visitors to vote in a poll, LEAF, Volt or neither? While I like autobloggreen’s content (hence it’s inclusion in my RSS new reader gizmo as one of the 6,983 sites I monitor), but I think this is a ridiculous poll. The LEAF (a 100-mile/charge battery EV, which Nissan is promising to sell in Japan and the US next... [read more]

New GM exits bankruptcy after selling good assets

July 11, 2009 by Ee Mien Low
with 68 views
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This article belongs to the GM, Ford and Chrysler bankruptcy watch story arc. news.yahoo.com A new General Motors emerged from a whirlwind 40-day bankruptcy on Friday [10 Jul 2009] - far more quickly than most industry-watchers had expected. The US government has taken on substantial new risks with the US Treasury as 60% owner of... [read more]

Born-again GM makes first mistake on road to recovery

July 11, 2009 by Tyler Hamilton
with 98 views
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Why oh why is General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson pulling dinosaur Bob Lutz out of retirement and reinstating him as vice-chairman? Let’s ignore the fact that Lutz doesn’t believe man is responsible for global warming and calls talk of climate action as “a crock of shit.” But has it occurred to Fritz that Lutz, like former CEO Rick... [read more]