220 Billion reasons to be a Plug-in Vehicle Skeptic

Ouch... "Fortunately, experience has taught me that the market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent. So I'll just watch the predictable train wreck from the sidelines." - AltEnergyStocks

I haven't seen so many finely sculpted curves and unspoken assumptions since the tax shelter forecasts of the early-80s. The only clear message is that electric drive will be little more than a footnote in automotive history unless the powers that be agree to provide $121.1 billion in direct subsidies and incur another $100 billion in unspecified budget deficits over the next decade. Then, if everything goes according to plan and nobody develops a better personal transportation alternative, we can start thinking in terms of cost recovery and potential benefit to society.



I'd love to be able to provide an in-depth analysis of the assumptions, but they're conspicuously absent. For me, that fact alone makes the analysis about as worthwhile as a call to the psychic hotline. While I hate to be a stick in the mud about history, I think it's always worthwhile to remember other transportation technology schemes conceived in the halls of government and sold to investment markets as the next big thing, including:

25 years ago	Methanol
15 years ago	Electric Vehicles
10 years ago	HEVs and Electric Vehicles
5 years ago	Hydrogen Fuel Cells
3 years ago	Ethanol and Biofuels
Today	Grid Enabled Vehicles
2012	???

Given the sweeping technological change I've witnessed over the last thirty years, I have to chuckle when anybody is naïve enough to suggest that any technology can ascend to dominance and hold that position for the next thirty years. On balance, I see the forecast decade of sunk-costs as realistically achievable but view the forecast cost recovery and long-term benefit decades as highly suspect.

To their credit the Electrification Coalition has always been upfront about the enormous challenges that electrification of personal transportation entails, including:

1. The current high cost of batteries;
2. The current lack of reliable access to refueling infrastructure for GEVs;
3. Regulatory and coordination problems that will complicate interface with the electric power sector; and
4. Consumer acceptance issues.

To overcome these seemingly insurmountable problems the coalition members propose several policy initiatives that will use your tax money to underwrite their business goals and pay for somebody else's consumption.

When I consider the electrification coalition policy initiatives, it's easy to see why the members are eager supporters of a proposal to convert huge piles of taxpayer money into operating revenue. I have a harder time, however, with the tacit admission that electric drive has no real future without government intervention to force the issue. The wheels really come off the bus when I consider the duplicity of suggesting that we can expect quantum leaps in battery powered electric drive technology, but must ignore the likelihood that some other nascent technology will gain enough ground over the next decade to give battery powered personal transportation a run for the money.

At its core, cleantech is an ethical system based on the responsible application of technology to optimize the use of natural resources, moderate global warming, secure energy independence, offset rising energy costs and increase the well-being of the six billion people that live on this planet. There has never been an industrial revolution led by a technology that promised to deliver less economic benefit at a higher economic cost. Shifting the burden from consumers to taxpayers is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, a hollow subterfuge that does nothing to eliminate the burden of unconscionable waste masquerading as conservation.

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Comments: "I hate to be a stick in the mud about history" - Love it.

The facts are inarguable making the challenges insurmountable if they continue to ignore 'basic economics' and 'recent EV history'.

Investors and media are increasingly become oblivious to the obvious limitations of scale, technology and resources required for this to ever corner even 3% of transport market.

FACT - We were closer to a electric drive society at the turn of the century than we will be in 2020...Even if we throw 400 billion into the deficit abyss.

REF:  A 'Black' History of Our Oil Addiction

PHOTO CAPTION: Ford engineer Fred Allison test drives second experimental electric car powered by Edison nickel iron battery at Henry's Highland Park farm in the summer of 1914. Photo courtesy of Edwin Black.

Thomas Edison had spent $3.5 million between 1903 and 1910 (equivalent to $71 million today) perfecting his nickel iron battery. He claimed it was half the weight of lead acid and had twice the energy density. Electric cars equipped with it were demonstrably superior to the competition, which were powered by what we today know as Exide batteries, then controlled by a group of cartels, which sought to monopolize all forms of automotive transportation from bicycles to automobiles, gasoline and electric.

Just as Edison and Henry Ford were about to go into business together to offer a low cost electric car comparable to the Model T, a suspicious fire destroyed nearly all of Edison's West Orange, New Jersey research facility, curiously bypassing areas where the most flammable chemicals had been stored. Within months World War I would engulf Europe and eventually America and the dream of the electric car would fade into obscurity, a curious, forgotten footnote of history.

History, Learn from it or become it. -Haase