EV's?

Well for their sake they had better hope the industrial electromotive machinery manufactures, the forklift and mining equipment manufactures, don't jump in with their own versions of EV tech geared toward the general public!

Who knows what their long and successful history's of making solid, efficient, cost effective, and reliable electro drive tech could bring about when scaled down to a typical public consumers less than demanding daily operating conditions and aplications!

Are your questions worded correctly?

You seem to state that all car companies are getting into EVs because cars run on fossil fuels and the oil companies are trying to protect themselves.

That statement contradicts itself.

However, car makers are dabbling into EVs because it is a marketing gimmick for PR. No car company makes money selling a few hundred EVs when they are already selling 100,000 fossil fuel cars each month.

And don't expect to see those number flip anytime soon! There are simply too many technological hurdles to clear before EVs are a mainstream event. Maybe someday, but you will still see conventional cars and trucks on the road for decades to come and you can bank on that.

I'm not so sure.

I agree with you and gave you a good point. We are far from a technology that will replace ff cars with ev technology. I really doubt if it will ever happen.

http://www.suncatalytix.com/about.html
If you check this out tell me if still say the same thing.

Can you really hang your hat on these guys?

From varied spots on the Suncatalytix site and the links there (not direct quotes, these are as I recall):

'..from a yet to be named catalyst..', and '..if a plant can do it, we can do it..'

The science doesn't sound too solid.

I've been following Nocera's work for a while now. I think the science is there. The company was formed to take it from the lab to the commercial world. He's got the funding and has assembled a team with a strong track record. I still have no idea of cost but they use the word "cheap" throughout. So if it does become available I think it could be game changing. You could drive your car back and forth to work and charge it up at home (assuming you had the right solar conditions).

All I'm saying is because it's moved from a 30 lab experiment at MIT to a start up catches my eye. I'll continue to watch it because if it had enough output and was reliable I'd buy an electric car even if the fuel was on par with the price of gasoline.

See his MIT web page:

http://www.mit.edu/~chemistry/faculty/nocera.html

He's certainly not Stanley Meyers.

I'm just suspicious due to the fact that oil companies own large chunks of car manufactures. I tend to agree with you, in that it's a PR stunt to look green to those who don't do their homework. Especially when you consider that the vase majority of electricity comes from coal fired power plants. It ain't too green. Coal and oil companies do not want to reduce their bottom lines by letting the car makers improve gas mileage or start burning hydrogen. There's an interesting documentary out called 'Gas Hole' that covers some issues relative to this conversation, including mileage improvement technology of the past that got squelched. I highly recommend it.

You said "I'm just suspicious due to the fact that oil companies own large chunks of car manufactures."

Can you substantiate that oil companies own large chunks of car manufactures?

I would be interested to know this is true. If it is true, where were these oil companies on the day the US government was handing out checks to keep them (US car manufacturers) afloat? Perhaps their interest only goes so deep?

Well it would help explain why my 8500 pound F250 super duty on a good day only gets roughly double the fuel mileage of a fully loaded 80,000 pound semi rig in the same driving conditions.

I just returned from the CAR Briefing conference last week and the general numbers by the industry are that we might see ~25% penetration by some type of EV, hybrid or pure, by 2025. Of that 25%, maybe 5% will be pure EV.

These are real industry numbers, not PR. It was quit interesting given the hype that the EV market seems to be afforded by the media.

You wrote, "These are real industry numbers, not PR."

They are predictions based on a lot of speculation. In order for those predictions to come to light a lot of unknown variables must come to pass as predicted.

As an investor I would probably be very skeptical about those dreams' odds. It might happen, it might not, but I think the crystal ball is too hazy to say with any certainty.

You may have missed the gist of my comments. This 25% represents new car purchases and includes any type of hybrid vehicles. When you take 5% of the 25% new purchases, you are looking at only just over 1% of new car purchases a good 15 years from now being pure EV.

Actually, the drift of the discussion at CAR was that indeed these are best case scenarios and that this media push toward EV options is just not substantiated by the realities of such things as development cycles, customer preferences, driving range and the development of a functioning infrastructure to facilitate the widespread adoption of EVs.

I don't believe I missed your point.

It may be possible that those predictions come true. They may fall short or they may be exceeded. I just feel that there are too many variables, of which many are geopolitical, to nail down a number that far out in the future.

It's not the numbers themselves, but one needs to recognize the large degree of uncertainty when you project far into the future.

I agree with your assessment in your second paragraph.

Agreed!

Because your power options are OPEN with a battery powered car. Any idiot can generate electricity (from wind or PV) but not make petrol. How the infrastructure provides electricity in the future is currently in development but EVs are the only way to readily take advantage of what is essentially solar power.

But it takes oil to mfr all of the little plastic goodies in the car...including battery cases and innards (until soy plastics and other alternatives are more prevalent).

In the US it takes a helluvalotta coal to run all of the factories to make cars...and that dog won't hunt forever.

Well that would be the conspiracy theory version

Occam indicates you should add the lack of charging stations at apartment complexes, range concerns by non-city dwellers, and lack of proven consumer adoption over time.

Especially since consumers routinely poll one way and shop another.

I'd approach a bit cautiously too.

No EV has been better than a gasoline car yet, but continued investment on EV devlopement, batteries,fuel cells can take place for an effective solution in future.All such institutions are surely not squeezed by Oil Companies !

Coal is on its way out. Natural gas power plants are going to replace coal. It is just too expensive to clean coal, and dispose of the waste. We have enough natural gas to last a hundred years, and supply most of our power. Natural gas turbines can localize power plants and overcome line loss, while distributing power and lessening the chance of blackouts. Wind, solar, biofuel, geothermal etc. are progressing, and will add to the mix of sources. We can also drill more in the USA.

Electric cars meet a big need. Most families have another vehicle for long trips. The average person drives less than 70 miles per day. Gasoline is more expensive, and will remain so. The question is whether manufacturers can get the price down, and make them truly competitive with gasoline or natural gas vehicles. Natural gas vehicles make more sense to me. Most of us have natural gas at home, as well as electricity.

We should not forget the blood and treasure that we are spilling daily in the Middle East. It should remain in our calculations Especially now that our economy is a basket case. This is exactly what Al Qaeda planned.

money and politics drive big industry.