A great battle has broken out on Seeking Alpha over the electric vehicle. Proponents see it as the answer to pollution and foreign oil dependence. Opponents see it as an unrealizable dream. Wonderful words and phrases have developed like "Hopium", "EVangelist" and Moore's Curse (vs. "law"). Acronyms are everywhere (ICE, EV and, of course, stock abbreviations.) The battle is heartfelt and clever.
The instigator is John Petersen, an investment lawyer with a long and deep history with battery companies. (He has an ax to grind; he owns a lot of a battery company.) He is also scornfully knowledgeable. His points: The information revolution has let the western cat out of the bag. Now 6 billion people know how the 600 million people live in the west and they want to play too. If only 10% are successful, that will double the demand on resources (water, construction materials, food, energy and commodities.) Consequently prices will rise. Since 80% of battery costs are raw materials and most are rare earth, those prices will rise as well. Already the price of metals is rising faster than oil. A single individual annually uses energy measured in metric tons, his annual use of metals is in kilograms. As alternative energy and electric power use metals as a base source of storage and conversion of energy, there is simply no way that metals will be able to accept the shift of the energy burden from oil. Oil is just too cheap and metals are too limited. So, when looking at energy, metals supplies are more constraining than petroleum supplies. Consequently conservation and improved efficiency of existing systems are the future; substitutions of new energy sources for petroleum are fantasies. (He loves eBikes and stop-start vehicle systems.)
An example: The UPS has just ordered 100 electric trucks. Each has a 72,000 dollar battery pack. The whole truck costs 180,000 dollars. If the electric plug-in cost is not considered--that is if the daily cost of charging the batteries is ignored-- each truck will save 5000 dollars a year in gasoline.
How long do you think that can go on?
The link.A bit technical. Be sure to read the comments.: http//seekingalpha.com/article/289828-it-s-time-to-kill-the-electric-car-drive-a-stake-through-its-heart-and-burn-the-corpse?source=yahoo
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