Bitcoin Forum

The Kochs Are Plotting A Multimillion-Dollar Assault On Electric Vehicles

The oil and gas industry may have thought it had killed the electric car, but sales -- boosted by generous government subsidies -- rose dramatically between 2010 and 2014, and energy giants are worried the thing may have come back to life.

Time to kill it again.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/koch-electric-vehicles_us_56c4d63ce4b0b40245c8cbf6

Maybe the Kochs should put their money into investing in electric cars rather than fighting it.  If they are going to spend the money anyway, why not?

I never understood where all that energy is coming from when recharging all those EVs... Free air? Wind? Nuclear?


Or good ol' petrol?

Electric cars are insanely expensive. An ordinary electric car cost as much as 10 to 20 times that of a gasoline-run car. On top of that, there are other issues. A gasoline-run car can be refueled in less than 2 minutes. But it takes up to 6 hours to fully charge an electric run car. Another thing is that, once charged, the electric cars can travel only 200 to 250 km. By then they needs recharged again.

The sums don't add up for me. Should I buy a brand new Tesla that has sucked up vast amount of fresh metals and chemicals or a crappy 10 year old diesel? Even if I ran it for two centuries it would probably have less impact.

One reason why electric cars are so expensive is that the technology is still new and being developed.  Internal combustion engines have been around a lot longer.  New technologies like electric and other will get cheaper.  Sometimes newer technologies need to be subsidized in order to keep the price down while it's in development.  The problem is that oil is still being subsidized, so noting else can compete, plus the Kochs want to fight it.

The important is to give it some times and let the technology develop itself. It's still rather new.

And it costs nothing to recharge doesn't pollute and doesn't make any sound. It's all a question of pros and cons, and yeah for now electric cars can't really compete, but it's fucking new while diesel technology exists since 1900's!

I'd gladly drive an electric car if it worked for my needs, and I expect that eventually they will.  I have a truck which I use when I need to, but drive my small car when I can.  A self-driving car would be even better.  This has nothing to do with the phony-baloney global warming fraud, peak oil fear-mongering, or the idea that it 'costs nothing' (which means that someone else is picking up the tab to subsidize your own lazy ass.)

I would rather the necessary R&D happened organically rather than through coercive and cronyist taxes on fuel and what-not.  If it takes longer for developments to occur without this extra money (which politicians and their sponsors inevitably use as a giant slush-fund) that just means that there is no really significant need for a solution in the near term.  In the mean time, internal combustion engines are totally fine with me to.

I'm afraid it's too late for them to take such evasive measures.
A smarter move would be to take action and get in front of the development while things are just at the beginning.
Because soon there won't be any fossil fuels left and electric cars will be the future.

Well as long a Buffet has Obama's ear and is able to put all his trains to use there is going to be no breakthrough on the electric "front".  Old industry beats new with "old ways".

I hope that in the future the technology will become more inexpensive. Around 40% to 45% of the overall cost of the electric car is taken up by the battery. Another 35% is taken up by the inverter. Unless these two components get cheaper, the electric cars will never become popular. And I am skeptical about this. The Lithium prices are increasing, which means that the cost of the battery is unlikely to go down anytime soon.

The tech is about to make a huge jump when tesla releases the new battery.
I saw recently guys that just install charging stations in homes. My power is maxed and think most older homes are in the same boat. Reason they are also working on power in the home.
Still a ways out I think.

Tesla is actually not able to sell cars in some states because of the lobbying of the car dealers.  Cars can only be sold through dealer in some states.  Tesla doesn't have any dealers (middle man) they just sell directly from the company.  So they have a disadvantage compared to the major car companies.

There is hardly any demand for Tesla cars in states such as North Dakota and Nebraska, where the gasoline is very cheap. Tesla vehicles are sold without any issues in the major states such as Texas, California and New York. Who cares about the minor states? If someone in North Dakota is very interested in purchasing a Tesla, then he can travel to Wisconsin and purchase the car from there.

Supercharging More Electric Cars Risks Crashing the Grid—Here’s What Might Help




Tesla claims to be the fastest on the planet, but BMW touts that it can go from 0 to 80 in less than half an hour. The electric car makers aren’t bragging about miles per hour—they’re touting percent battery charge.

The race for fast-charging stations is on: Tesla has more than 100 of these supercharger stations in North America. Both Oregon and Washington have invested in direct-current fast chargers (such as BMW’s) every 25 to 50 miles along their “West Coast Electric Highway,” one of the largest continuous networks of fast chargers on the continent. And thus technology has begun to clear a great hurdle to adopting the electric vehicle—the inconvenience of long charge times.

Factor in new legislation—such as California Gov. Jerry Brown’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Action Plan, an executive order designed to boost the state’s number of fully electric vehicles from a few hundred thousand to 1.5 million by 2025—and we can expect a new wave of electric vehicles to dart in within the decade, if not sooner.

There’s just one problem: Our electrical grids might not be ready.

The average California household uses energy at a rate of less than 1 kilowatt* (amounting to 19 kilowatt hours per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association). BMW’s new direct-current supercharger charges at a rate of 24 kilowatts, which seems like a lot until you realize that BMW’s charger is small potatoes compared to most DC fast chargers, which hover around 50 kilowatts. And Tesla? Tesla’s superchargers come in at a whopping 120 kilowatts.

Supercharged vehicles haven’t used more energy to charge—they’ve just used it faster. When it comes to the grid, that’s a huge difference, because timing is everything.

Scott Moura is an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, and a proponent of “smart cities”: urban centers that coordinate among their infrastructures. Traditionally, Moura says, cities’ electric and transportation grids remain separate, but with the advent of electric vehicles, the networks are “colliding.” The collision couldn’t be clearer than Moura’s example of a supercharging Tesla coming online, which he says would “feel” to the grid as if 120 houses came online for only half an hour. “It’s like an entire neighborhood popping up in the middle of a city, and then disappearing,” he says.

Even when electric-vehicle owners charge their cars at a much slower rate of 6 or 7 kilowatts per hour overnight, that can still be a problem. The demand for energy is spiking each evening just as electric vehicles typically roll in to charge, and just when the source of solar power is setting. If demand spikes too high in an EV-smitten zip code (cough, Silicon Valley), its transformers, built to handle modest residential loads, may blow out.

We’ve known what this might look like for a while now: In 2011, the Utilities Telecom Council trade group released a report highlighting the exponential rise in energy use that will come with the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Gigaom, a blog dedicated to “humanizing technology,” followed up by painting a picture of “blown transformers (and) neighborhood blackouts” from mass electric-vehicle charging. The article noted that the electrical utility giant PG&E had flagged plug-in zealous Berkeley as a “hot spot” that may be vulnerable to grid overload.

This hardly means we shouldn’t give the green light to green cars, which do move us away from dependence on fossil fuels. But they also present a problem: If California is going to go for 1.5 million of them by 2025, we need to know what to expect, and crucially, where and when to expect it.

This is where Alexei Pozdnoukhov comes in. Pozdnoukhov, like Moura, works at Cal in smart cities research. He directs UC Berkeley’s Smart Cities Research Center, where a research initiative called the Smart Bay Project may provide us with the crucial information to prevent an electric-grid meltdown.


http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2014-11-05/supercharging-more-electric-cars-risks-crashing-grid-heres

What is an absolute fact is that the electric golf cart I have is the worst vehicle ever.  EVER!  

That includes boats, lawnmowers, cars of all sorts, motorcycles....

Nobody will dispute this that has owned one of the damn things.  Even the worst starry eyed green fanatic.

When an electric golf car gets reasonably good, we can talk about electric cars.  

Electric cars are the horseless carriages of hell itself.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012SmartFortwoElectricDrive-3-626x382.jpg

check  "smart fortwo electric drive"

Whit a "wallbox" this is charged in 1 hour.

My Smartcar charges with gasoline.  In 3 minutes.

And why in the world would anyone want to take a car that gets some 35 miles per gallon and turn it electric?

This destroys the good points of the Smartcar.  It takes a low cost commuter vehicle, (less than 20k USD) with a couple hundred miles range and extremely good gas mileage, and turns it into an expensive commuter vehicle with terrible range.

Gas and oil will go out soon and people must think an prepare for the alternatives. Why they fight electric vehicles althought investing in it have a promising future

Peak oil theories seem to have all been disproved.  Regardless, there are many, many other fuels.  Methane, butane, propane, (natural gas), methanol, ethanol come to mind.    There is a huge convenience in LIQUID FUELS because of transport and storage considerations.

I remember 2 years ago reading an article about a 17 year old Indian girl that that developed a new type of battery that would charge in 30 seconds. Haven't heard anything about it since. I don't know if the project was destroyed by interested parties or it's being developed.

Also there are a number of alternative fuels. A friend once asked me what alternatives are for gasoline. Well - gasoline is an alternative. When the first vehicle was developed they used ethanol if I'm not mistaken. Any liquid that can burn can be used as fuel. Again - if I'm not mistaken.

The fifth largest used industrial chemical is methanol, and it is available today in huge quantities, enough to run all cars in big cities.  Think in terms of buying it not by 18 wheel truck loads, but by ocean barge loads.  Modern cars will run methanol with a few changes to seals and tubing.

However, methanol use is not amendable to corruption, so it's use is not considered.  Preferred are things like massive wind farms, corn ethanol, huge solar installations, because they create entire ecologies of corruption, bribery and wealth.

Exactly. It's not about that we won't have fuel. It's about the right people making the most money that they can out of it.

The "Smart for Two" vehicle is more like a two-wheeler than a car. It has a range of only 90 or 100 km. You need to charge the battery after every 100 km. Also, it is having a maximum capacity for two people, compared to 8 for an SUV. I am afraid that you will not be able to directly compare electric and gasoline-run vehicles, at least for the next two decades.

And coal.







And the batteries only last a few years.  Replacing the battery will cost more than the used car is worth. 






It's been "new" and "will get cheaper and better" for the past 20 years. 





Successful technologies pay for themselves.  Hybrids are a dead end.  "Cash for Clunkers" destroyed wealth.







It costs just as much to recharge, or more.  And power plants do pollute.






Exactly!  Anytime someone tries to sell you something because it's "green" or "good for the planet", it means you're paying too much for an inferior product.  Like water bottles with plastic so thin that the bottle doesn't stand up straight "because they're using less plastic" - they're saving 50% on the cost of materials, but they're still charging you the same price for the bottle of water.  If it was cheaper, that would be a reason to buy it.  But they want you to pay more for less.





Soon?  Before we run out of coal and petroleum and propane,
we'll run out of lithium for the batteries,
and uranium for nuclear power plants.
Then we'll still have to burn fossil fuels to run our cars.







So it's still impossible for everyone to drive electric cars, even if they were given the cars for free.






And the race towards exploding car batteries.

People have already died from exploding cellphone batteries, so imagine a battery 1,000 larger. 






Good point - cars failed at being "a carriage without a horse".
They had to be something much better before they were successful.
If people wanted to keep driving something slow and smelly, they kept their horses.
The world doesn't throw away everything and replace it with something new, just because it's there.

Electric cars have failed at being "a gas-powered car without gas".
We already have gas-powered cars.
Even if electric cars become equal in every way,
why would we switch to something that just does the same thing as what we already have?

Electric cars will have to be much better than the cars we already have, or they will fail.






Isn't the Smartcar smaller (less useful) and more expensive, with worse mileage, than other vehicles that already exist but aren't marketed as "smart"?

They cut the size and weight of a car in half without improving the mileage at all, so the Smartcar is actually less efficient and has worse technology.

Smartcar might be perfect for someone who drives alone and likes to park easily anywhere at all.  And it's safer than a motorcycle. But it's not going to save the world from fossil fuels.

Just like the Prius, they want to sell people on a lie.  They think if people will buy a car because it's "smart", then they'll buy even faster if it's "smarter with electric".

This is very worrisome. I am already hearing reports about the depletion of the Lithium reserves. There are so few electric cars around, and still they use a large chunk of the Lithium available. This insanity must stop. Lithium is not like Iron Ore or Coal. It occurs in very limited quantities, and once you waste all of the deposits for batteries, then there will be no other alternative for the metal.

There must be batteries that do not use lithium. It can't be the only type of battery that exists.

If you've already consolidated most of the global fossil fuel reserves, would you like the price that end-users pay to be:

  a) higher
  b) lower

Generally speaking, 'austerity' helps achieve the 'a)' selection whether one is talking food, energy, health care, intellectual property, etc, etc.  We can expect to see a lot more of it as earth moves toward toward a more 'globalized' form with multi-national corporations consolidating control of all means of production and a more centralized power structure dictating global operation.

There are a several types of rechargeable batteries. But Lithium batteries are the best.

For example, Lithium–titanate batteries are having a power capacity of 4,000 W per Kg (or 4 KWh per Kg). The same for a Lithium-ion polymer battery is 3 KWh per kg and for a Thin film lithium battery the power capacity is 6 KWh per kg.

The others can't even come close. The Lead–acid battery is having a power capacity of 0.18 KWh per kg.

Tesla and Nissan leaf uses the lithium-ion battery, because the thin film lithium battery is very very expensive.

i share same ideas with you.. oil and gas giants must invest on renewable energy and any other energy resources for their future.. because oil and gas reserves will run out off soon.. they should stop whining...

I know this is just talking but I'm sure they'll discover new and better batteries soon.

we wont have any fuel in the near future .. you are totally wrong..

We have tried all the available permutations and combinations using various chemicals and metals. If you want newer batteries, then I am afraid that you might need to travel to the Andromeda galaxy, to bring minerals and metals which does not exist in the solar system. The Lithium-ion battery was invented in 1973. More than 4 decades have passed and we are still using it.

Everyone dumping their oil now while there's still demand, lithium is the new oil.

False.  Continual improvements in lithium batteries and other types.  Often by incorporating nano techniques.

Little relation between the 1973 lithium battery and those in common use now.

No metals in other galaxies that are not here. Bounded by periodic table.

Any minerals that exist somewhere else can be fabricated here.

Lithium can be found from asteroids near Earth. It's not going to be depleted.

Hmmm... really? A space launch can cost anywhere from $450 million to $500 million. Even if you are able to collect a tonne of Lithium from the asteroids (I am not even asking how), do you think that the car-makers are going to buy this Lithium at a price of $500,000 per kg? Imagine how much will be the cost of a Tesla, if they do so. (An average Tesla uses around 14 Kg of Lithium for a single 85 KWh battery).

You guys are behind in battery science.

Look up nano tech and paper batteries!
In around a decade it will be ready to be mass produced for industrial scale.

---

Space flight will cost exponentially less in the future with private companies and new technolgies.
Like the reason nasa outspurces to spaceX etc.

Space mining will be done for sure just a question of time and effiency.

Tesla is working on a better battery right now and think they are spending more time on that then the car.
Its most likely at best 5 years out still after it goes through all the hoops of testing.
That girl most likely has sold here idea to Tesla or a like minded group to fiddle with.

Perhaps they should try to design electric cars with a portable power source (not nuclear  ;D), so that the batteries and inverters are not needed. That will reduce the overall cost of the car by as much as 75% to 80%. This idea might sound ridiculous now, but I hope that as technology advances, it might be made possible.

Man, get with the times.  The solution (http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/USCSS_Nostromo) to these problems has been known about for years.

More seriously, I've heard tell that Afghanistan (http://www.mining.com/1-trillion-motherlode-of-lithium-and-gold-discovered-in-afghanistan/) is something like 'the lithium king.'  I cannot help but notice that nobody seems to be in a big hurry to defeat the Talliban and get the hell out of there.  One has to wonder if these two things are related.

Count the price for 100 miles road, the electric way cost much less and with no emissions.

i dont know this .. thanks for sharing.. and then i will use an electric car if i decide to have a car..

Electric cars are not for everyone. For starters, the price of an Tesla Model S is around $70,000 to $100,000, depending upon the variant and the local taxes. Although the fuel expenses are low, the maintenance cost is extremely high. You need to replace the battery every two years or so, and these batteries can cost up to $25,000.

The Nissan Leaf costs around $30,000, but you can use it only for short-distance travel. The maximum range is somewhere around 100 to 120 km. After every 100 km, you need to charge the battery (which can take up to 8 hours).

VOLAR-e - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJSMUXFwC8E

Well, to each his own.  I've also got one car that gets 6 mpg and a truck that gets 10.  But for a run a mile or two down to the grocery store, you simply can't beat the Smartcar.  Leave the labels aside, and just look at the product.

What kind of a car gets 6 mpg?  Some custom supercharged hemi-powered hot-rod?  I'm pretty sure my grandparent's Ford LTD did better than that!

I think my pickup gets around 9 mpg, but it's got a 460 CU engine.  Even my 35,000 lb crane truck gets about 6 mpg highway.  Even so, these vehicles are more 'efficient' than my 40 mpg Toyota because I use it only for moving heavy, large, or awkward things.

I'm getting the sense that more and more people cannot even conceptualize why anyone would have a need to move heavy things.  I think that this lack of vision stems from not knowing of life outside of the 'factory farm'.  That is, stack-and-pack housing in an urban center, or at best the 'burbs.'  One youtube channel I watch from time to time is from some guy who attends a lot of planning meetings in Southern California.  It turns my stomach to see these 'planners' go on and on about making the area into a 'mega region' and giving people a good quality of life by inducing people to live such that their 'living room is a public space' where they, supposedly, mingle with others and it makes them happy.  And they have dog walking parks with mirrors for doggie reflection zones.  These people are so incredibly presumptuous to think they can design a better life for their underlings.

I can confidently predict what's going to happen in these high density 'human habitats';  people are going to find that when they venture into their public area 'living room', they will do so under the threat of being groped and robbed.  To mitigate this problem, the planners will design a solution where everyone lives under intense and constant surveillance.  This will be supported by 'the masses' primarily because it is less unpleasant than being groped and robbed all the time.

http://www.planetaryresources.com/#home-intro (http://www.planetaryresources.com/#home-intro)

The Koch brothers did try to run for election but they could not win on their ideas which is why they sponsored groups to fight against climate change to protect their business interests using lobbying organizations. Funny enough its candidates like Bernie Sanders who likes taking small donations and Donald Trump who has a lot of money and doesn't need to pander to the super rich lobbyists and PACs that provides the best chance to kill the power of lobbyists and stave them off a bit from the election cycle.
1 Billion dollars is change to the Koch brothers who have 50-60 but it sure is a lot of persuasion if your running for office and well need to pay someone back and coal pwning the electric car sales well they have their own interests.

Koreans made a battery for 800 km trip.

Two things which seem to really get Bitcoiners juices flowing:

  1)  Space travel/exploitation.

  2)  Living in harmony on a ship or island or desert wasteland with other like-minded Bitcoiners.

Hey, don't let my bad attitude and lack of 'vision' stop you!

The Tesla battery is also capable of making a 500 km trip. But it costs more than $30,000 and needs replacement in approximately 20 to 24 months. What about the new battery? How much does it cost, and how long does it last? If you could tell me how much Lithium it uses, then I will be able to calculate the approx. cost.

  Right.  Well, think about the Prius.  I see many people here buying and using them for primarily highway driving.  That's totally stupid.  Any vehicle that attempts to recirculate energy from braking and downhill mission segments shouts "City Driving!"  But they think they are cool.

The Smartcar is really good for certain things, largely because of it's simplicity.  Someone who is 6'6" and weighs 350 lb will find the Smartcar very comfortable, believe it or not.  By contrast the very complex dual power system of the Prius cannot pay for itself over the lifetime of the car.

Couple years ago I pulled up to a fast food lane by a major university, and got lectured to by the punk at the window about my gas guzzler.  We had our little two minute chat.  Fucking idiot. 

Yes they are afraid, because the last few years all the big auto companies have started developing electro motors.
And they see if this continues they will get a lot of progress, and in 10 years everyone drives electric cars.
They don't want that so they are going to fight it, but electro will win because the technology will become better.
And everyone know's it is better for the environment!

Bull.  Nothing you have said is true.

There are many emerging battery technologies. Aluminum-ion, Lithium-sulfur, Metal-air etc.