Nissan will win the plug-in throne next quarter with its newly opened factories in USA and Europe. We need to see more production capacity at Tesla. With a global sales network and the Model X on sale too they should be able to sell 100k units per year despite of the high price tag of 70,000 to 100,000 USD. If the orders keep coming after Tesla win down their waiting list it should not be too difficult for Tesla to find the investment capital needed to make 100k units per year.

For the least expensive Model S (the 70,000 USD version 60kwh) the calculation is roughly 500 USD per month plus 300 USD per month in saved gas over electricity costs, 100 USD in saved time at the pump (one hour per month) and 150 USD per month in tax savings because of the EV tax credit. You still need to pay 1050 per month but the marketing point of being able to say 500 USD per month and then explain people that there are lots of savings that make up for the difference to your 1050 USD per month payment is very important. EVs need to be marketed with that in mind or most people unfortunately will not really get it. I am looking forward to see the Model S used as a Taxi in large polluted cities where they could really make a difference in air pollution as up to 10% of all traffic can be from city taxies. Hope that city municipalities will be allowed to ban the use of petrol and diesel taxies in order to accelerate the deployment of non-polluting taxies. The Model S is really the first EV that can replace the gas taxies without any inconvenience to the consumers apart perhaps for a little higher fares.

Industry standards takes time to get approved everywhere and since nobody can make money thinking out a really good standard you end up with suboptimal technology. Tesla has the brightest heads in this business but they need to make money so they do a system that is proprietary and all others will have to pay money to license it afterwards. Industry standards does not make business sense for those who create it and that is the big problem with industry standards. Eventually patents runs out and Tesla's charger technology can become the de facto industry standard. From a business perspective I think that Tesla is doing the right thing by making their own proprietary charger technology.

Great that Tesla is now making money. Also great that they are doing 2000 new cars per month so shortly after starting production of their first mass produced car. They clearly have very competent employees. By dropping the 40kwh option it also means that Tesla can build a fast-charging network faster and at lower cost as the chargers do not need to stand as close together to serve the range of the available Tesla models. And all Tesla's will come with fast chargers so the network will see usage faster than if not all models came with that charger. Tesla's fast charger network will give them the competitive edge when other car makers ready their EVs but do not have any fast charging network to support the selling of their cars.

At long last. CO2 in non-toxic, non-flammable and its global warming effect is trivial compared to the hydrocarbons that it replaces as a coolant. Only drawback is that it needs higher pressure compressors that are more expensive than those currently used. However, for safety and environmental reasons future refrigeration systems should all be required to use CO2.

Seat price http://carconfigurator.seat.de/seat-cc/main-seat-007-de.view?msk=1#carline

Davemart I said km not miles and (=(9000/1.3)*24) is 166,154. The Seat and the Up are identical apart for the batch and some minor unimportant things. I found the basic Seat price it is 9000 EUR and the gas version is 12000 EUR so the premium is still 3000 EUR but now 33% relative speaking not 30% as for the up.

The price in Germany for the basic up! is 10,000 EUR with the bi-fuel natural gas option it is 13,000 EUR. So the premium is 3000 EUR or 30%. Larger more expensive cars needs larger motors and they maintain that 30% premium. You still need to drive a lot to justify the premium. A rough rule is that you would spend 6000 EUR to drive the same distance on natural gas as you can drive spending 9000 euro on gasoline. So in order to make up for the premium you need to drive 166,154 kilometer (=(9000/1.3)*24) assuming one liter of gasoline cost 1.3 EUR and you can drive 24 km per liter in the up! The natural gas option makes most sense for those who drives a lot like taxies. However, the most important thing would be to get trucks and commercial ships to use natural gas instead of oil. That would really help reduce air pollution on this planet. Globally you could save 4 million barrels per day for ships and an additional up to 8 million barrels per day for trucks and other heavy duty vehicles. Prices see http://www.volkswagen.de/de/models/up/CC5.html

Forget it. It is BS. If the combustion engine makes 35kW in electricity expect waste heat of at least 3*35kW = 105W. There is no cooling system in the shown drawings so this is BS. And what about notice and vibration. I expect it to be far worse than in a normal combustion engine. Also I do not get what moves the cylinder back after the central combustion. Is it a spring?

So in January 2013 Tesla produced about 1800 model S that is more than any other plug-in car delivered in January 2013 in the US market. The volt did 1140 the leaf did 650, the Prius plug-in did 874 the cmax energy did 338. See http://www.hybridcars.com/january-2013-dashboard/ Moreover, the vast majority of Model S sells with a 85kwh battery pack so 1800 model s compares battery pack with to sell about 7000 Nissan leaf per months. Measured this way Tesla is the world's largest buyer of lithium battery cells for automotives. That means lower prices than the competition. I am amazed by how well this company and their CEO are doing. However, for Tesla to survive long-term they need to get to over 100,000 cars per years so that they can procure all the other car parts at competitive prices versus the competition.

At least this is 50kWatt chargers that are useful for public charging when doing long-distance driving in a pure EV. In Europe we just decided to install 0.5 million 2kWatt chargers publicly that in my opinion are useless for 95% of all situations where you need to charge in a public place. Europe would have been much better off with 5000, 50kWatt chargers. In ten years the 0.5 million chargers for Europe will be gone as nearly no one will use them and not enough to justify the expenses for maintaining them. Japan is already fully covered with 50kWatt chargers. Tesla's cars for Japan will get a adapter so that they can also use these 50k watt chargers.

There is a very interesting piece by Verge interviewing Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO on the Dreamliner issue. http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3930502/boeing-787-dreamliner-battery-structure-inherently-unsafe-says-elon-musk Apparently large lithium cells are more unstable than small cells and they require more expensive packaging if they are to be made as safe as similar small cells. I would not be surprised if Musk was one of a few engineers and managers in the auto industry who is bright enough to actually see and understand this. The fact that a small startup with very limited resources compared to a global automaker can do a car like the Model S is credence to the brilliance of Musk and his team.

On-shore wind power cost about 1.2 million USD per MWatt so 4.8 million USD for this 4MWatt installation. 14 cents is too much for an industrial customer they pay more like 7 cents per kWh. The US state subsidy for wind power is normally 1.8 cents per kWh. That is enough to make wind power compete with coal power and gas. In a decade or so wind power will not need any subsidies in order to compete with coal power or gas.

What I do not find very environmentally friendly about this picture is that a forest full of life has been bulldozed to make space for this solar field that effectively has destroyed the life that were. Why did they not use 3 large 3Mega watt wind mills instead. Put them on 120 meter towers and the forest below could stay where it is and should always be. Life below could continue unharmed. Solar power should be limited to rooftop installations, desserts and other non-fertile areas. When solar is implemented by bulldozing forest it does much more harm than good. At least that is my opinion.

Sure it is a fun. It is a rollercoaster of a drive with 0 to 60 in 4.1 sec versus 4.4 sec for Tesla's fastest Model S. I don't personally like it is so wasteful when other people have a hard time paying for gasoline. However, that is not enough for me to support limiting the life styles of other people by prohibiting it. Freedom to live as we please is more important as long as it does not directly hurt other people. Nor would I support prohibiting obesity even though that is just as disrespectful of those who have a hard time affording to buy food. Think about it. If you felt so good about yourself that you would drop all of your relations that where morally questionable in some sense be it obesity, extravagant lifestyle, hard-line political or religious beliefs, gambling, sexual orientation, illegal or legal narcotics like alcohol or cigarettes, etc then how many people would there be left in you network? I am optimistic. We still need to see a four wheel drive Model S from Tesla and that would surely beat the 4.1 sec of this very cool Bentley.

According to hybridcars.com 391,000 hybrids and 45,500 plug-ins were sold from Jan to Nov in USA. http://www.hybridcars.com/november-2012-dashboard-65420 Most were sold after June 2012 because of many new and attractive models. I expect hybrids to sell over 500,000 and plugins to do over 100,000 for 2013 in USA. Many new plugins and a much improved and US produced Leaf will be important for USA's 2013 plugin sales.

99.9% sure this is another bogus story from a small company that is desperate to raise money like Envia. As said “Hollow drums make the most noise”. So forget about it.

In my opinion a takeover of A123’s automotive unit by a large automotive supplier like Johnson Controls is good news. A123 has a competitive product (high power, high temperature and high durability cells) and they will benefit from Johnsons experience with product quality controls and mass production. Also this will be good news for Fisker that may otherwise be without a battery for their car. One bankruptcy could lead to another if A123 production is not continued in another company ASAP. Selling to China will probably get a better price for A123 stockholders but it may be mission impossible as national security is at risk with a company like A123. Also A123 is probably the best hope that the US has to become a serious player in the increasingly important industry for automotive batteries otherwise dominated by Panasonic and LG Chem. In a few decades that industry could grow into one of the largest industries in the world with sales of possibly over 300 billion USD per year.

Roger and others The global economy is booming as can be seen from the GDP growth numbers given in CIA factbook (see link below). GDP (purchasing power parity): $80.33 trillion (2011 est.) $77.46 trillion (2010 est.) $73.65 trillion (2009 est.) note:data are in 2011 US dollars GDP (official exchange rate): GWP (gross world product): $69.99 trillion (2011 est.) GDP - real growth rate: 3.7% (2011) 5.2% (2010 est.) -0.8% (2009 est.) GDP - per capita (PPP): $12,000 (2011 est.) $11,700 (2010 est.) $11,300 (2009 est.) note:data are in 2011 US dollars Any growth rate above 2% pro anno is considered a boom with falling unemployment. From 0 to 2% it is slow growth with slowly increasing unemployment as new technology enable more production with less people. The annual technological progress is about 2% so the economic growth rate needs to be higher than that in order to create more new jobs than are destroyed by technological advances. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html @Bob You are right. I did not mention technological advances and they matter especially in the long-term. However, with regard to fuel efficiency I think you will see that changes in oil prices and legislation are what will trigger and guide the technological change. The point is that unless oil prices go much up or legislation will require it technology will be developed to make faster and more convenient cars rather than more fuel efficient cars. Don’t expect cheaper batteries to be developed fast unless there is an urgent need for it.

Harvey Relax, there are far more people on this planet that get better off each year than those who get worse off. Your talk about 97% getting worse off and the eventual collapse of society is pure nonsense and comparable to the utter nonsense that Karl Marx wrote about in Das Capital. About your other blog then you tend to think that higher vehicle fuel efficiency is coming all by it selves. It does not. It needs a motivator. It can either be higher oil prices or legislation requiring manufactures to make more efficient vehicles. Do not expect much to happen with the global sales of hybrids or plug-ins until it is required by legislation or until oil approaches 200USD per barrel.

The world economy is not in a mess. It is booming and the global annual vehicle production numbers confirms this fact. However, both USA, Japan and EU27 faces low economic growth currently and probable for some years to come as they owe money to the developing world that now make up for more than half of the global economy. Fossil energy prices are going to rise as a result of this boom in the world economy and that is also needed in order to grow the more sustainable forms of technology such as PV solar, wind power and electric vehicles.

It also means competition for the Volt and the Leaf. The PIP seemed to be the best plug-in deal before this one came from Ford. However, the competition does not start until Ford start selling the C-Max energy in significant numbers and when they do the PIP and others will probable respond by lowering their prices.

The only comparable EV by size is Fisker’s Karma that got EPA rated at 52 mpge. So it is really good for the Model S to get 89 mpge for the most heavy version with a 85 kWh pack. We should expect a little better mpge for the shorter range Model S. Also, the performance edition of Model S can do 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 sec using a 2WD 350 horsepower motor. The coming Model X will be sold in a performance version with two 350 hp motors and 4WD. So 700 hp in a series produced car. That will be a world first. Even the race cars at Le Mans are no more than 550 hp. Tesla is doing more than anybody else to crush the image of EVs always being slow and boring to drive.

Darius You are right I use other information than the BP report to conclude that USA is heading for positive net exports of oil by 2025. The most important information is this graph from EIA showing the US net oil imports combined with knowledge of the things that drives the development. http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTNTUS2&f=M As you can see net US oil imports drops from about 12.5 million barrels per day in 2006 to 7.5 million barrels per day in 2012. That is a drop of 5 million barrels per day in just 7 years. For the US to become a net exporter it just needs to drop its oil consumption another 4 million barrels per day from currently 18 million barrels per day and increase its production by 4 million barrels per day from currently 10.5 million barrels per day all liquids included (including natural gas liquids, ethanol and biodiesel). You have a number of things that drives this development: 1) US production of sweet crude oil from shale rock in Ford Eagle and Bakken is increasing rapidly. Combined it is now about 400k barrels per day more per year. 2) US production of natural gas liquids as a byproduct of increasing production of primarily natural gas from shale rock is also increasing rapidly. 3) New shale plays both oil rich and gas rich will start production in the coming years in other places in the US than the current places for such production. 4) New ethanol production from cellulose biomass and waste will add at least a million barrels (possibly 2 million) of ethanol per day by 2025. 5) The US petrochemical industry is capable of switching more of its feedstock from expensive oil to cheap natural gas. 6) More efficient vehicles will substantially lower the about 9.5 million barrels per day of US gasoline consumption by 2025. 7) The US daily consumption of nearly 4 million barrels of diesel can be switched to a large part to less expensive natural gas. 8) The US use of over 1 million barrels of oil per day for fueling commercial cargo ships could substantially shift to LNG. All in all I think it is likely that the current trend of decreasing US oil imports by 5 million barrels per day for every 7th year will continue at least until about 2025.

The BP statistical review is the best source there is for global energy statistics. It is a must read for anyone who need to follow energy markets. Some of the things that I have noted are this: 1) Coal is on track to overtake oil as the most important energy source globally by 2013 or 2014. At page 41 in the report you can see coal is at 3724 million ton of oil equivalent and oil is at 4059 million ton for 2011. However, coal is growing at 5.4% while oil grows at less than 1% per year now. For comparison gas is consumed by 2906 million ton of oil equivalent in 2011. 2) Coal cost about 120 USD per ton in global markets in 2011. Two ton of steam coal is about one ton of oil so 240 USD for a ton of oil equivalent in coal. A ton of oil is 8 barrels at 100 USD in global markets so 800 USD for a ton of oil. Natural gas selling at 10 USD per million BTU at global markets in 2011 is about 400 USD per ton of oil equivalent in gas. 3) China produced 1956 million ton of oil equivalents of coal in 2011, see page 32. With 8 barrels of oil per ton this compares to producing nearly 16 billion barrels of oil per year or 43 million barrels of oil per day in terms of coal. 4) USA, Europe and Japan are now making good annual progress in terms of using less oil, coal and nuclear while still being able to grow their economies. Renewable energy and natural gas is taking over in these parts of the world. Inferences: The high price of oil will mean it will continue to grow at very slow rates as cheaper substitutes for oil like natural gas will slow its growth. Coal is cheap compared to oil so it will keep growing strongly for now but natural gas can be produced very profitable at 5 USD per million BTU from abundant shale formations so a long-term global price of natural gas could result in gas being priced at 200 USD per ton of oil equivalent or cheaper than coal at 240 USD. Moreover, natural gas pollutes far less than coal and can be transported much cheaper than coal over long distances. Gas can furthermore be used for powering vehicles on land and at sea unlike coal that is too cumbersome for that. China will be running gradually out of cheap domestically produced coal from around 2025. That will mean huge imports of much more expensive internationally traded coal, gas and oil for China in the coming years. Their imports will be bigger than imports for USA, Europe and Japan combined. In fact, the US will most likely be a net exporter of energy by 2025 both in terms of coal, natural gas and probably also oil. In conclusion, from 2013 to about 2025 coal will rule as the world’s most used fuel probably hitting 7000 million ton of oil equivalents in 2025 (or 153 million barrels of oil per day). Oil will not be much larger than 90 million barrels per day in 2025. After that natural gas will take over as increased production from shale formations will drop the global price to 5 USD per million BTU and make this fuel the most affordable and practical fuel for most uses. Renewable energy will need to be able to compete with natural gas at 5 USD per million BTU or it will only be used in the wealthy parts of the world. This should be doable for both wind and solar in a few decades from now on.