"Today rare earth metals are an important component in the permanent magnet of any electric motor..." except not all electric motors require permanent magnets. Tesla uses and AC induction motor, and uses only Aluminum and Copper in their motor.

They are starting to build cities in the European style, with stores on the ground level and living quarters above them. This makes needing to leave the neighborhood to go shopping a thing of the past. Good old suburban sprawl is the result of separating stores from the consumers, as well as needing to travel miles to get to the stores. Walking becomes an option because it no longer takes driving for 10 minutes just to get out of your suburban neighborhood, and then once again driving another 10 minutes to the nearest grocery/Starbucks (or whatever). It also could mean the end of big box stores as once again local stores can support their local neighborhood. As long as these newer urban developments are near a public transportation, who needs a car?

Being able to use the sugar directly takes a whole couple steps of fermenting to alcohol. It would greatly improve the energy yield per acre over corn ethanol. But better would be either sugar cane, or sugar beets which would yield considerably more sugar per acre than corn can. And just think, all those obsolete gas stations could be repurposed to pump sugar water.

I want to see exactly what he means by "Clean". You get credits for being "cleaner" than the other guy, but by what benchmark? Measuring CO2? Measuring toxic byproducts? Measuring environmental damages? Soot? NOx? This really needs clarity.

Finally, somebody is going to start sampling their new battery tech. I'm tired of hearing about all these new battery advancements, and never actually having anything for people to test. I am curious about the cycle life though. Common problem for silicon anodes is poor cycle life.

I only see the need for this transmission in use with brushed DC motors. They have a much more limited RPM range (lower than ICE engines) and transmissions for DC powered conversions always leave the cars original transmission (preferably manual) because the approximately 0-3600 RPM range of a DC brushed motor is not wide enough to get a car to freeway speeds. For other more modern (DC motors date back to late 1800s) motors like brushless DC, AC inductive, switched reluctance (or others) have a wide enough RPM range to not require multi ratio transmissions. Sure if you want a top speed over 90 MPH, but in reality, nobody needs a commuter car that goes that fast.

Can I swap out my tank at the local Blue Rhino? That would be pretty convenient since those are all over.

We are going to start to need a new metric for emissions, grams CO2 per KWh. Since these generators are being designed as range extenders, you will have to combine your EVs miles per KWh with the range extenders grams CO2 per KWh to find out what the grams CO2 per mile of the two combined are.

I wonder what kind of sales they are talking about? Pop and candy in the waiting room?

Another option of CCS would be BioChar. The advantage would be using plants to extract the carbon from the atmosphere, rather than more energy consuming chemical or other means. You could use a fast growing crop like bamboo which could be harvested regularly. Problem is crops need fresh water.

There are those that are suggesting NH3 as a alternative "green" fuel. If it's produced this way, they might actually have a point. But since currently it's produced through the Haber-Bosch process, it's anything but green. My question about this new process is that it's waste byproduct would be oxygen. Not exactly a bad thing, but I can see that it would have the potential to poison the catalyst, since it would oxidize pretty much anything short of platinum or gold.

Well it's a good thing those polar ice caps are melting so we can get supertankers up there to carry all that oil. Of course when the US burns 18 million barrels a day so this ends up as A 6 year supply, but that would be if we only got it from here. But since we have other sources of oil it probably works out to around 25 years supply.

I guess it's better to burn it and turn it into CO2 than to just lets it escape to the atmosphere because of rising polar temperatures. Lesser of 2 evils.

Woo hoo, lets see US uses 19 million barrels of oil a day, so this would last... 18 days. The 10 billion is a little better, but it's still less than 2 years. (not exactly long-term as the article says). Of course I do understand we don't use all the oil from one source.

Another option would be to get your workplace to install charging stations. All modern commercial EVSEs have monitization options to allow tracking and billing of electricity used (in case the office or workplace doesn't want to give it away). Of course the offest between the price of buying an EVSE vs. the cost of electricity would take decades to recoup.

10kW isn't that impressive, my 1999 Ford Ranger EV does 6.6kW and the Ford Fusion EV does too. J1772 can go up to 15kW as is.

I now have 4 separate charger RFID cards for each of the networks that are in the Seattle area. Yes, we need to stop this nonsense and coordinate all those into a single collaboration.

Doesn't that say it right there: 11 million dollars for 23 Hydrogen stations (if I did the math right they want to double what's there), vs. already having 4300+ EV charging stations (and they only are giving it another $7.5 million). Hydrogen just isn't economically feasible.

Like we don't have enough EMF flying around.

At least they didn't decide to start their own network. I think there are about 6 now, ChargePoint, Blink, 350Green, SemaCharge, GE, and one more that escapes me right now.

Jeez, I already carry two RFID tags for two different networks predominant here in the Seattle area (I understand that Walgreens is using a 3rd). And now GE comes out with their own. Well, I guess I'll sign up for that one when I start seeing Wattstations around the area. Be nice if they could talk to each other.

The conversation has strayed rather far away from the bioeconomy blueprint that is the focus of the article. So my attempt to steer it back is this question: Does this "Bioeconomy Blueprint" support the heavyhanded control that DOW/Monsanto et.al show when they can sue a farmer for incidental usage of GMOs when it wasn't even planted by him? Personally I think that the farmer should be able to sue the GMO crop originators for damage to his crop, but the opposite holds true. I surely don't want this type of activity to be upheld by the current administration because it unfair, and ultimately monopolistic. Should they be taken on as anti-competitive and monopolistic? I think so, as well as any laws that make it illegal to publicly report issues in the industry - as the beef producers have gotten passed in several states.

I have been using their (Superbrightleds.com) LEDs in my 1999 Frd Ranger EV for a couple years now. And yes I had to replace the flasher unit with one made specifically for LED lamps, and it wasn't cheap - $85 from NAPA. So you need to consider that additional cost when thinking about replacing lamps with LEDs.

And that is a truth the Republicans will never admit to, even though it completely follows their mantra "let the market decide".

But we already have zero emission cargo transport, or at least we used to. They are called sailboats. (and no trolls complaining about coal generating the electricity).