There are some things you probably don't want made in China. Reliability and quality control is not yet up to Japanese or American standards. Electric bicycle manufacturers have learned this lesson the hard way: http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2011/01/battery-history-lesson-from-nerd-king.html Although, I'm certainly happy with my A123 batteries: http://www.youtube.com/user/biodiversivist#p/a/u/1/lV4FxzprGfg

Ah, the Volt is not an EV. It's a plug-in hybrid. We are all victims of marketing to varying degrees but this is getting ridiculous ; ) Biodiversivist

Oh, my bad. 99% is wasted ; )

"Their approach reduces US greenhouse gas emissions ...more than 10% of total US annual emissions—while increasing soil fertility and promoting biodiversity" ...oh, and will also give every child in America a magical pony! Common sense suggests that if this system really is the most profitable way to produce food it would already be the way we produce food. And oil companies love biofuel. Should it ever prove profitable they will twitch their little finger and buy up every ethanol refinery in existence. It perpetuates their business model of producing liquid fuels for internal combustion engines where 80 percent of the energy in a tank is wasted.

Call me when the inventors open a battery factory like A123.

This just in: Emperor's new clothes don't need washing!

Odd, this already has a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cognition What do we do with those who have a strong attachment to commerce and industry who also have strong egalitarian values?

Sources for above post: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/slyutse/as_i_discussed_here_last.html "..At its worst, lifecycle GHG emissions from corn ethanol exceed those from gasoline in all three scenarios. At its best, corn ethanol is not that much better than gasoline on a climate basis, and certainly not good enough to warrant the soil degradation, water resource depletion and water pollution it continues to cause.." http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/E85PaperEST0207.pdf "..Due to its ozone effects, future E85 may be a greater overall public health risk than gasoline.." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/02/0812835106.full.pdf "..health costs are $469 million for gasoline and $472–$952 million for corn ethanol, with the higher totals coming from coal-fired production." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214101408.htm "..would likely worsen health problems caused by ozone, compared with gasoline, especially in winter.." http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/biodiesel/page6.html "..According to an EPA study of biodiesel emissions, biodiesel emits half as much particulate matter as conventional diesel. But, this still means that a Golf running on 100% biodiesel emits four times more particulate matter than the equivalent gasoline Golf.."

According to the EPA's latest research, corn ethanol currently emits more CO2 than gasoline. According to several independent studies, corn ethanol air pollution will have a worse impact on health than gasoline. Propel's false promotion of biodiesel as being cleaner than gasoline has led many thousands of people to purchase diesel cars to burn biodiesel in but according to the EPA, the pollution from these cars is far worse than an equivalent gasoline powered car. People who think these fuels are actually clean are victims of an effective marketing campaign, like those who own station wagons because they are now called SUVs.

A biodiesel Jetta pollutes worse than the gasoline version. Biodiesel competes with food. Biodiesel can't scale.

Interestingly enough, here is another recent Swedish study showing that by 2050: http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Ambio_Agriculture.pdf ----"...very little, or nothing, remains for biofuel from agricultural primary crops."---- Converting food crops into fuel is a dead end idea.

Fred, I don't think "value added" is the proper description of a process that mandates use of a heavily subsidized product. Remove the tariffs, mandates, and subsidies and your value added product would disappear in a value added puff of smoke.

Everybody seems to missing the main point. Biofuels only represent about 2% of global energy use today. Expansion of their use is when the problems start: "..each type of biofuel has different limitations in production volumes. In order to avoid negative effects, it is important to know where this boundary lies. Rapid and significant increases in production of biofuels from food crops could result in negative indirect land use changes, he said. “There is a limit, but we are not there yet.” This study only covered fuels used in Sweden. Thirty thousand square miles of prime farmland was usurped for corn ethanol in the US last year.

Are they assuming the grass will be harvested and co-fired with coal (up to 90% more efficient than converting it to a liquid), or the cellulose converted to ethanol(there still is no economically viable way to do this), or gasified and converted to methanol? http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2010/05/21/methanol-versus-ethanol-technical-merits-and-political-favoritism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+R-squared+%28R-Squared%29

"Sales of the Toyota Prius dropped from 128 last October to 54 in February," Numbers that low are meaningless.

Yeah, right: "..Methanol from syngas? Oh, that technology has only been with us since 1923. Congratulations on reinventing the wheel and burning through taxpayer money in the process.." http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2010/02/broken-promises-from-range-fuels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+R-squared+%28R-Squared%29 Biodiversivist

According to my spreadsheet, eliminating all cars and all cows in America would only reduce global GHG emissions about 3%: http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/10/wwf-study-puts-global-warming-into.html Few seem to grasp that there are hundreds of sources that all have to be tackled. Tackling only one or two of the biggest in America alone does almost nothing: http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img34.gif

Storky, There are no cars running on cellulose-based ethanol: http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2010/02/broken-promises-from-range-fuels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+R-squared+%28R-Squared%29

American corn ethanol policy has hurt the poor of the world more than it hurt fat Americans. The CBO said it cost us a billion extra dollars in food costs last year but many of the poor in the world spend most of their income on food, unprocessed grains in particular. It's myopic in this day and age to be concerned solely for America, particularly since corn ethanol can't even stand on its own. It exists only because of government fiat. Calls for energy independence started out as a scam to get politicians elected. Voters love the idea. But, there is no way a country that consumes as much oil energy per person as America can be oil independent and as this article attests, becoming dependent on crops for fuel will add another layer of price instability thanks to the unpredictable and uncontrollable impact of mother nature.

I'm really glad to see the big companies entering the electric bike market. Here's a link I just found about Sanyo's electric bike: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/01/09/feet-on-with-sanyos-eneloop-electric-assist-bike/ No comparison to the one I built. I suspect the lack of electric bike standards is part of the problem: http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2010/01/electric-bicycle-lessons-learned.html

The RFA is a lobbying organization out of control. Peer reviewed studies along with the researchers who author them are publicly attacked by these organizations. Somebody needs to somehow put them back in the bottle they sprang from, ditto for Growth Energy. They also tend to attract internet nutballs like a sweater collects lint. http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/12/question-for-arianna-huffington.html http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/10/myth-of-american-farmer.html

I can see the advantage of the Nissan Leaf battery concept where the owner leases it and will be able to upgrade as better technology arrives.

The ten points are found in the following PDF: http://mobilitychoice.org/MobilityChoice.pdf Electric cars, biofuels, ethanol, and flex fuel cars are deliberately not mentioned anywhere in it. However, it does say this: "..it is necessary to remove barriers to competition not only amongst transportation fuels but also among transportation modes. In other words, we not only need fuel choice through vehicles that support alternatives but we also need mobility choice.." The barriers they mention are all technical and related to the fact that our government has forced a fuel down its citizen's throats that is not compatible with our cars or our existing pipeline infrastructure (ethanol). Here are the names found on the mobility choice website: Anne Korin, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) Gal Luft, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) Cliff May, Foundation for Defense of Democracies Robert C. McFarlane, former National Security Advisor R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence Agency Deron Lovaas, Natural Resources Defense Council Pictured on the website is a 125 page book written by Korin and Luft, which according to Amazon.com reviews proposes flex fuel vehicles as the main solution. Looks like a (very short) xenophobic polemic to me. The best way to prevent war is through mutual dependence on trade. Corn ethanol has the effect of reducing corn exports, which has a similar pound for pound impact on trade deficits as oil imports. Cellulose ethanol is forever five years away. Corn ethanol can't scale much further. Where is all of this biofuel going to come from for all of these flex fuel cars? Not to mention, our present biofuels have a few downsides of their own: http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/05/biofuel-myths.html A car with 10% ethanol reduces average oil use about 7%. A midsized four door hatchback Toyota hybrid reduces average oil use 100% (getting double the American average mileage). Flex-fueled cars are a fine option for anyone wanting to pay extra for one, as they would for power windows, but to force the concept onto everyone is a dumb idea any way you look at it. Our politicians are not qualified to lead in this era of rapid change and complexity.

That is my point, Ziv Batteries will probably never be cheap enough to create an all-electric version of something as heavy as a working truck. Hybrid electric might work, as well as hybrid electric with natural gas. We will likely never get battery power densities as high as a tank of liquid fuel.