EV Dreams And Industrial Metal Nightmares

Fear and desperation have always been powerful engines of innovation for the auto industry. Given the current state of the car business, you can bet we’re entering a golden age of innovation.

John Petersen submits:Before moving to Switzerland in 1998 I lived and worked in Houston, Texas, a place that teaches you the importance of keeping an eye on long-term weather forecasts, particularly during hurricane season. Most of the time it turns out to be wasted effort because Mother Nature is fickle and highly unpredictable, but when it's important it's really important. The same logic holds for investments in energy storage and electric vehicle technologies.

Gird yourself: It's possible we're about to see a new wave of attacks on electric cars that ignore battery science. This time the culprit is the troubled Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

By John Petersen:In the most under-reported clean tech story of the year, researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have used an impressive array of computational and modeling tools to prove that the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility, which holds that the first unit of consumption of a good or service yields more utility than the second and subsequent units, doesn't have a loophole for plug-in vehicles.

John Petersen submits:The hardest part of blogging on subjects like energy storage and vehicle electrification is synthesizing the mass of data that's generated every year.

Juan Carlos Zuleta submits:In a recent article, John Petersen has argued inter alia that: (i) using “eight to twelve kg of lithium” in a Li-ion battery “is massive for a non-recyclable product in a world that only produces three grams of lithium per person”; (ii) “while companies like FMC Corporation (

John Petersen submits:Last week I did a 40-minute interview for Hedge Fund Radio, a weekly investment program hosted by John Thomas, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

By Greentech Media: By Katherine Tweed So many electric vehicles, so many batteries with so much life left to give.