Replies to post #18121 on Evcarco, Inc.(fka EVCA)

[Don]

I forget, where does this magical electricity originate? Don't say solar either.... TOO FUNNY!

[NASCOW]

time is short for EVCARCO

If you continue to pump carbons into the earth, mankind will become extinct (That sounds like a motive to wait a little longer to fill up)

Yeah about the time the sun explodes
TOO FUNNY

Doesn’t bode well for the EV industry
For all of 2010, BYD reported having sold 480 of its F3DM plug-in hybrids and E6 electric taxis. By contrast, GM had over 600 Chevy Volts as of February, counting just two months of sales in 2010 in the U.S. market.
The disappointing BYD electric car sales come despite generous government incentives in China. The F3DM, for instance, carries a government subsidy of about 47 percent of its purchase price.
"BYD makes a lot of claims and not a lot of them come true," said Newton of IHS.
More recently, BYD's February sales fell by half from January and nearly a quarter from a year earlier. Analysts said its low-end models were less competitive than they used to be and higher-end models were not gaining sales momentum, even with price cuts in mid-February of up to 20 percent.
Sales also fell 15 percent in January, even as the Chinese auto market was growing in the double digits at that time.
"They are in recovery mode, working on the quality of the vehicles, working on the dealership network and most importantly trying to prove to the world that they are in fact a genuine producer of electric vehicle(s). That's why Warren Buffett had invested and that's why everyone is watching," said Michael Dunne, president of consultancy Dunne & Co.
The sales declines are nonetheless showing up in BYD's stock. Even with a sharp bounce since the last part of February the shares are still down nearly 10 percent this year, suggesting that Buffett's investment has slipped below the psychologically important $1 billion mark.
Falling sales at home would be bad enough, but BYD's aspirations are global. If the company does make it to the world stage it could face a whole different set of problems, as the Guangzhou consulate noted almost two years ago.
"Especially as the company eyes overseas markets and gears up to export its models, including electric cars, to the United States, the likelihood of legal challenges related to intellectual property and safety or liability issues would appear to loom larger and larger on the horizon," the consulate said.
The consulate's warning about lawsuits could serve as a caution to the 80-year-old "Oracle of Omaha." Though Buffett is a long-term investor, he may not want the hassle -- or the headlines -- of holding a stake in a company that risks years of protracted litigation. Otherwise, he may be reminded of his words in his 2008 letter about another bad deal, this time the acquisition of shoe maker Dexter.
"To date, Dexter is the worst deal that I've made," Buffett said. "But I'll make more mistakes in the future -- you can bet on that."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110309/bs_nm/us_wiki_buffett_byd

1: Gas = $4 gallon plus
Electric cars cost about .40 for the same coverage
2: The world controlled by the middle east or the world independent of what happens in the middle east

Here is reality with that common sense and these really are not funny ...time is short for EVCARCO


Then there is this to worry about

Conventional gas-powered cars starting to match hybrids in fuel efficiency
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 9, 2011; 8:56 PM
The new Chevrolet Cruze Eco can reach eye-popping fuel economy levels of more than 50 miles per gallon on the highway, which even in this era of hybrid-electric cars stands among the best.
But here's the real trick: The Cruze Eco is neither a hybrid nor electric. It runs on that "old" technology, the conventional gasoline engine.
Although hydrogen, electric and other alternative cars have garnered more hype and significant federal subsidies, the best immediate hope for restraining the nation's fuel consumption might be some new vehicles that, although powered by conventional engines, run efficiently because they have been stripped of unnecessary weight, streamlined to move smoothly and equipped with gas-sipping engines.
This year, General Motors, Ford and Hyundai began selling cars with conventional engines that achieve 40 mpg or more on the highway, exceeding the fuel efficiency of some hybrids, because their mechanics and shapes have been optimized.
To achieve the efficiency of the Cruze Eco, for example, engineers dropped its weight by 200 pounds, installed shutters to close off part of the grill at higher speeds to reduce wind drag, added a rear spoiler, cut the car's height by one centimeter and adopted an efficient turbocharged engine.
The result is a car that, with a manual transmission, is rated at 42 mpg on the highway by the government but can achieve more than 50 mpg under the right conditions, reviewers say. Likewise, the new Ford Focus, with its "super fuel economy" package, is rated at 40 mpg and the Hyundai Elantra gets the same fuel economy, standard in all models.
With the recent spike in gas prices reawakening consumer interest in fuel economy, the new cars are expected to be particularly appealing, in part because they are typically less expensive than their hybrid counterparts.

"The buzz has been all about electric vehicles and hybrids, but to me, the real buzz should be about the old internal-combustion engine," said Jeremy Anwyl, chief executive of Edmunds.com, an automotive Web site. "It ain't dead yet."
At least since the oil shocks of the 1970s, American politicians have been infatuated with developing alternative sources to power the nation's auto fleet. The George W. Bush administration pushed a hydrogen car; now Congress and the Obama administration are laying out billions of dollars for the development of electric cars.
But the new fuel-efficient gasoline cars, critics say, raise doubts about government efforts that favor any one technology over another. If subsidies are to be made, they argue, they should go to efficient cars, no matter what their power source. Moreover, when the fuel economy of a best-selling gas car is improved even incrementally, it can have much larger effects on the nation's oil consumption than an alternative-technology model that doesn't sell well.
Experts expect alternative fuel technologies to take hold eventually, but hybrid cars still represent only about 3 percent of U.S. car and truck sales. And the latest generation of electric plug-in vehicles hit the market only recently.
"When you take some of the most popular vehicles in the U.S. - say, the Ford F-150 pickup - and improve them by just a few mpg, the effects can add up very quickly," said John DeCicco, a faculty fellow at the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan. "Much more so than with a niche car."
The new crop of energy-efficient vehicles springs in many ways from the last time gas prices spiked, in 2007. Sales of small cars jumped. Support for higher fuel economy standards gathered momentum. And then during the automobile industry bailout, congressional critics demanded to know why U.S. car companies weren't selling more fuel-efficient cars.
It takes about three or four years for a car to be developed, and the results of those tumultuous times are now coming to market.
"The near-death experience of the auto companies when they got hit with the last gas-price spike finally convinced them to get off the gas-guzzling business model," said Roland Hwang, the transportation program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. As a result, "we're seeing 40 mpg become the new 30."
One of the biggest barriers to smaller fuel-efficient cars has been consumers, who just a decade ago were embracing sport-utility vehicles. But according to automakers and other researchers, the instability in gas prices has created an appetite for more efficient cars.
Even so, the auto companies are still wrestling with how to make money on their fuel-saving enhancements, or as some analysts put it, "how to bring green to the bank."
The most efficient Cruze Eco costs about $1,900 more; the super fuel economy package at Ford costs $495.
Hyundai, by contrast, offers a 40 mpg highway standard on the Elantra. It dropped 62 pounds from its predecessor and made engine improvements to get the higher fuel economy number.
"As a company, we are focused on getting high mpg across our lineup," said Mike O'Brien, a vice president at Hyundai Motor America. "We think it's what consumers want."

time is short for EVCARCO

Unaffordable at Any Speed
President Obama's electric car subsidies are snobby and foolish.
By Charles Lane
It's official: The Chevrolet Volt, the new plug-in electric hybrid car from General Motors, will cost $41,000—that's a four-seat hatchback for about the base price of a BMW 335i. To be sure, a $7,500 federal tax credit cuts that to $33,500, and electricity is cheaper per mile than gas. But barring some huge oil price spike or stiff new gas tax, it would take more than a decade to offset the higher purchase price. Some will pay a premium for the frisson of going green or being the first "early adopter" on the block. Still, this little runabout is a rich man's ride.
And that's my problem with the Obama administration's energy policy, or at least with his lavish subsidies for the Volt, Nissan's all-electric Leaf (likely sticker price $33,000), and Tesla's $100,000 all-electric Roadster: Where does the federal government get off spending the average person's tax dollars to help better-off-than-average Americans buy expensive new cars?
President Obama's ostensible goals are reducing both carbon emissions and the nation's dependence on foreign oil and creating "green" jobs. But it's far from clear that his program will actually achieve these laudable aims at a reasonable cost. And there are cheaper, more equitable policies. You might call the president's subsidies limousine liberalism—if only the cars were bigger.
How rarefied is the electric-car demographic? When Deloitte Consulting interviewed industry experts and 2,000 potential buyers, it found that from now until 2020, only "young, very high income individuals"—those from households making more than $200,000 a year—would even be interested in plug-in hybrids or all-electric cars. This "small number" of people will provide "nowhere near the volume needed for mass adoption." They will be concentrated in Southern California, where weather, state regulations, and infrastructure are all favorable to electric vehicles—"adoption is already being popularized by high-profile celebrities."
Eventually, Deloitte argues, a somewhat wider market may emerge: 1.3 million people with annual household incomes above $114,000 (double the national median). Of these, however, many will not actually buy, because of the electrics' shortcomings in size, range, and comfort. "For E.V.s to become popular, they must mimic the experience and performance that drivers have become accustomed to," Deloitte notes. Today's models, and those of the foreseeable future, can't do that.
Annual sales will hit no more than 465,000 by 2020, according to Deloitte—a mere rounding error in a 250-million-car national fleet. This projection is consistent with others by Boston Consulting Group, Resources for the Future, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Honda Motor Corp., whose head of research and development recently declared that "we lack confidence" in the electric-vehicle business.
The Obama administration says it knows better, which is why it is not only subsidizing the purchase of electrics but spending heavily to help corporations build them. There's $2.4 billion in stimulus money for electric-car component factories, such as a Volt battery plant in Holland, Mich., whose groundbreaking the president attended in July. And the Energy Department has loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Ford, Nissan, GM, Tesla, and Fisker.
The administration's theory is plausible enough: Ramp up production of the electric car's most expensive component, the battery, and its price will come down to mass-market levels. Economies of scale, and all that. It's worked for other former luxury products, like cell phones and laptops. As the president argued in Michigan, "Because of advances in the manufacturing, [battery] costs are expected to come down by nearly 70 percent in the next few years. That's going to make electric and hybrid cars and trucks more affordable for more Americans."
But the technical challenges of mass-producing cell phone batteries are relatively modest compared to mass-producing batteries for cars, and for the most part, cell phone and computer industries grew with private, not public, capital at risk. Notice that the president said "more" affordable, not "affordable." Cutting through the hype and bias that plagues official advanced-battery cost forecasting, a recent study by Boston Consulting Group projects a 60 percent to 65 percent reduction in the cost of batteries to car manufacturers by 2020—smaller and later than Obama's bullish claim.
It's doubtful that the government's electric-car push can "create" net jobs, as opposed to moving them around within the economy. Absent robust consumer demand, of course, the new production facilities will go idle and lose money. That is all too likely, because the Obama administration is hardly the only government that's jumped on the electric-car bandwagon. Bloated by subsidies, global battery production capacity far exceeds demand, present and projected, with the biggest excesses forecast for Japan and the United States, according to a study on the possible battery "bubble" by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. The shakeout should begin within five years, the firm says. And when it does, factory workers in Michigan will be back out on the street—unless their companies successfully lobby for a federal bailout.
As for greenhouse-gas, or GHG, emissions: The carbon-reduction impact of electric vehicles is notoriously difficult to calculate. The ultimate source of their power could be a hydroelectric dam or a carbon-belching coal-fired plant. Several studies have found, however, that introduction of plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles will probably not reduce overall U.S. fuel consumption in the short run, and may even increase it slightly. A report by Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs found that "strong income tax credits for the purchase of new diesel, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles are essentially ineffective at reducing GHG emissions from transportation."
Why? Under federal Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards, carmakers can use the high fuel efficiency ratings of a few electric models to offset slower improvement in the rest of their fleets. In other words, the electrics clear the way for SUVs. The opportunity to game the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency system—and California's zero-emissions vehicle targets—helps explain why car companies take advanced-vehicle subsidies in the first place.
Electric carIf the federal government wanted to dent carbon emissions and gasoline consumption without subsidizing a handful of rich consumers and client corporations, it would accept that the internal combustion engine is going to be the dominant technology for decades to come—and focus on getting more mileage out of it.
The Obama administration's toughened Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards may help in that regard, though they are suboptimal compared with higher gas taxes, which the president—like almost all other politicians—is loath to discuss. At MIT, a team led by engine expert John Heywood has recommended a gradual increase in the gasoline tax, phased in over years and rebated to low-income households, coupled with a system under which consumers would receive a per-MPG bonus every time they traded up from a less fuel-efficient car to a more fuel-efficient one—and a penalty every time they traded down.
Such measures might not lead to ribbon-cutting ceremonies in Michigan. And they might not increase the number of Volts, Leafs, and other green status symbols rolling through West Los Angeles. But they would provide carmakers and car buyers with transparent long-term incentives. Notably, those car buyers could be of any income. Of all the findings in Deloitte's market research, the most poignant was its profile of electric car "non-adopters." They have average household incomes of $54,000, live in the suburbs and rural areas, and depend heavily on their cars. There are millions and millions of nonadopters all across America. They are the middle class.

time is short for EVCARCO

I can go on and on