October 31st, 2012
Lost in the noise of the news of battery maker A123’s bankruptcy filing is an ongoing fight over who will get their hands on A123’s battery technology and manufacturing capacity. If clean tech like electric vehicle batteries was such a bad bet, as naysayers have tried to claim, you’d think nobody would touch the assets with a 10-foot pole. But, the naysayers are wrong. Read More
October 25th, 2012
October 17th, 2012
You’ve probably already heard the news this week about a clean energy company that received a government grant filing for bankruptcy. What you may not have heard quite so clearly is that clean tech is working, for the United States and our transformation to a better, stronger, cleaner energy future. Read More
October 17th, 2012
Fall is officially here and television lovers are tuning in to the new season of their favorite shows. And, in an annual ritual dating back more than 60 years, we TV viewers are also tuning in to commercials from car companies promoting their 2013 Model Year (MY) line of cars and trucks. Of course, for me the start of the new model year also means it is a great time to look at all the sales data that’s now out for MY 2012 to see if there are any new plot twists when it comes to hybrid and electric cars. Read More
October 12th, 2012
A new study examining the life-cycle impacts of electric vehicles looks at global warming emissions and other environmental impacts from the production and use of vehicles in the European Union. Here’s one media story about the report with a rather damning headline – Study: ‘Global Warming Potential’ From Electric Cars Twice That Of Conventional. Kind of reminds me of some of the coverage of our State of Charge report (See a Columbia Journalism Review blog on that). It’s stories like this that might lead some casual readers to conclude that electric vehicles are a disaster. Read More
September 26th, 2012
California leads the nation in plug-in car sales, but the state isn’t resting on its laurels to maintain dominance in the emerging market for zero tailpipe emission vehicles. Read More
September 11th, 2012
Imagine that 8 out of 10 cars on California roads release no tailpipe emissions, that the telltale exhaust plumes of soot from ships sailing into our ports are no longer visible, and that freight trains run on electricity. These are a few examples of what California air quality regulators, including the Air Resources Board and the air districts of the San Joaquin Valley and South Coast regions, envision in the recently released Vision for Clean Air. Read More
September 7th, 2012
At the beginning of every month, automakers report their sales and auto journalists and analysts pore over the data to see what trends there are to see. Many of the stories that result seem to indicate that doom is on the way for plug-in electric vehicles, so I dug into the data to see what big trends there were to uncover. Read More
August 13th, 2012
The longer you own an electric vehicle, the lower its global warming emissions are likely to become. Why? As some of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants are being retired and investments in renewable electricity increase, the global warming emissions that result from generating a given amount of electricity are estimated to fall nationwide by an average of about 13 percent by 2025. Read More
July 16th, 2012
Seeing an electric vehicle driving down the street isn’t really a novelty anymore, at least not in the San Francisco Bay Area. I no longer do a double take whenever I spot a Chevy Volt or a Nissan LEAF. Granted, there are far more gas-powered vehicles on the road, but it’s clear that electric vehicles have finally hit the streets. And more and more automakers are offering electric variants for consumers to choose from. Read More
© 2013
