Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (307573)	10/24/2006 11:14:30 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1571540

"And how much of an investment in electricity production and distribution are we going to need if we add 140 million new electric vehicles?" Less than you think, although almost certainly some will have to be added. Remember that power plants are sized for peak demand because there isn't any practical way to store it. So if some of these are charged at night when power use is at its lowest, then power plants can be run more efficiently. IIRC, peak vs. average is close to a factor of two. With them generating at peak production 24 hours a day, the number of new plants that need to be built is reduced. With that out of the way, adding the additional infrastructure would be easy. Now the initial markets will be in the more heavily populated areas which can be serviced almost instantly. Silicon Valley springs to mind, along with LA and many places in the Northeast. City vehicles would be another, obvious first market. The rest would take care of itself. Very little is known about EEStor. I found the patent and the information looks good. It isn't pie in the sky, the numbers add up and the materials should worked as claimed. There have been a couple of articles, but the information is sparse. The founders have good backgrounds, one is a disk drive guy and the production of this thing is a big thick film application, 400 pounds of it. The biggest clincher is that they picked up Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as an investor. Now KPC&B backed such companies as Google, AOL and Amazon. So not only do they know how to do these sort of things, they can put in enough cash so that it is done right. So, is this for real? Beats me. There are all kinds of reasons why it isn't feasible. One that comes to mind is 52kW-hr is an awful lot of energy. Think pounds of dynamite. If it has some catastrophic failure modes, then that could be a problem. Like if it shorted in an accident, at a minimum it would melt the cars. If it decided to explode, well... Most auto companies have various electric car prototypes. Not just small ones, Ford, for example, has prototypes for SUVs, minivans and pickups. All have a common problem, batteries. They only have limited charge cycles, are heavy, expensive to dispose of and slow to charge. If this cap. works as advertised, it is almost just a drop in replacement for the battery. The voltage is somewhat higher than the battery packs being used, 2k-3k volts as opposed to about 900, but it is smaller and lighter. But both GM and Ford could field a line of a half a dozen vehicles that hit the major categories in under 5 years. Probably more like 2-3. GM's AUTOnomy project could be easily retooled from hydrogen fuel cells to this thing. Of course, it isn't going to happen this way. But it isn't as big of a stretch as you think it is. It would be disruptive and there would be dislocations. But it could give the US auto industry the break they are looking for.

To: TimF who wrote (307573)	10/25/2006 6:46:29 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571540

re: And how much of an investment in electricity production and distribution are we going to need if we add 140 million new electric vehicles? How much does this country spend every day on gasoline? That's a lot of money that can be spent on electric infrastructure. And as the demand for electricity "stands up", the money going into gasoline will "stand down", so it will be a gradual and probably equal relocation of assets.