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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sergio H who wrote (46793)	2/28/2012 6:52:38 PM
From: E_K_S	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78520

OT - (Maybe not OT if you look at the cost to produce electricity as a value play) Sergio - What is the argument for the production of low cost electricity? Are the batteries charged from the "grid" that is powered by coal and/or NG power plants? Basic physics teaches us that there is an inefficiency in producing a unit of energy, transmitting it and storing it (loss due to heat, friction etc) vs directly producing it to power an engine. I am just not convinced all of the economics have been worked out for an electric car if one looks at all of the resources used from end-to-end. The best "value" argument I have seen in this field is what Bloom Energy is doing. bloomenergy.com This is a fuel cell that produces electricity directly from NG. There is a point where if the price of Oil reaches some level, it becomes cost effective to use these types of fuel cells to generate electricity directly (aka Distributive Power) from very cheap natural gas. For me the value proposition comes full circle back to NG. These fuel cells are not there yet, but the developer stated that at some point the economy of scale would be reached where a small size refrigerator size Bloom Box (the size needed to power a typical U.S. home) would cost $20K and combined with $2.50/cmf NG would provide the world's energy needs. This is the piece of "disruptive" technology that would fuel the advancement of the electric car IMO. EKS