Nissan Leaf is losing ground to its hybrid competitor the Chevy Volt. In fact, some report that Volt has been kicking Leaf's butt -- or at least blowing Leafs off of the lawn?
So Nissan has decided to take on Volt the old-fashioned way: with a TV spot that CNET featured this morning and that will air on June 12 during the NBA Finals.
Imagine a world where all our appliances are gas-powered and you've got the world Nissan wants us to think we live in.
The ad is funny, inventive, even a little steampunk.
While it's message is delivered in a tongue in cheek manner, it is also a little disingenuous. Most of your all-electric Leaf mileage will be powered by dirty coal.
Nevertheless, its a spot that will no doubt have people talking, much like last year's Polar Bear ad.
Earlier today I helped Stuart Varney on FOX Business answer a question from a viewer about the cost to charge an electric car versus a gasoline-powered engine.
The bottom line is, electric vehicles will be cheaper than gas.
An EV1 all-electric car by GM that escaped in 2005.
Digging in this week post-vacation.
After five months of intense work with some great clients, my consultancy, VerdeStrategy, finally has a couple of open slots for new projects and clients. Contact me here if your company can use some help with strategic communications, business planning or developing your investor presentations.
Now, after that shameless self-promotion message, on to the links.
A lot of Electric Vehicle love this week:
First, how'd you like to travel from Alaska to Argentina in an Electric Sports Car? Greentech Media has a story about two entrepreneurs who did just that: Sports Car
And congratulations are in order for Green Skeptic-favorite EnerNoc (ENOC) on a profitable quarter and almost 5GW under management: $ENOC
Have a great weekend everyone!
(Disclosure: I hold long positions in ENOC. This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities.)
Tesla Motors will have its IPO today. The Nissan LEAF electric vehicle sold out shortly after it was announced, many of the orders coming from first-time Nissan customers. The Chevy Volt may even hit the showroom later this year.
It certainly seems as if the age of the electric car is upon us. But hold on a minute. Let not all the hype keep us from seeing the speedbumps -- and maybe a few roadblocks in the way of a complete transition on our roadways.
Don't get me wrong, I believe the battery electric vehicle (or BEV for short) is the vehicle of the future. But this new generation of electric vehicles will have lots of challenges, including battery technology, range, and charging.
Let's take range. Today, we are used to driving 300 miles or so before having to pull into a gas station and, after inserting our credit card, choosing the grade, and popping the nozzle in the tank, we can be refueled and ready to go before we've had a chance to clean the windshield.
Contrast that with the currently planned charging experience for electric vehicles. Drive 100 miles and you need to charge it -- the LEAF will take 8 hours for a full charge at 200 volts -- and there is currently very little infrastructure to support electric vehicle charging.
You can get around this by increasing the number or density of batteries in a vehicle, which will add weight and cost, but as battery technology improves the weight and cost, life and range will increase.
Charging, however, still remains an issue. I'm concerned about the vision of the future that imagines hundreds of thousands of charging stations around the country, in cities, parking garages, and on-the-street parking (perhaps replacing the meters that have gone the way of the parking kiosk). That seems like an awful lot of infrastructure needing to be built.
And what about that volatile mix of bad weather and high voltage. Imagine the housewife, parking in the Whole Foods lot, plugging in while she goes in for groceries. She comes out, and some idiot parking next to her has dislodged the plug. Not only does she not have the charge she needs to go pick up Junior from day care, but now she's dealing with a live wire on a wet macadam. Doesn't sound like the way to go to me.
I've even seen plans for "battery replacement stations" where you drive in and your old battery is swapped out for a new one -- the batteries are on a huge circular conveyor. The Pep Boys, Manny, Moe, and Jack, are probably salivating at that prospect. But that doesn't seem feasible to me.
Which is why I was encouraged by this video from the UK-based HaloIPT of an alternative future featuring wireless, dynamic charging based upon inductive power transfer technology.
Momentum Dynamics, a Malvern, PA-based company I've written about before on this blog, also has a technology that may help advance the vision depicted above.
As Andy Daga, CEO of Momentum Dynamics said to me recently, the battery electric vehicle industry "Needs three things: improved battery technology (this is coming), improved vehicle integration of new technologies (also in the works), and finally, improvements in the technology and distribution of charging technology."
Of course, that is what Andy and his company are focused on, and which he feels "is absolutely critical to the industry."
I hope for the sake of the electric vehicle market that the Tesla IPO ($TSLA) goes well. I have concerns that, like $AONE, it will go from 0 to 60 and come to a screeching halt, like, well, a Tesla Roadster as it approaches a speed trap. (That won't be good for future cleantech IPOs -- some companies have already pulled their plans this year).
But I have larger concerns that we are ignoring the looming issues facing the electric vehicle industry that may well prevent it from going the distance.
The big three U.S. automakers are circling their wagoneers and SUVs and hovering over the bailout trough. And Democrats want to reward their labor votes by letting the big three feed off the TARP.
Even President-elect Obama, speaking on CBS News 60 Minutes last night, said we can't let the big three fail. At least he offered conditions.
"We need to provide assistance to the auto industry. But I think that it can't be a blank check," Obama told Steve Kroft. He wants an answer to the question "what does a sustainable U.S. auto industry look like? -- so that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere, as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere."
I don't think a sustainable U.S. auto industry includes GM. They've been failing for years, and their hubris, along with some bad negotiations with the UAW, have gotten them into this mess.
Bailing them out now will just postpone the inevitable. These dinosaurs are going to die -- in fact, they are already dead.
Other industries have gone through the restructuring offered by bankruptcy and emerged, why can't the auto industry? It's a viable alternative.
Why should we trust losers like GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, who told an industry trade publication that he won't offer to resign should he successfully scarf up some of the TRAP, er, TARP funds.
He won't resign? What part of failure doesn't he understand? They should make General Motors (GM) and Wagoner an example and let them go bankrupt.
GM has had a failure of imagination (except for self-interest) for more than half a century, ever since they destroyed the light rail and trolley car industry in the 40s and 50s.
Alfred P. Sloan, then GM president seized a great opportunity, "We've got 90 percent of the market out there that we can somehow turn into automobile users. If we can eliminate the rail alternatives, we will create a new market for our cars. And if we don't, then General Motors' sales are just going to remain level."
The documentary film film "Taken for a Ride" (1996) tells the story of that sordid affair in GM's history.
GM has never cared about us -- ever -- why should we care about them?
Oh, sure, I hear the whining about all the downstream jobs that may be affected by the failure of the big three -- one of which, Chrysler, is a privately held company. But, I've got news for you: the automakers don't give a shite about those downstream suppliers and parts manufacturers. This is about keeping business as usual going for as long as they can.
Mark my words, Wagoner and his cronies will take the money and run, just like they did when the Clinton administration created the taxpayer-funded $7 billion "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" to help jumpstart fuel efficient technologies capable of 80 mpg.
That effort was scrapped for the more profitable lines of SUVs GM and others cranked out when oil was cheap. (The government's own PNGV website devoted to that project is no longer live.)
And then there was the EV1, the subject of the documentary film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" According to the film and its sources, GM made a tremendous effort to erode demand for their own product and then killed it. Literally. GM allegedly took back every EV1 and disposed of them, a few ended up in museums, but almost all were found to have been crushed.
Wagoner, told Motor Trend magazine in 2006 that the worst decision of his tenure at GM was "axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids. It didn't affect profitability, but it did affect image."
Now GM has the Chevy Volt, FlexFuel SUVs, and are working on other hybrid technologies. They are making progress, but kicking and screaming the entire way. Volt has so many issues they will be lucky to get any on the road by the end of this decade, and its projected price will be out of the range of most Americans.
And with <$60 per barrel oil, I've seen more than one GM dealer pimping their backlog of SUVs again, with good terms.
They haven't learned and never will. They can't. Because the problems of GM have to do with 30 years of management mistakes that now has them having to grow for the sake of growing. That is not a winning strategy.
As Wagoner himself told Business Week in 2003, "We have a huge fixed-cost base. It's 30 years of downsizing and 30 years of increased health-care costs. It puts a premium on us running this business to generate cash. Our goal is to grow. We don't care who we take it from."
We don't care who we take it from. Now, that's a winning outlook and proof positive that we'll be throwing bad money after more bad money by investing in the future of GM.
It's time to let them go bankrupt and let the smart survive. And let's invest the money in a better car company made for the new green economy.
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