electric vehicles – Page 2 – Knowledge Problem

National Research Council Says Benefits from Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles Decades Away

5 Comments / Electricity, Transportation / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson The National Research Council has issued a study examining the costs and benefits of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and concluding that it will likely be decades before such vehicles yield benefits to overcome their higher initial costs. From the press release: Costs of plug-in hybrid electric cars are high — largely due to …

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U.S Government Becoming Clean Energy Venture Capitalist

2 Comments / Energy markets, Politics / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal summarizes the news that you already know: the U.S. Department of Energy has become one of the biggest financial forces in the clean energy innovations business. The DOE hopes to lend or give out more than $40 billion to businesses working on “clean technology,” everything from electric cars and …

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Mcardle on the Search for Financial Villians; Indiviglio on Electric Cars and Power Costs

Electricity, Environmental policy / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson Worth reading: Megan McArdle, “The Search for Financial Villains Founders,” at The Atlantic: Business Channel. Apparently, damning remarks taken out of context from emails are not so damning when considered within the original context. On the other hand, I’m not so convinced by the earlier post at The Atlantic Business Channel by Daniel …

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Where Does Lithium Come From, Anyway?

2 Comments / Electricity / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson Joshua Keating, in Foreign Policy, offers a photo essay on lithium extraction in Bolivia. Keating said: Bolivia hopes its lithium treasure can pull it up from the bottom rungs of the global economy, but as countries throughout the developing world have learned the hard way, resource wealth can just as easily lead to …

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An Illustration of the Problem Discussed in an Earlier Post

3 Comments / Electricity, Regulation / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson In a previous post I was complaining that the entrenched regulated utility industry makes the electric power business resistant to entrepreneurial efforts to shake things up, even when those entrepreneurs want to do things that regulators, utilities, and consumers say they want. (Like environmentally-friendly cogeneration projects, as The New Republic story mentioned.) A …

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Life Imitates Art: Nissan to Give Electric Car a “Beautiful and Futuristic” Noise

5 Comments / Music, Technology / By Michael Giberson

Michael Giberson From the LA Times car culture blog Up to Speed: A campaign backed by automakers and some lawmakers to make electric or hybrid cars noisier in a bid to increase safety for pedestrians and cyclists has taken a strange, “Blade Runner”-type twist. Nissan sound engineers have announced that the Leaf electric car set …

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