Whom the Gods would destroy . . .

That was the point I was trying to make. Land use is not much of a problem. I tried saying you thought it was a problem, then asked whether you agreed it was. What is your point? I am not trying to guess, but you appear to be taking both sides of the issue.

If you mean central Texas, that won't be much of a problem, but unlikely to be necessary. If you mean inside Austin city limits, that would be a little crazy. Any land close in to Austin, is expensive for this type of venture.

Here is a farm that is expected to grow to 300 acres - a little less than a half square mile.
First portion of huge algae farm in New Mexico is done — Cleantech News and Analysis

The first 100 acres cost $135M. You can do a bunch of 10 to 500 acre farms, there is no reason to build a 6400 acre (10 mile) contiguous site. I know we have some industrial farms that big, but lots of small farms can be beautiful. We don't really need those megacorps with billions of dollars to have a monopoly on bio-fuels.

 

Is there something personal here that the rest of forum is missing?

 

No. I am sorry if I appear to be making personal statements.

I am having trouble expressing my incredulity that someone could actually think that scaling up from two ponds totaling 3.3 acres to 20 MILLION acres of farms would present 'no technical challenges'. Words fail, I'm afraid. My apologies if anything appeared personal.

So let's look at the number for that 100 acres farm, 3.3 acres of actual algae ponds. "This first portion of the farm took a year to build, used 634 full time construction workers, and required $85 million from Sapphire, backed by a USDA loan guarantee, as well as a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy."

so 634 full time workers (for a year) / 3.3 acres * 20 Million acres = 3.8 Billion worker-years.
$135 Million / 3.3 acres * 20 Million acres = $800 Trillion dollars.

But a lot of that may be in unrepeating infrastructure. How about the final numbers. 100 barrels per day = 4200 gallons / 300 acres * 365 days = 5,110
gallons per acre. At a cost of something way north of $600 Million. At $4 a gallon and NO ongoing costs, that should pay back in 80 years. Total cost for 12 Million acres (20M / my number of 3000 g/a * 5110 g/a in their projection) = $23 Trillion.

 

There are many more than 2 ponds built. The technical challenges are not high to simply produce algae based fuel, the problem, I will repeat again is cost of the fuel. If you did it at cost plus, then no problem rolling it out.

That was badly written in the article much many more than the 2 ponds have been built, those are just the pond sizes. As I mentioned earlier the cost of fuel with today's tech would be around $6/gallon for diesel if rolled out - some estimate $8/gallon. If we could do that carbon neutral, with American labor, its still too expensive, with our $100/bbl oil. This is not a problem technically with the pond structure.

You have a bad assumption here, and that is the second farm costs as much as the first. When you build something the first time, you find cost savings, which is why estimates are not nearly as high as you say. But clearly stated in every post I have had on this is that cost is the problem with algea. If we have some scenario with $10/gallon gasoline adjusted for inflation, much algea could be brought on-line in say a 5 year period.

 

Algae. Plural of alga. The confusion may be due to the odd US pronunciation of the plural.

 

Just my poor typing ;-)

 

I'd look more at the bottom line of Fiskar's marketing plan vs. the convoluted how many hybrids will be sold. He's looking for 50,000 cars by 2020 which seems reasonable. I think Tesla has a similar plan though I think Tesla will make it and Fiskar will not. But 100,000 high end, long range EV vehicles by 2020 does not seem unreasonable.

I would purchase a $60K Tesla X in 2015 if its out. It would likely be the last car I would need. It would use no oil.

 

Tesla wants to sell many more vehicles than that. They expect to be selling the tesla X and a bmw 3 type electric car. WSJ seems to like the cars and give another crack at segmentation

Tesla's Cars Look Better Than Its Stock - WSJ.com

IMHO Tesla can do it, but its not a good investment, except as speculation, as the article says. The key to tesla getting over 10% market share in the segment requires great execution, which they seem to be doing, along with continued battery improvements. The battery improvements are likely.

Fisker has had poor execution.

The X will definitely be out by then, the price likely will be over $70K before tax credits and a minimum of a 60 kwh battery pack.

 

The karma is currently contract manufactured and can work for very low production. No risk of that being overbuilt. The battery manufacturing by A123 did get overbuilt and knocked A123 out of the automotive battery market. JCI can handle the overhead of the discounted factories that it looks to be purchasing from the bankruptcy court. JCI managing the battery manufacturing should help Fisker's supply chain.

We don't know where the atlantic will be built, but I doubt fisker is expecting 3000/month sales. It originally was to be built in a Delaware plant that had been closed, that fisker purchased very cheaply. How well it sells really depends on what Fisker designs.

I definitely agree that Fisker would be foolish to assume large numbers of karma and Atlantic sales in the next few years. They need to talk about 2020 potential to get the investors to put up the money to finish the Atlantic. Heirik Fisker did design the ashton martin DB8 and bmw Z8. There are serious design skills in the karma. But making it efficient and keeping costs down were not done well. Let's wait to see if they can do a course correction with the atlantic. They are going to use a more efficient bmw engine. They need to drop some weight as well.

 

50,000 hybrids in is a very low bar even in current hybrid market much less in 2050.

Issues with Fiskar's marketing plan are not so much in its quantity but in its product, a $100K hybrid with a radical design look that likely has limited appeal.

Tesla's $100K buys you a full bore EV, different market.