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Battery maker Ener1, a DOE grant recipient, goes bankrupt

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by cwerdna, Jan 27, 2012.

  1. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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  2. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    This does not make the green tech sector look good. :(
     
  3. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    That $118.5 million grant is just to manufacture the battery. Once it gets a plugin or EV, there will be additional tax credit to purchase the car. Unfortunately but fortunately, this will not happen.

    $118.5 million could have been used for $3,150 tax credit to 37,619 Priuses. Those Priuses would have saved 112.9 million gallons of gas over a 25 MPG midsize car. That's almost $1 per gallon in return.

    That's twice the gas that could be saved by the Volt with $7,500 compared to a 30 MPG compact.
     
  4. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    It shows the federal government does not do a good job as a venture capitalist. This is not another solyndra though.
     
  5. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    There has been no lack of VC funding in these floundering companies, and most VC funded software companies fail outright. I wonder if AG is old enough to remember the internet bubble. Or, for a really outstanding example of just how stupid the free market can be, the derivatives market.

    Talking about failed green companies is well and good, but a little perspective and less blind ideology is needed. How about writing about government funded green ventures that are succeeding ?

    In any case, the best example of stupid government subsidy in recent memory is GM and the Volt.
     
  6. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Sagebrush, I have tried to ignore you, but you keep following me around making snide little comments. Please stop. If you have something to add, please add it, without reference to me.

    I said that this was not like solyndra. I mainly quoted from the bw article to set some of the facts up. $55 million of the grant is gone so far, not the whole thing. This is chapter 11 not chapter 7, the grant money may still have an effect. This program is different than the solyndra loan program, and doesn't appear to have partisan favors under the table. These facts diverged from a previous posters characterization, and I wished to bring them up.

    Then as you attack me, you seem to lend credance to the idea that the government is not a good venture capitalist, but giving an example of where you think they have made an unwise investment.

    Really, just stop, your argument just gets very week when you go around following me trying to taylor yourself to poor attacks. You would like a bigger government, I get that. I don't understand how that applies to Ener1.
     
  7. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    Sorry AG, if you post nonsense it is fair game for ridicule. The nonsense of course, is that Solyndra or this company somehow prove the ideology that government investment is inferior to private.
    As usual, you 'get' it wrong.
     
  8. ItsNotAboutTheMoney

    ItsNotAboutTheMoney EditProfOptInfoCustomUser Title

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    And it would cost the country $742 million dollars in imports to buy the Priuses.
     
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  9. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    That is misleading, because the alternative is not a 100% domestic sourced product.

    What is true though is that the 113 million gallons of gas is about 300 million dollars of petrodollars drain out of the country every year. Moreover, the dollar exit is to Japan rather than OPEC.
     
  10. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Anyone believing SageBrush, should read the 2 articles the OP posted. Both CNN Money and businessweek talk about solyndra.

    SageBrush do you think that CNN Money and Businessweek have some ideology to prove. Can't people talk about the news without getting yelped at by a misguided little puppy.
     
  11. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    We don't have US soldiers fighting war in Japan. We have an alliance with Japan.

    Are you saying the economic war takes precedence over the war over oil?
     
  12. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I hope most of the soldiers fighting an oil war are coming home soon:D
    I agree with you, imported cars are better than imported oil, that is one reason I bought the prius:)

    Subsidies to get hybrids on the road have already happened. I don't think more subsidies will get significantly more prii or other hybrids on the road though. With the importation issue, I doubt there is much appetite in congress to do another subsidy. Slowly raising taxes on oil and removal of oil subsidies, would be the best free market recipe to get higher hybrid and prius usage. This is unlikely in this political climate.

    There is a $2500 tax credit on the prius phv, and that is likely to get more of them sold, and less oil used. This tax credit applies to all plug ins, which in my mind is a good thing. I would not want to favor imported cars over domestically produced ones.
     
  13. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    How many of those 37k Prius would have been bought anyway, without the subsidy ?

    Unless the Prius market drops dramatically, all of them. So the added value to society would be zip.

    Off-topic, you just reminded me of my distaste of subsidy.
     
  14. drees

    drees Senior Member

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    I don't quite follow your logic here. Where does $3,150 come from? How do you get 112.9M gallonsof gas? Any why are you comparing some mythical tax credit to one that already exists ($7.5k for big plugins) and ignoring the $2.5k credit for the plug-in Prius? And how do you estimate that it's twice what's saved by a Volt without providing any estimates for how much fuel a Volt uses?

    Either way, since $3.15k is close enough to half of $7.5k for ballpark estimates, one could spend the same amount of money on tax credits for LEAFs and save the same amount of gas.

    And the LEAF will be manufactured in the USA starting in 2013 model year.
     
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  15. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    $3,150 tax credit was back in 2006, faded out in 2007 after 60,000 sold and proved to be popular and worked well. In Japan, they now have incentive about $3,000 as well and Prius has been #1 selling car. So tax credit of $3k is the magic number to increase the demand of Prius and lower the oil consumption.

    50 MPG Prius would use 3,000 gallons (150k miles lifetime) less than a 25 MPG midsize. 37,619 Priuses x 3,000 gallons = 112.9 million gallons saved.

    Average Volt runs on gasoline 1/3 of the miles so it'll consume 1,351 gallons (50,000 / 37 MPG). A 30 MPG compact non-hybrid would 5,000 gallons. Volt would save 3,649 gallons. 15,800 Volts ($118.5m / $7,500) would save 57.6 million gallons.

    $7,500 Volt tax credit is good for 200,000 units so it is significantly higher than 60,000 hybrid 2006 tax credit.

    If you compare Volt to Prius (no tax credit), the saving diminishes to 26.1 million gallons.

    Leaf would save more gas than the Volt. It has more battery kWh capacity than the Volt. It deserves to get more tax credit. The current tax credit favors the Volt and it is not effective. It should be spread out more to the hybrids and EVs.
     
  16. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Toyota is forecasting 220,000 prius (liftback, c, v, phv) sales this year. Even if you made the first 37,619 free these would still be likely to go to these same buyers. That would mean there would be no gallons saved versus without the subsidies. If you can somehow target these to people that would not buy a prius otherwise then it might have some effect.
     
  17. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    AG, the same logic can be applied to Volt and Leaf as well. Those who can afford without tax credit would purchase them as well.

    $1,000 per hybrid would help. The problem I have is $0 tax incentive when it is the technology that is saving the most gas. Yet, the market share is still a few percentage. Tax dollars could be better spend on the proven known way to reduce oil consumption rather than "investing" in the battery (ahem, Volt) with little or unknown returns.
     
  18. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Well there is an important difference, there are fewer buyers in the case of plug-ins than the incentives. You yourself have said that you are looking at a prius phv, would you be as likely to buy one without the $2500 incentive? You said the hybrid incentives did help sell the prius, when demand was lower. Now the prius technology is mature, and sales high, so incentives have less of an impact.

    The current incentives are far from perfect, and the returns are far from guaranteed. As I said in the earlier post, removal of oil subsidies and slowly increasing oil taxes would probably be the most effective along with the new cafe standards. The plug-in incentive is fairly small, and may pay off in the long run, so there are much easier and more effective ways to cut subsidies. If there actually is a multiplier effect and plug in technology becomes mature, these small incentives may reduce oil subsidies. I wouldn't bet on the last part though.
     
  19. Corwyn

    Corwyn Energy Curmudgeon

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    Research and development is a GAMBLE. Not all of it is going to pay off.

    If private business is so much better at investing than the federal government, why did the Federal Government need to use our money to bail out private investors?
     
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  20. wjtracy

    wjtracy Senior Member

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    ...saw Toyota quote today, that EV is mostly gov't push vs. consumer pull. This was in a Rueters article called something like Revenge of the ICE.

    When does government push work, and when does it not work? Probably works best when there is general agreement on direction. Gets messy if there is not agreement. Historic example is Congress ethanol mandate, touted to make gaso burn cleaner.

    EV looking a little like a house of cards at this snap-shot in time, that is the concern.