I must admit that I have been living in this era of Electric Car already for the last 7 years. This number is very important and it is my personal problem - now you can read The Economist's take on the VolskwagenGate. You already know my thoughts and I will provide links for those who is catching up.
Join the Disruption or be Disrupted. Dump The Pump - It Is Time To Go Electric.Tesla And "Virtual Lithium Producers" - Joe Lowry: The Lithium "Paper Chase".
"Joe Lowry is the source to go for the real analysis of what is going on in his "Opaque Lithium Kingdom". He spent more than 20 years at the very heart of very secluded Lithium Market and worked with one of the "Big 3" - FMC. You can find more about Joe on my blog, just search his name and visit his LinkedIn page. He is the must follow in the Lithium Industry. Read more."
DieselGate: There Is No "Clean Diesel", They All Are Here - Audi Emitted 22 Times The Allowed EU Limit.
A lot of people were thinking that China with its horrible air pollution and "total corruption" is so far away. Not any more. We have our very own heroes with DieselGate now spilling into PetrolGate and smelling like total FrackingGate. Who will dare to talk about that one? Check the links below with reports and infographic: "Carmakers above and beyond the safe limits". And spread the word. And stop buying that rubbish.
"China has announced "The War On Pollution". They have made Electric Cars The Strategic Industry. While we are here in the West were fed up by GMO in order to increase our acceptance of Shale Oil and its consequences like dramatically increased because of water pollution cancer rates and flaming water from the tabs; China has spent billions to secure the best Lithium Deposits, has built 75% of the world Lithium Hydroxide production facilities and leapfrog the ICE age straight into the post carbon EVs world powered by Solar.
Nothing is perfect anywhere and not all is lost. We have Elon Musk, but we need more of them! Who will take the challenge and will embrace the vision for The Next Fifty Years to come and join me and International Lithium Team to built the secure supply not only for China, but for the West as well? I am waiting for that call and some people are coming already into International Lithium now. Read more."
DieselGate: AUTO BILD - Poisonous Nitrogen Oxides Pollution Of BMW X3 Exceeds Euro 6 Limit By More Than 11 Times.
Here we go … AUTO BUILD in Germany reports:
"Even BMW diesel exceeds emission limits significantly. Poisonous nitrogen oxides of the BMW X3 xDrive 20d exceed noisy road test of the ICCT the Euro 6 limit by more than 11 times."
Join the Disruption or be Disrupted. Dump The Pump - It Is Time To Go Electric.
Nothing Is Ever Clean About Oil: VolkswagenGate Continues - Now Millions Of Petrol Cars Could Be Affected.
It didn't take long. There is nothing clean with Oil, ever. There is just no such thing as "Clean Diesel" or "Clean Petrol". I guess, that nobody can really comply, but let's courts to decide here. Clean, Performance and Cheap - are not the words from the same sentence as Petrol, Gas, or Diesel. Billions in Fines and Fraud - these can be fixed easily with BP, Volkswagen "Clean Diesel" so far and …
What will happen next will be very interesting. There are already reports that all this VolskwagenGate was almost swiped under the rug in UK. Where the billions will go now? To lawyers and PR companies to make other lies or, finally, somebody will show Porsche CTO where to charge his Mission E and Tesla Superchargers Network?
There will be a lot of scams, as usual, when disruption is coming to 4 Trillion auto-industry. Just wait to read again about Electric Cars polluting more than ICE ones. Whatever. It is all not important any more. Tesla Gigafactory makes Oil ICE powered cars obsolete, Apple Electric iCar will smash the floodgates. Tide is coming. If you are looking how to enjoy the sailing, just read my disclaimer and welcome to the links below.
Now the real economics will work for EVs. The real deal with VolswagenGate is that Cheap, Powerful and Clean are NOT about any of the ICE car any more whether its is Diesel or Petrol. Would you like to buy Porsche performance, but pay Toyota price? They are coming: Electric Cars are just better.
Now who will, finally, start the FrackingGate?
Tony Seba: Clean Disruption - Learning From The Past And "Horse Manure Crisis".
Tony Seba gives another brilliant presentation on Clean Energy and Transportation Disruption. Do you now that the world was facing unsolvable "Horse Manure Crisis"? It was back in 1880 and apparently we have survived, but it was the Climate Change of the day in the past. There were even "Horse Manure Crisis" deniers. This crisis was solved not by "Clean Poop" or "Manure Capture and Storage". It was not "Fracking Manure" or even "Biofuel-poop" - just think what Energy Industry is selling you today. It wasn't solved by government "targets" of 30% less manure in 20 years! It was solved by two disruptive technologies: automobile and electric streetcar.
Today we are facing the crisis of our time - Climate Change and we now even have the Clean Power Plan to address it. New disruptive technologies will change completely our Transportation and Energy. Lithium technology allows us to store energy very efficiently and electric cars will take our streets over. Just look at Tesla Model S and wait for Model X and Model 3 to ignite the mass market in EVs. Solar will power our houses and EVs and lithium batteries for Home Energy Storage will make it work 24/7. Watch video.
The Future Of Oil: Electric Cars Have Reached The Point Of No Return With Tesla Gigafactory.
The short answer: All cars will be electric and the rest is history. If you like some details you are welcome! Nobody knows the future. We can only speculate and try to extrapolate the existing trends into the future. I would like to remind you that all expressed opinions on this blog are my personal ones and do not reflect the official position of any companies I am involved with.
Actually, I do not have anything against oil and, particularly, those hardworking women and men who were powering our technological progress for a little bit more than one hundred years. I just hate to pay so much for my petrol - guilty, I like Big and Powerful cars. Particularly I hate that this money is going to pay for Wars and provide dirty politicians which are bathing in oil denying the climate change. And I hate that my own money will pay for the use of One Hundred Years Old Technology based on controlled explosions of Dinosaurs Poop with less than 35% efficiency: heating everything around it and chocking us all with deadly air pollution. But not for long, Elon Musk has changed everything - I can get my Big and Powerful car from Tesla now. Read more.
The Economist:
A scandal in the motor industry
Dirty secrets
Volkswagen’s falsification of pollution tests opens the door to a very different car industry
"EMISSIONS of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other nasties from cars’ and lorries’ exhausts cause large numbers of early deaths—perhaps 58,000 a year in America alone, one study suggests. So the scandal that has engulfed Volkswagen (VW) this week is no minor misdemeanour or victimless crime (see article). The German carmaker has admitted that it installed software on 11m of its diesel cars worldwide, which allowed them to pass America’s stringent NOx-emissions tests. But once the cars were out of the laboratory the software deactivated their emission controls, and they began to spew out fumes at up to 40 times the permitted level. The damage to VW itself is immense. But the events of this week will affect other carmakers, other countries and the future of diesel itself.
Winterkorn is going
VW first. Its chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, has resigned, and the company is setting aside €6.5 billion ($7.3 billion) to cover the coming financial hit. But investors fear worse: in the first four trading days since the scandal broke on September 18th, VW’s shares fell by one-third, cutting its value by €26 billion. Once all the fines, compensation claims, lawsuits and recall costs have been added up, this debacle could be to the German carmaking giant what Deepwater Horizon was to BP. At least BP’s oil-drilling disaster was an accident; this was deliberate. America’s Department of Justice is quite right to open a criminal investigation into the company. Other countries should follow South Korea and probe what VW has been up to on their patch. Though few Chinese motorists buy diesel cars, the scandal may prompt its government to tackle the firm for overstating fuel-economy figures for petrol engines.
Whether or not Mr Winterkorn bore any personal responsibility for the scandal, it was appropriate that he should lose his job over it. He is an engineer who is famous for his attention to detail; if he didn’t know about the deceptive software, he should have. Selling large numbers of “Clean Diesels” was central to VW’s scheme for cracking the American market, a weak spot, which in turn was a vital part of the plan to overtake Toyota of Japan as the world’s largest carmaker. The grand strategy that Mr Winterkorn had overseen now lies in ruins.
A change at the top, and a hefty fine, must not be the end of the matter. America’s prosecutors ought to honour their promise to go after the individuals responsible for corporate crimes, instead of just punishing companies’ shareholders by levying big fines. Most of the recent banking scandals have ended not in the courtroom, but in opaque settlements and large fines. Earlier this month the Department of Justice announced a $900m settlement with GM, America’s largest carmaker, for failing to recall cars with an ignition-switch defect blamed for crashes which killed at least 124 people and injured 275. Prosecutors said (unnamed) managers at GM had knowingly ignored the potentially deadly effects of the fault, and put profit before safety. Yet they announced no charges.
That has to change—and the authorities know it. In a speech this month, America’s deputy attorney-general, Sally Yates, said that from now on, fining businesses would take second place to pursuing criminal and civil charges against individuals. An accused firm will no longer get credit for co-operating with investigations (as VW says it will) unless it gives the feds the names of every manager or employee involved in wrongdoing, and seeks to gather and submit evidence of their personal responsibility. VW is a test of this new approach. But to avoid suspicions of being tougher on foreign firms—as were raised in the BP Deepwater case and in recent banking settlements—the American authorities should also prosecute culpable GM managers.
Yet the biggest effects of the scandal will be felt across the Atlantic. VW’s skulduggery raises the question of whether other carmakers have been up to similar tricks, either to meet Europe’s laxer standards on NOx emissions or its comparable ones on fuel economy—and hence on emissions of carbon dioxide. BMW and Mercedes, VW’s two main German peers, rushed to insist that they had not. However, in Europe, emissions-testing is a farce. The carmakers commission their own tests, and regulators let them indulge in all sorts of shenanigans, such as removing wing mirrors during testing, and taping up the cracks around doors and windows, to reduce drag and thus make the cars burn less fuel. Regulators also tolerate software a bit like VW’s, that spots when a car is being tested and switches the engine into “economy” mode. This is why the fuel efficiency European motorists achieve on the road is around 40% short of carmakers’ promises.
At least America’s regulators, unlike Europe’s, sometimes stage their own tests to verify the manufacturers’ findings. But it is time this whole system was swept away and replaced, everywhere, with fully independent testing of cars in realistic driving conditions. Now, with outrage at VW’s behaviour at its height, is the moment to act. That would mean overcoming the objections of carmakers. But it also requires European regulators to change their attitudes to diesel, which accounts for half of cars sold on the continent. Diesel vehicles can be very economical on fuel (and thus emit relatively little carbon dioxide) but often at the cost of increased NOx emissions. That trade-off has been decided in diesel’s favour by Europe’s lousy testing regime and more lenient NOx-emissions standards.
See no diesel
Even if other makers of diesel vehicles have not resorted to the same level of deception as VW, the scandal could mean that these cars struggle to meet standards applied rigorously to both types of emission. Some fear that this may be the “death of diesel”. So be it. There is still scope to improve the venerable petrol engine; and to switch to cleaner cars that run on methane, hydrogen and electricity, or are hybrids. A multi-billion-dollar race is already under way between these various technologies, with makers often betting on several of them as the way to meet emissions targets. If VW’s behaviour hastens diesel’s death, it may lead at last, after so many false starts, to the beginning of the electric-car age."
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