On July 26th I wrote a piece about oil and energy which also focused on the speculative battery technology company EEstor and it’s minority owner Zenn Motor Company (ZNNMF).  Since then I’ve given more thought and some added research to the matter.  On July 29th, I posted a correction to my original pieces as follows:   re: the Zenn investment, it seems the information in my piece was incorrect. According to a 7/2/09 press release you can find athttp://www.emediaworld.com/press_release/release_detail.php?id=623265the Zenn investment was $5M [not $700,00]. The …

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Game Changing Battery Technology: Is It Here Now? Nearly every oil observer - Simmons, Maxwell, Jeff Rubin, many others, and least of all myself - see oil prices rising in 2 - 5 years, probably to new heights, if the global economy continues to recover.   That’s based on pretty accurate visibility of new oil supply over the next 5 - 7 years, fairly certain rates of decline in old fields, plus assumptions of demand growth rates for OECD, developing, and oil exporting economies.   I provided my own version of this …

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Another episode in the drama of EEstor - the privately owned potential game changing technology developer that has yet to produce a prototype for public inspection - is the public endorsement or EEstor’s recent milestone announcement by Zenn and Zenn’s decision to increase its investment in EEstor.   Zenn (ZNNMF) is the only way for the public to participate in EEstor.   Here and here are my recent reports on the Zenn/EEstor back-story.

The current development has Zenn “independently verifying” EEstor’s recent announcement of significant permittivity (energy storage capacity) by its …

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Here is very good news:  The U.S. Department of Energy will stop researching hydrogen fuel cells for cars.  Hydrogen fuel cells might be feasible if there were gigantic supplies of cheap wind and solar power available to make hydrogen.  It was never a near term concept.   In fact, when George Bush proposed a “moon shot” in transportation technology based on hydrogen, my take at the time was that it was being trotted out because of the desire of both Bush and some Detroit executives to defer the inevitable transition to …

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Stocks continue to recover from their panic bottoms of last November, many of them having doubled or more from then (case in point: General Electric).   All this seems very healthy to me given the lack of real world data indicating any sort of resumption in economic growth.  We get only data indicating a slowing in the rate of decline.  On top of that, we know there are more shocks to come:  huge default rates in loans on commercial real estate which lags the economy, the likely bankruptcy of both Chrysler …

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I’m scratching my head over $50 oil in the face of unprecedented levels of inventory both on land and at sea and with ample spare capacity of “underground inventory.”   Talk about speculative influence - speculation seems to be the only explanation for why oil is not, say, $35.  Speculators in oil futures are betting on an economic bottom begetting a recovery begetting greater oil demand.  Along with limited expansion capacity due to reduced investments in oil production and high rates of decline for older wells. Of course all that …

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The first press report of a Chevy Volt test drive,  has been published here.  The Volt is America’s first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.  What stood out in my mind was the very positive performance review in terms of power, acceleration, and the low center of gravity.  As I recently wrote, the surprising virtue of the new PHEV’s will be great performance.  The other advantage of the PHEV, as this report mentions, is that some drivers may not need to buy any gasoline.  That could save $1,000 a …

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I’m very enthusiastic about the potential for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV’s) to provide a big piece of the ultimate solution to America’s “oil addiction” problem.  The PHEV will have an extended-range all-electric capability and a small gasoline engine that will re-charge the battery when it begins to run low, thus providing ample total range on a tank of gas.  

A PHEV with a 20 mile electric-only range will allow many drivers do all their normal daily chores while using only minimal gasoline, if any - thus getting virtually …

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My recent post on “Battery Wars” was a broad overview of the ongoing global struggle to develop one or more cost-effective batteries to power a commercially viable electric or hybrid vehicle. Follow-on commentaries to that post have added more substance and I invite readers with knowledge to add their views on the viability of lithium-ion vs. current NiMH batteries - or any other alternatives. Because  lanthanum, a rare earth element, is essential to the NiMH battery, the business of mining of rare earth elements and related investments has …

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A horse race is in progress that will determine the next generation automotive power plant.  In order to break our oil addiction cars must transition to electric power, which means the power plant must be either all electric or plug-in hybrid electric.  Either one requires a battery with vastly better cost/benefit ratios than is currently available.  The two near term favorites to fill the bill are nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion; a long shot on the outside is ultracapacitors.    Competing battery technologies also include an improved lead-acid battery and …

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The first available plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are hitting the road and turning people on.  The report below from Hawaii, a particularly oil-price-sensitive state (because importing oil is expensive), says that driving a PHEV is a huge turn-on for some people.  They are driving a modified Prius that uses technology similar to what will power GM’s Volt scheduled for introduction in 2010.  Unwilling to wait, people are modifying hybrids to make them plug-ins.  The car in this report runs on its battery alone up to about 35 …

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Our current investment trauma marks the end of an era of excesses in credit and real estate markets, of course.  But it also denotes that the United States is undergoing a far more general and significant transition - not only to a new government with a radically different agenda, but more lastingly into a whole new climate for investments. 

Gone is the era of wind-to-the-back investing powered since 1982 by continually lower interest rates and the virtuous influence of the baby boomer demographic bulge working its way through the U.S. economy …

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Here’s a phrase you might want to remember: necessity is the mother of invention.  Catchy, don’t you think?  What made me coin this phrase was watching last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” story about Saudi Aramco.  Among the many wonders of the guided tour hosted by the Saudi oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, was a research lab where the Saudis are working to develop new ways to make oil into a cleaner burning and more efficient fuel.  Clearly the Saudis are concerned about the future of their primary export.  They see the …

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I’ve followed the progress of Better Place with great interest because it is the most radical and comprehensive attempt to solve the Peak Oil problem.   As I’ve written before, the plan, which has snagged Israel, Denmark, and Australia as customers, includes all-electric vehicles, a massive public and private re-charging infrastructure, and government assisted renewable electricity generation facilities, usually solar and/or wind.   The basic idea is that consumers will purchase a certain number of all-electric miles per month, much as they now purchase cell phone minutes.  The company …

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Here’s some really interesting reporting from the Wall Street Journal.  It turns out the electric utilities are starting to salivate, as well they should, at the prospect of plug in hybrid electric cars - which we know must be a key part of the ultimate solution to an eventual oil shortage.   And guess what the electric utilities have that almost no other group has these days?   A lot of money.  The report follows: Hey, Auto Industry, Need a Jump? Utilities Consider Buying Electric Cars By …

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