Remember Beacon Power, the spinning flywheel manufacturer and the other company in the Department of Energy loan program to go belly-up?
Climatewire reports,
People still need electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, which is why renewable energy developers are increasingly investing in energy storage systems. They need to sop up excess juice and release it when needed.
However, storing large amounts of energy, whether it’s in big batteries for electric cars or water reservoirs for the electrical grid, is still a young field. It presents challenges, especially with safety…
Problems have also afflicted spinning flywheels, which allow power plants and other large energy users to store and release powerful surges of energy. In Stephentown, N.Y., Beacon Power’s 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage facility suffered two flywheel explosions, one on July 27 — just two weeks after it opened — and one on Oct. 13. The company declared bankruptcy earlier this month.
Click for “Bust: Another Obama-backed green business goes bankrupt”
The math is in. http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/02/autos/electric_car_fuel_economy/index.htm CNN Money page has done the math on cost differences between electricity and gasoline to power the Leaf and Volt cars the same distance as their base gasoline models. Electricity is obviously cheaper, but how much and how long to equal out the initial vehicle cost differences? Although the author failed to connect all those critical dots, anyone can easily do that. The Volt is basically a Chevy Cruze and the Leaf is basically a Nissan Versa. If you divide the cost differences between the EV and base models ($41,000 – $18,000 = $23,000/Volt; $33,000 – $15,000 = $18,000/Leaf) by the cost savings for fuel per year as outlined in the article you will find that payback to equal the initial difference is 20.45 years for the Leaf and 23.05 years for the Volt as compared to the base models, excluding costs of interest for the initial difference, maintenance, and new battery sets.
To buy a Volt or Leaf is to announce you are an economic moron or government entity, which, in the second case, is a redundancy.
I would rather own a Yugo than a Volt.
Gene, you’ve been suckered by leftest propaganda.
Both the Corvair and Pinto were very successful automobiles selling over a million units each. Neither was killed by Nader or the press though both would like you to believe otherwise. Studies have exonerated both cars as being no more dangerous than their peers.
Ford sold more than a hundred thousand Edsels over three production years. Comrade obama’s volt will reach those numbers only if he’s buying them for the government with your taxpayer dollars.
The Chevy Dolt is a classic example of America emulating the USSR. Same results.
The Chevy Volt will prove to be another Edsel / Pinto / Corvair…Even the wacko environmentalists who “demanded” the production of this boondoggle are not going to buy it in any numbers..