Comments on: Why Intel Could Rock the Electric Vehicle Battery Market

By: GearHead

GearHead — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:52:23 +0000

- This may not be true: “Clearly this isn’t exactly the best time to be making large, capital-intensive bets on new fields.”
- This is just the kind of mind-set that crippled American industry, handing market share to the Globe. The better strategy is to innovate and develop during an economic down-turn in order to be in position to benefit from the recovery. Typically US industry pours money into innovation and development during strong economic times, then yanks the rug out from everything they started once indicators point downward. Companies with a stay the course, longer term view reap the benefits of recoveries because they are there with the product when others are still calling meetings…

By: Andrew Apipat

Andrew Apipat — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:17:58 +0000

Intel can do it, and it is about time that we take this lead and somehow encrypted some code on the new invention, so by the time the copy cat gets around to it, all R/D investments have passed on to retail market and got the return back for other futuristic R/D. We need the new type of battery now,just take a look at all the notebooks battery problem which we still can’t solve the short fuse problem until a new type of battery come around, then everything such as reasonable price EV and other electric gagets will follow.

By: U.S. Tech Companies Unite For Car Batteries, Seek Gov. Aid « Earth2Tech

U.S. Tech Companies Unite For Car Batteries, Seek Gov. Aid « Earth2Tech — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:52:01 +0000

[...] the battery market, making it difficult to find battery options domestically — heck, even chip-maker Intel has been advised to look into the market partly because it’s so sparse. This morning, a group of more than a dozen U.S. tech companies [...]

By: Quickthink » Blog Archive » QuickFinance - Intel — igent Stock Pick?

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:14:24 +0000

[...] stage left — a story from Giga today that Intel may be getting ready to invest heavily in the automobile battery business. More [...]

By: Jeremy Roush

Jeremy Roush — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 01:55:50 +0000

Stopped reading at the Enderle comment… and what pointless comment. Battery tech has lagged?

Water is also wet.

By: kerry bradshaw

kerry bradshaw — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:56:31 +0000

It would be hard to find an article with more inaccurate info than this one. ALtair Nano is hardly a startup, and its technology is not advancing. Nor is A123 Systems, although it will get cheaper, which is just as good. Plug-in hybrids are all that’s needed to basically destroy the oil industry – they can easily eliminate over 95% of current demand – those who look to pure electrics are looking in exactly the wrong direction. Nor will Obama’s misleading
(and typically fraudulent) “green subsidies” accomplish anything – his one million car dream is actually nonsensical – the US has over 265 million cars on the road. Eliminating 1 million will have zero effect (and cost many billions).
Also misleading is the article’s claims of 25% of carbon emissions produced by autos – even if every car were electirc, the amount of reduced emissions would be nowhere near even half that 25% figure. One thing you can aount on when boosterrs of green technologies are speaking – lies, plenty of lies. Like the one about wind power being of any value. Ho, ho,ho. Merry Christmas. We all know that anti-nukes have caused global warming – if nuclear power had progressed the way it should have after Three Mile Island, any need for reducing carbon would be non-existent at this point. The greenies are universally brainless.

By: Albert Hockanum

Albert Hockanum — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:44:06 +0000

Have to agree with kontra, Enderle is a disgraced informational source. Witness his performance in the SCO debacle. Why use him for a meaningless quote? Do you guys have a relationship with him?

By: Alexander Ainslie

Alexander Ainslie — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:15:20 +0000

One has to look at this ecosystem from the bottom up (identifying cheap, abundant, sustainable and accessable material resources) and then apply the appropriate technological solution to take it downstream. Granted Intel has done this well using silicone but source material for energy storage (and production) is not so clear cut.

The source material for batteries is key to keeping the cost of future electric and hybrid cars down to affordable levels for mass market adoption.

The cost of Lithium has gone from $300 to $3000 per ton and, at current production levels, we will run out of supply of this resource by 2015. By then the cost of Lithium will be so high that the cars produced using Lithium Ion batteries will be to costly for the average consumer.

The principal country that can fix this shortfall in Lithium resources is Bolivia who have the world’s largest untapped sources for the Lithium metal under their salt flats. The Bolivians, however, have been raped for so long by foreign mining companies that they are now taking the rightful stand that they do not want to allow the same thing to happen to their land and peoples all over again in relation to “developing” and not “exploiting” their Lithium riches. BTW, the French corporate raider and industrialist, Vincent Bollore (see: http://tinyurl.com/a5mqu3 & http://www.bollore.com ), is at present all over the Bolivians promising them the moon in exchange for the rights to “exploit” their Lithium resource for the benefit of his industrial battery/supercapacitor venture, Batscap http://www.batscap.com (he also bought the Canadian firm Avestor adding further production capacity in North America in 2007!), which will also benefit his nascent European electric car business, BlueCar, in partnership with design/engineering powerhouse, Pininfarina (see: (http://bit.ly/Z6FX) & (http://bit.ly/B8vk) & (http://tinyurl.com/8ok2zo) ).

So the US is going to have to go and suck up to the Bolivians right quick if they intend to use Lithium as a source or identify another source or material. However, Bollore’s deal making talents in developing countries may make it hard for the US to match or beat the terms he is surely offering the Bolivians.

In the short term the most carbon efficient car you can buy today is a used car – not new electric or hybrid car’s all of which use a lot of energy and produce a much bigger carbon footprint to manufacture than an existing used car (let’s call them pre-owned, sounds more palatable!).

By: gametheoryman

gametheoryman — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:35:24 +0000

Adding a large solar plant to the electric grid does not use batteries. Natural gas (or hydropower) plants are turned up or down as needs change. Batteries are way more expensive.

Solar power produced at the home might use batteries to store unused home-produced electricity. It avoids the cost of distribution and can be less expensive than buying power on the grid. Even so, efficiently regulated grids (not in evidence) would have excess power here sold to the grid and extra demand bought from the grid, so natural gas plants would play their usual role here, too.

Unless we have a really radical change in technology, batteries are only for applications off of the grid: autos, other mobile devices, isolated fixed applications.

By: Mash

Mash — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:04:48 +0000

Why haven’t people used some sort of magnetic energy harvesting as a power source yet? Has anyone seen the “Hummingbird Motor”? A project like this would change the way the world operated. Imagine powering the home and the automobile with this type of technology and the effect this would have on the world. No nation/country would have to rely on any other country for natural resources.

Hummingbird Motor: http://tinyurl.com/pdes5

By: Kontra

Kontra — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:27:29 +0000

For heaven’s sake, why would you stoop so low as to go to Rob Enderle, that quote-whore “from the research firm Enderle Group”? I mean, really!

Less frivolously, you ought to have mentioned the track record of Intel Capital.