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dlabtot
07-25-2006, 09:39 AM
^^ What a nonsensical answer. Where did this number, 100 million barrels of oil, come from, other than your imagination?

Let's stick to the real world and skip the hypotheticals. Please stop just making numbers up and pretending they have some basis in fact.

Melonie
07-25-2006, 03:37 PM
Where did this number, 100 million barrels of oil, come from, other than your imagination?

3 million barrels of oil per day to be sold onto the market for 30 odd consecutive days = 100 million barrels in order to provide the proof you seem to require ... the same 3 million barrels of additional oil per day that development of the ANWR plus development of offshore oil deposits off all three US coasts are estimated to be capable of providing into the US oil market on a more or less continuous basis over a period of a few decades.


Melonie, you still have not brought forth a single fact or argument to back up your assertion:

actually I have ... that the 50 cent reduction estimate you quoted was based on a $27 per barrel oil price in the much less volatile world oil market of about 8 years ago when the EIA did the bulk of their ANWR research.

... that the latest figures provided to the gov't correlate a 1.5 million barrel per day reduction in Mexican oil exports to the USA due to rapid depletion of their monster field to an $11 increase in the US oil price. If you assume that what goes up must come down, this would correlate to a 1.5 million barrel per day increase in US domestic oil production causing an $11 decrease in the US oil price. Double that to the 3 million barrels per day of additional US domestic oil production forecast for the ANWR plus offshore wells combined, and arithmetically the decrease would double to $22. Conceding that non-linear effects are possible with larger quantities, I stated a number of $20.

Not that I want to dwell on this point any longer, but the question that somebody should be asking is '$20/bbl lower than what?". If the Mexican monster oil field is indeed declining with shocking rapidity, if our Argentinian neighbor is serious about diverting oil currently exported to the US market to China etc. the US price of oil in 2010 could indeed be well above $100 per barrel mark if no other source of supply comes into the picture to take up the slack. Thus bringing new domestic oil supplies from the ANWR and offshore deposits to market might indeed result in a $100 per barrel US oil price in 2010, but this price would be $20 lower than it otherwise would have been without 3 million barrels per day of additional domestic oil supply thrown into the equation. This was the basis of my 'proof' commentary earlier, that there is simply no way to allow complex economic interactions to play out over a three year period for two different mutually exclusive 'cases', where in one scenario we allow the start of development of the extra 3 million barrels per day of US oil in 2007, and in the other scenario we do not, and arrive at an authoritative comparison. You can actually do one scenario or the other but you can't do both.

Of course there will also be a group of people who will contend in 2010 that authorizing development of the ANWR and offshore oil fields in 2007 didn't reduce oil prices at all, since the 2006 price was $80 and the 2010 price is say $100, with the strong possibility that oil would have cost $120 instead of $100 in 2010 without having allowed development those additional domestic sources of oil being conveniently overlooked.
~

Jay Zeno
07-25-2006, 04:24 PM
Now I felt compelled to take 15 minutes to read some of this stuff.

Tar sands, not economically feasible right now. Might well be by 2013 or 2025.

Coal liquefication, looks economically feasible, already being done.

2 million bbls per day available out of Iraq if we got their oil infrastructure running.

On the other hand:

Proponents say 8% of ANWR would be used and the other 92% locked up forever. (For an analysis of that language, consult the subject 8% of ANWR and American Indians.)

They claim the surface footprint would be much smaller yet, thanks to improved methodologies.

They claim that this can be done without noticeable effect on wildlife numbers, and indeed, the migration numbers reported around the Alaskan Pipeline seem to bear that out, assuming the comparable care is given.

I can be swayed by facts. Here's my proposition. National parks, wildlife refuges, national monuments, are meant to be protected, in trust for future generations, and remain relatively undisturbed. (Things such as national forests are meant to have some exploitation going on.) It should take a dire need to unlock that future trust. Don't rob the kids' piggybank unless there's no other way to buy food. That sort of thing.

Are we at that dire need? I don't think so. We're at economic preferences, not dire need. We have a number of other means to bring in the energy that we need, if we have the will.

But I realize it's much easier to pick up the hammer and break the piggybank than just finding it elsewhere. Sorry, kids.

phonehome
07-28-2006, 01:18 PM
100 thousuand miles on your electric car sounds like a high estimate to me.

I work in the wireless industry so I know a thing or two about rechargeable battereies.

The first generation was Nickel Cadnium (NI-CAD) they were good batteries and properly maintained could last a long time no where near what a lead acid battery would however. The drawbacks of NI=CADs were the could, if not properly used develop the "memory effect" if recharged before they were fully discharged, if/when this happened they would basically be "dead" when they were in reality half way charged still. They also were kind of big and didn't deliver a lot of power for the size and weight involved. The next generations were Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) and lastly your Lithium Ion (LIon) batteries each smaller and lighter than the one before it so for a given size package they deliver more power. However the downside of these batteries has always been that they are only good for a fixed charge cycles, about 5oo for NiMH and about 700 for LIon. In addition their capacity degrades a little with each charge cycle. This is why after about 6 months to a year your cell phone battery does not seem to last anywhere near what it did when it was new.

So assuming that you drive enough every day to require you to charge your car every night, you could go through you 700 charge cycles in around two years. maybe the laptop batteries in question do a little better than you average cell phone battery charge cyclewise but you are still looking at needing to replace those thousand batteries by the end of about 4 years max.

As far as the plugged in version of the Prius, the one sold in Japan always had this option but it was not marketed in the US because Toyota did not want it veiwed as an "Electric Car" with alll the negative images that have tradtionally came with them here in the US.

I still believe that the diesel hybryd with a small bank of lead acid battereis, that can be maintained for many years, with just enough power to take care of the increased demands of accelleration but not needed for cruising down the highway that could get around 150 MPG would be the better way to go.

I you happen to make your own Bio-Diesel even better.

Melonie
07-28-2006, 01:36 PM
^^^ the Tesla people did state that the lithium ion batteries will need to be replaced after 500 charging cycles ... which at 200 average miles between recharges should yield 100,000 miles. As you say, there are tons of variables that can effect overall battery life.

evan_essence
07-29-2006, 12:40 AM
Are we at that dire need? I don't think so. We're at economic preferences, not dire need. We have a number of other means to bring in the energy that we need, if we have the will.I think we are at a time of dire need, not simply at a state of economic preferences, especially when you consider the lead time it takes to see any of these projects, either traditional or alternative sources, come to fruition. If you read "A Thousand Barrels a Second" by Peter Tertzakian and "The Coming Economic Collapse" by Stephen Leeb, you'll likely conclude that we need all of these sources developed simultaneously. All of the traditional sources including all of ANWR, not some measly 8 percent, and all of the new alternatives, and probably some ingenius technological breakthroughs only envisioned now in science fiction as well. And we need to haul serious ass on progress now. Tertzakian is generally cautious but optimistic about the future. Leeb's contention is that if the demand isn't met in an economically feasible fashion, the fragile and complex civilization we live in could take a plunge into the Dark Ages.

-Ev

evan_essence
07-29-2006, 12:55 AM
Call me hopelessly or romantically optimistic, Melonie, but I think it's worth the government's $20,000 to entice you to spend the rest. (It's not their $20,000 anyway, it's supposedly $20,000 they're not taking from you. What would it be used for if they got their hands on it? Bloat.) I mean, you are taking a big risk with your money, regardless of the potential you see for a net return, because there's far from any guarantee that this will come out as promised. I would lay odds against it. Regardless of whether you make, lose or break even, hopefully the project will be solid, not a paper tiger, and yield some positive results in terms of creating technological innovation to advance America's energy independence.

Rah rah rah!

-Ev

evan_essence
07-29-2006, 12:59 AM
A side note on fuel taxes. There's a political and economic can of worms as we move to conservation and alternative energy sources. That fuel tax money's being used to make the deficit look smaller, not so much for transportation projects. Encouraging better gas mileage is undercutting a key source of the federal government's funding. People aren't going to be happy when a more obvious tax has to be instituted to replace a largely unnoticed source of revenues for the feds.

-Ev

Melonie
07-29-2006, 04:58 AM
Leeb's contention is that if the demand isn't met in an economically feasible fashion, the fragile and complex civilization we live in could take a plunge into the Dark Ages.

I don't agree that the $10 a gallon gasoline and 30 cent/kWh electricity and say 40% price increases on everything that requires large amounts of energy to manufacture and/or deliver will throw us back to the Dark Ages literally. However, it is very likely to lower the current 'minimum standard of living' in America, as well as virtually eliminate the middle class, because in both cases the future costs of continuing to use the amounts of energy necessary to sustain these lifestyles will simply no longer be affordable.

To illustrate the principle involved, I'll site last week's lengthy power outages in St Louis and New York City. 100 years ago people would have functioned just fine if their electric lights went out. But today, poor or middle class alike, things like Air Conditioning and Hot Running Water and Microwave Ovens and Refrigerators are taken for granted to be an 'essential' part of life. Because of rising energy costs, not only will unaffordable transportation costs come into the picture, but poor Americans may also be forced to remove some 'essentials' from their list.

Author Leeb is probably correct, though, that certain segments of the American population are likely to 'take matters into their own hands' when some of their 'essentials' become unaffordable - especially when they also see 'rich' Americans living their lives virtually unaffected by rising energy prices ! After all, a $10k per year increase in the energy cost of 'essentials' really means next to nothing to someone earning $1 million per year, but a $5k increase in the annual energy cost of 'essentials' can break a lower middle class or poor American.


It's not their $20,000 anyway, it's supposedly $20,000 they're not taking from you. What would it be used for if they got their hands on it? Bloat

well, not exactly. What it is boils down to the gov't taxing $20k away from middle class taxpayers and handing it to the hybrid/electric car company as a subsidy. At least with Tesla, 100% of that subsidy money lands in Silicon Valley and is used to pay American workers, which is not the case with Honda or Toyota hybrids.

To be even more precise, since the US gov't is running huge deficits, this is an additional $20k that the Federal and state gov't 'borrowed' ... and then decided to give to me for about 2 seconds en-route to the hybrid/electric car company's corporate treasury ... but which will actually be paid for by the future taxes of middle class americans across the board.


That fuel tax money's being used to make the deficit look smaller, not so much for transportation projects. Encouraging better gas mileage is undercutting a key source of the federal government's funding. People aren't going to be happy when a more obvious tax has to be instituted to replace a largely unnoticed source of revenues for the feds

Especially true in states like New York and California were state and local taxes on gasoline add something like 50 cents per gallon. New York has a state budget surplus for the first time in years this year, and the major contributor has been percentage based taxes on fuel, such that state and local tax revenues rose in direct percentage to prices at the pump. This became so 'embarrassing' to state politicians that they recently agreed to cut their fuel tax rates by about 25%, and to actually start fixing some state roads and bridges. However, in point of fact, the lion's share of state and local fuel tax receipts were diverted to pay for Medicaid benefits !
~

phonehome
08-01-2006, 06:30 PM
So Mel, what does tesla say about changing those battereies is it do-able? something your average " I can change my own oil" type of guy/gal would be capable of or would it have to be returned to the factory? Seeing how you will be doing it every 18 months or so, because with those last 50 charge cycles you will be lucky to get 100 miles IE charging every day, how much will just buying the new batteries cost? even if you get a heck of a "bulk rate" and they are 10 bucks each thats 10 grand or 20 grand every three years. At three dollars a gallon that is almost 7000 gallons worth. Put 7000 gallons in a 30 MPG car and you go 210,000 miles, or 70K a year, do you drive that far each year?

All the sudden this electric car does not seem to be such a great deal.

smartcookie
08-01-2006, 09:20 PM
Funny how nobody has an issue with agricultural subsidies.

Jay Zeno
08-02-2006, 04:50 AM
What it is boils down to the gov't taxing $20k away from middle class taxpayers and handing it to the hybrid/electric car company as a subsidy. At least with Tesla, 100% of that subsidy money lands in Silicon Valley and is used to pay American workers, which is not the case with Honda or Toyota hybrids.The article I read said that Lotus is making the Tesla for Tesla. Assuming the article is correct, is Lotus located in Silicon Valley? ? Honda and Toyota both do, and I think I saw that Nissan is going to build its Altima hybrid in Tennessee.

Melonie
08-02-2006, 06:56 PM
Funny how nobody has an issue with agricultural subsidies.

Actually I have made a huge issue about agricultural subsidies and tariffs/quotas erected by the US gov't against imported agricultural products ... in particular the billions paid to corn farmers and the 50 cent per gallon tariff + 7% quota erected to keep out Brazilian sugar cane based ethanol (which can be produced for at least 50 cents/gallon less cost than US corn based ethanol, even if the US gov't agricultural subsidies paid to US corn farmers aren't counted in).


how much will just buying the new batteries cost? even if you get a heck of a "bulk rate" and they are 10 bucks each thats 10 grand or 20 grand every three years. At three dollars a gallon that is almost 7000 gallons worth. Put 7000 gallons in a 30 MPG car and you go 210,000 miles

... well, that's the dirty little secret of all electric/hybrid cars ... amortizing the battery replacment cost. But in fairness, if a Tesla owner winds up spending the equivalent of $3,000 per year = 10 cents/mile in amortized battery replacement cost, this probably has to be compared to future gasoline at 4 or 6 or 10 dollars per gallon not the $3 per gallon we have today. Obviously, vs $10 per gallon and a 30mpg car with a gas engine, the batteries are actually less expensive. But even at a discount middle of the night electric rate the charging costs are still rather significant, and electricity costs will rise right along with gasoline costs in most areas of the US (unless of course more states decide to follow California and mandate a below generation cost electric vehicle charging rate paid for by 'overcharging' commercial and industrial electricity customers).

So from an operational standpoint the Tesla is probably more expensive per mile to drive than almost any gasoline engine car of similar size - and we haven't even talked about states devising an alternate means to collect road tax on electric/hybrid vehicles yet. However, the states are very aware that electric/hybrid vehicle owners are escaping the road tax collected via gasoline sales, and some are already experimenting with alternatives like mandatory GPS/ annual vehicle inspection mileage recording with road tax then being charged annually to the car owner based on miles driven, or other possible means of collecting road tax other than via gasoline sales. With road tax amounting to somewhere between 10% and 25% of the cost of gasoline at the pump, if and when electric/hybrid vehicle owners wind up being billed for road tax by another means it will have a major impact on their overall driving cost per mile. Coincidentally ?? the states that offer the highest alternative energy tax credits for hybrid/electric vehicles are also the same states that charge the highest percentages in road tax, and are also the states where the Tesla will first be offered for sale !

As I said earlier, IMHO the money to be made from buying a Tesla is from flipping it quickly and pocketing the federal and state tax credit incentives @! However, like Honda and Toyota hybrids, I doubt that financial practicality will really be the primary sales factor !!!


The article I read said that Lotus is making the Tesla for Tesla. Assuming the article is correct, is Lotus located in Silicon Valley? Does Lotus have an American plant?

Given the carbon fiber body manufacturing technology, I would guess that this work will either be done on the US west coast (by subcontracting it to somebody who has experience with carbon fiber for aircraft) or in the UK by Lotus as part of their Elise production line ... if for no other reason than the tech being too high and the quantity being too small to be worth tooling up Lotus' Nanjing affiliate in China. The electric motor setup, speed control electronics, battery charging electronics etc will probably come from the US west coast Tesla people initially, as this isn't an area that any automaker besides Honda and Toyota (actually Toshiba) has any real experience with. Well, to be technically correct, Chrysler Corp. has a ton of experience, but it's based on their Orion hybrid electric buses not small cars.

However, I don't doubt for a second that if the Tesla turns out to have 'legs' in the auto market, that a mostly Chinese built future model selling for about half the price will come off the drawing board in short order (which will probably come from Lotus' Nanjing division). But this will probably have to wait until market research starts to show a 60,000/year sales projection, not the couple of thousand Teslas expected to be sold during the first year from initial sales projections.
~

phonehome
08-03-2006, 05:47 PM
Mel

My simple math says that the battery replacement cost will be more like 7000 dollars a year, not 3000. 20 divided by 3

Of course that is totally based on being able to buy the battereries at 10 dollars each AND the fact that you can/have the ability to replace them yourself. Bump up the cost of the battery to 15 or 20 dollars, well within the realm of possibility. Have you bought a new cell phone battery lately? Add to this having to pay someone else to remove and replace the batteries and you could easily be talking more than 10,000 a year. even with 10 dollar a gallon gas that is 1000 gallons or 30,000 miles in that 30 MPG car a year.

Melonie
08-04-2006, 03:25 AM
^^^ you're right of course. I used the extremely rough estimate of 100,000 mile battery life divided by $10,000 replacement cost = 10 cents per mile amortized cost for batteries, and the actual cost could indeed be higher. I also didn't work out the electricity cost of 500 recharges, which at 300kWh * 5 cents/kWh special low rate * 500 = $7500 or another 7.5 cents per mile. Even with these conservative estimates and a 17.5 cents per mile 'energy' cost, this is a break even situation versus $5 per gallon gasoline in a vehicle that gets 32mpg.

Melonie
08-05-2006, 09:18 AM
and speaking of the issue of charging 'road tax' to alternative fuel vehicle owners ...



(snip)"A French farmer faces prosecution for driving on public roads in a vegetable-powered truck.

Olivier Lainé, a cereals farmer based near Rouen in Normandy, believes he will go down in history, not as a criminal, or tax-evader, but a "revolutionary".

M. Lainé, 49, was arrested near his farm by French customs officers. He faces prosecution for driving a vehicle powered by an "unauthorised fuel" - namely pure vegetable oil, made from colza, or rape seed, grown on his own farm. (snip)

"The use of vegetable oil as fuel is authorised for vehicles while operating on a farm. It is illegal to drive vegetable-powered vehicles on public roads because no tax has been paid on the fuel."

Jay Zeno
08-06-2006, 12:55 PM
...I would guess that this work will either be done on the US west coast ...or in the UK by Lotus....Well, but please, a "guess" as to where something might be built is quite a ways from saying tax benefits will go to American workers - when no American plant is yet known to exist - and not Japanese workers - when Japanese car companies employ thousands of American workers in car plants. That was the gist of my comment. I don't think what you set forth as a fact is provably correct.


M. Lainé, 49, was arrested near his farm by French customs officers. He faces prosecution for driving a vehicle powered by an "unauthorised fuel" - namely pure vegetable oil, made from colza, or rape seed, grown on his own farm. (snip)France makes for a good American economic model. Let's follow it.

Casual Observer
08-06-2006, 03:09 PM
Funny how nobody has an issue with agricultural subsidies.

I do...it warps the entire world economy, and it's a regressive tax on most of the third world, where we'd like to sell more of our own products and services, but their economies can't get started because congressmen from the Midwest and French parliment love the romance of the farmer and artificially high crop prices.

Melonie
08-06-2006, 03:17 PM
I ran across this story today regarding the impact on California air pollution levels which supposedly justifies the high cost to state taxpayers of offering alternative energy vehicle tax credits.



This is certainly one more example that govt's can attempt to control events within their own borders, but without effective barriers on imports all that happens is that things seek the lowest common denominator. In this case, California has exported middle class jobs in part because of the high costs of attempting to control pollution (resulting from high taxes, high energy costs, and high environmental compliance costs), but in fact is importing just as much airborne pollution right back in again ! And the problem is only going to get worse, as China has 500 additional power plants mostly powered by coal in some stage of planning or construction to handle the increasing power demands of outsourced production facilities.