How Killed the Electric Car? This new documentary has some pretty straight forward critisim of the Bush Administration and their direct role in making sure we have, and have had these huge oil price increases. They did everything possible to sue California to prevent their leading role efforts in sponsoring the Electric Car choices. Now those choices are going to overseas companies. It is impossible to call Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Benz and a select few others foreign, what with their huge give aways (tax and municipal corporate breaks), their domestic US factories make them US car manufacturers too. So, its best car forward at present. The documentary shows that in 1998, fully electric vehicles capable of 80 miles per hour were already being distributed in the US, and they weren't economy boxes either. Oil Terrorism, Oil Administration, Oil Fiasco, The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History.....all titles of a new movie, soon to show up at your mailbox and in your bank account....
I have read into the death of the Electric car pretty extensively and it was a combination of big oil and all the auto manufacturers fighting it in California. The oil companies sure were worried about something, especially seeing the cool GM EV1 Generation 2 hit the roads. Bush had nothing to do with it besides owning some oil stock in his blind trust. Bush is definitely not my favorite either, but he can't take the blame for everything. I also disagree with your theory that those Japmobiles are now American. Sure they let a few of us assemble imported parts that are engineered and designed abroad but that is a drop in the bucket as far as jobs and benefits to us. Of course now we have to consider MPG also and it may be in the US best interest to drive the most efficient even if it is a Prius. Sure we send our initial money to buy the car to a foriegn country but end up saving our fuel money from sending it to Saudi Arabia, so it balances out. BTW, Insiders at GM confirm they intend to release a plug in hybrid very soon. If they do they will leap into the lead in front of Toyota for hybrids. As far as I know, GM is the only company with actual plans to have the plug in feature, actually Chrysler also because it is a joint project.
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06/07/01/10050631.html That is right folks...the US has been played like a flute by the Bush Oil Administration... Furthermore...there would be no US deficit if Bush Oil Administration policies were not put in place... It does look like the Bush Cheney fiasco team are going to walk away... As they have already won the game... Spin it boys...spin it.....
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Sto...668-4F0E-8A33-2456509615A3}&siteid=mktw&dist= Yeah....add Blair to the list....
What do you want to make a bet: when GM releases it's plug-in hybrid---it's a ginormous chrome-encrusted fat-tired SUV? With fuel efficiency less than a gasoline-only Camry.
With plug in hybrid it doesn't matter, as long as the electric range can get you to work and back, you will never need gas again.
I know it'll sound strange, but talk about hybrid cars and other methods of cutting down consumption are mostly IRRELEVANT (unless we're talking about cutting down overall consumption -10% which would happen in a recession). Every data points to a significant drop in REAL "wet barrel" consumption, even producers say this every other day that they can find NO BUYERS for all their oil anymore. See prior posts. Yet price is surging higher every day. Also, see indirect data, VLCC supertanker rates. See natural gas, which is back to 2004 prices, down -65% since Dec-2005. Remember that nat.gas and oil are substitutable in some applications. Right now nat.gas trades at a price which corresponds to crude oil $35. Just look today, crude oil is +1.3% $75 at all-time HIGHS and nat.gas at 2yr lows -4.6% Oil is a CORNERED MARKET with broken price setting mechanism, because it's priced after futures but there's no link between futures and physical market. (because only a very small % of daily oil production can be used for physical delivery) I consider it criminal negligence by the people in charge to allow this condition to still persist after so many years (but then again, I always considered them criminals anyway). I really don't understand what they're hoping to accomplish, other than even larger wealth transfer. Saudi Oil minister in an interview in a French newspaper last weekend suggested there might be political reasons (fuel outrage against Arabs? I've no idea, but for me it's almost working). An extract from the Reuters story: Naimi said Saudi Arabia had always worked on market stability "in the interest of consumer countries, producer states and in the interest of the world economy in general". "There is no doubt that the initiatives taken by my country and by other oil producers, within or without OPEC, will sooner or later return stability to the market," Naimi said. Naimi said since the beginning of his career in the oil sector, he had never seen as many disagreements and agitation, noting this could partially be explained by a short-term rise in oil prices and "rumours about an assumed exhaustion, limits in excess production capacities and effects on the environment". "It is preferable to us, government officials, business men and intellectuals, to be realistic, to avoid resorting to intimidation or exaggeration despite what this might accomplish in terms of attention and short-term political advantages."
Some think it would be helpful if we could stabilize Iraq. http://www.thekidfrombrooklyn.com/video_disp.asp?videoid=1198
And others like journalist Greg Palast think that... "Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/37371/ Did the U.S. invade Iraq to tap its oil reserves or to make sure they stayed under the sand?" PS: I don't necessarily share his opinion, I'm just presenting an alternate point of view for us to think about. PPS: Oil ended today at all-time-highs 75.x/bar up +1.8% and nat.gas new lows at $5.75/Mbtu -6%.
Why are you taking natural gas----as valued in the continental United States at one point, Erath, Louisiana (Henry Hub) as having anything to do with the global price of oil? US continental natural gas is not really globally, freely supplied, being limited basically to Gulf of Mexico, Wyoming, NM and Canada. Oil in many grades---not just West Texas or Brent---is tracking in price the light sweet crude---around the world. If there was truly a huge supply of wet physical crude without buyers then the spread between physical non-exchange traded and exchange traded would widen greatly. It isn't. Recent facts about Chinese oil demand: <quote> Crude Oil Imports up +20.5% yr-yr in May, re-accelerating, and spiking into positive territory from the (-) 1.8% yr-yr contraction posted in April. Domestic Crude Oil Supplied up + 9.7% yr-yr in May, accelerating from the rise of +2.6% yr-yr posted in April. Product Imports up +416.3% yr-yr, not a typo, up four hundred and sixteen-plus percent, soaring further from the already stratospheric pace of increase posted in April, at +69.5% yr-yr.</quote> There are a couple possible conclusions: 1) global market manipulation across all suppliers, including state owned in all countries 2) A Saudi oil minister is lying, and we are hitting Peak Oil at the same time China isn't close to hitting Peak Oil Demand. Note that the Kuwaiti opposition party, which just got control of its parliament is now demanding that plans for increased oil production be halted---and an independent survey of reserves taken, under rumors that real oil reserves are significantly lower than claimed. The Saudis are looking at this potential very warily. If they admitted that oil reserves truly were lower than they say {and they are profigately spending the nation's wealth the dissipative lifestyle of the House of Saud} n the result would not be criticism by the opposition, but fundamentalist revolution. They would lose their heads, literally. Because of their extremely difficult domestic political position, I think that anything a Saudi oil minister says is about as reliable as Baghdad Bob. My feeling: peak oil is real. No whining.