by Jeremy Hsu – TECHNEWSDAILY – Published: Feb 12, 2010

Rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum are crucial for future technologies such as hybrid cars, but their scarcity could thwart innovation.

But more common metals used in the tech industry could fare better, even if their prices rise due to worldwide demand. For example, lithium-ion batteries for hybrid cars and smart phones won’t run out anytime soon because there is an overabundance of lithium, Jack Lifton, an independent consultant for U.S. rare earths, told the Gold Report during a December interview.

Other important elements tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

Iron and steel make up about 95 percent of all the metal produced in the United States and worldwide, and find uses in thousands of products. These are the least expensive of the world’s metals.

Aluminum is the second most abundant metallic element in the Earth’s crust, just behind silicon. Its light weight, durability, corrosion resistance and malleability make it the most widely used metal after iron.

Copper has one of the oldest lineages of any metal, and has served as the foundation for many ancient civilizations. It still represents the third most-used industrial metal because of its thermal and electrical conductivity – characteristics that make it highly useful in power transmission, telecommunication, and many electronic products.

Gold is still coveted for its monetary value and for jewelry, but it is also an excellent electrical conductor. As an industrial metal, its applications include computers, communications equipment, spacecraft and jet aircraft engines.

Silver has been used for thousands of years to make ornaments, utensils, and coins. Of all the metals, pure silver has the highest reflectivity, and the highest thermal and electrical conductivity. As a result, silver has many industrial applications including mirrors, electrical and electronic products, and photography.

Niobium and tantalum find uses in a variety of high-tech applications. Niobium (also known as columbium) shows up in jet engine components and rocket subassemblies, while tantalum is used to make parts for cell phones, pagers, personal computers and automotive electronics. The U.S. currently imports both resources from countries such as Brazil, Canada and Australia.

Yesterday at the Seeking Alpha Web site, John Petersen published an excellent article on the new Electrification Coalition, titled “Rapid Transition to Grid Enabled Vehicles Not Possible or Desirable.” I suggest you read this article right now, if you haven’t done so already.

To paraphrase John Milton, “logical analysis is a dangerous thing, drink deep or drink naught of the logical spring.”

I want everyone to print the following paragraph by John in his article, and to read and to understand it:

“Batteries are commodities, as are all of the raw materials that are used to make the batteries, motors and other components required for a [Grid Enabled Vehicle]. The roadmap assumes away critical issues of raw materials availability by proving that the elements exist in nature and then ignoring fundamental natural resource development issues like location, economics, environmental impacts and the difference between known mineral resources and developed mineral reserves. It also assumes that recycling issues will resolve themselves despite the fact that the only class of ARRA battery manufacturing grants that went begging was battery recycling.”

As usual, John has zeroed in on the two key points of logical absurdity in this latest set of directions on how governments should spend taxpayer money for private interest:

1. This group does not understand the difference between “present in the earth’s crust” and “available for use by mankind,” and
2. There is no safe, economical, recycling method for recovering the lithium from lithium-ion batteries.

Unelected, poorly educated bureaucrats, throw money at nice presentations such as the outlined in John’s article. The money has been allocated to their use by elected, poorly educated, politicians whose advisors are agenda ridden interest groups. In government speak this process is called “investing in science and technology.”

We’re watching just another lobby being born. This will be the infrastructure spending for electrification lobby. It’s an interest group not an agenda.

by PAUL MASON – BBC WORLD NEWS / NEWSNIGHT – Published: Nov 17, 2009

LONDON – Above ground, factories in China are churning out goods to be shipped around the world, below it, lies rare earth metals which are crucial to nearly every 21st century technology.

Paul Mason reports on a rare commodity in hot demand [features an interview with Jack Lifton].

by ALISHA HIYATE – THE NORTHERN MINER – Published: Nov 6, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Jack Lifton has an urgent warning for the United States when it comes to the supply of rare earth elements (REEs) — metals that are essential to everything from cell phones and LCD screens to military applications and hybrid cars.

Addressing attendees here at the first annual Infocast Risk Management for Critical and Strategic Metals conference, Lifton cautioned that the States’ nearly total reliance on China for rare earths may jeopardize the nation’s access to the high-tech metals in the future.

“When everything is made in China, it will be a Chinese decision whether you can have these things,” the author, consultant and rare earth expert told the audience. “I think we’re reaching a serious choking point here. We must develop production of rare earths in this country right now because it takes a while (to get production online).”
Once a producer of rare earths — the 15 lanthanide metals plus yttrium — the U.S. now relies on China for 95% of its supplies.

Over the three-day conference, attendees largely representing industry, government, and explorers of rare earths and other minor metals, heard that the U.S. — which is also now dependent on foreign supply for other strategic and essential metals, including germanium, tantalum and lithium — is right to be concerned about the situation.

Although the overall market for rare earths is small by volume, demand is on the rise, from 124,000 tonnes rare earth oxides (REO) in 2008 to a projected 200,000 tonnes REO in 2016, according to Dudley Kingsnorth, executive director of Industrial Minerals Co. of Australia.

Recent developments have shown just how precarious the U.S.’s position may be.

Exports from China have been falling steadily by about 6% a year, Kingsnorth said, and while he doesn’t see exports falling more dramatically than that in future, he does predict that China’s rapid consumption of the metals could cause it to run out of heavy rare earths in 20-30 years. While China provides 95% of the world’s rare earths supply (India and Russia are minor producers), it consumes about 60%.

And that may explain why, in August, a report by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for a complete ban on exports of some heavy rare earths — the most valuable and in demand of the REEs — terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium and lutetium. A severe restriction on exports of the REEs neodymium, europium, cerium and lanthanum to a combined 35,000 tonnes a year, was also proposed.

Mark Smith, CEO of privately owned Molycorp Minerals, said that the spectre of a ban and additional restrictions have underlined the sense of urgency surrounding rare earths.

“We need to do something about it — not just look at China and hope they supply the rest of us forever,” Smith said. “China doesn’t have unlimited mining capacity.”

Molycorp’s Mountain Pass operation, which first began production in 1952 and came back online at the end of 2007 after being shut down for five years, is the sole U.S. producer of REEs.

Seeking to bolster its own manufacturing sector and create jobs, China is making the shift to new technologies, including flat-screen TVs, wind turbines and electric vehicles. To that end, it will not only consume more of its own resources in future, but also continue to reach into Africa, Australia, Canada, and other parts of the world for more.

“We’re all focusing on the fact that China is the leading producer (of rare earths),” Lifton said. “We need to focus more on the fact that China is a leading consumer.”

China’s centralized economy means that it can make the switch to new technologies quickly and efficiently. Much of its 4-trillion-yuan (US$586 billion) stimulus package is going into making that switch.

“They don’t have to spend a year in Congress to decide how that money is going to go out,” said Noah Lehrman, senior vice-president of Hudson Metals, a New York City-based company that supplies minor metals to industry.

Environmental concerns are also putting a crimp in Chinese production to the tune of about 10%, Kingsnorth said. The country is in some cases enforcing its own pollution laws. In other cases, word of chemical spills and other environmental damage spreads quickly through the Internet and other new technologies, pressuring the government to crack down on operations that are not up to code.

While many presenters and panelists sounded the alarm on rare earths, Chris Hartshorn, research director of Lux Research, a firm that provides strategic advice on emerging technologies, advocates a more measured response to a potential rare earths crunch. There may well be some REEs that will be in short supply and for which there are few or no alternatives, he says, but that’s not the bulk of them.

“It depends on where you are in the value chain,” he said in a post-conference interview. Hartshorn explains that while China may well impose further restrictions on exports of certain raw metals, “I would be surprised if the export of components (further down the value chain) would be restricted (to the same degree).”

The U.S., European Union and Mexico have taken their complaints about China’s export restrictions to the World Trade Organization. But in the meantime, the squeeze on Chinese exports has Lifton urging the U.S. to look north, rather than east. Canada, he said, is a friendly neighbour with a “treasure trove” of natural resources, small population and expertise in exploration and mining that already has China and Japan making investments.

“Why aren’t we?” Lifton asked.

And as rare earth projects take a long time to get online, it might be wise for investors to get in now — but not before they educate themselves on the many ways they differ from typical mining projects.

First, REEs occur together and must be mined and processed together, then separated. That affects the economics, because some elements, namely HREEs, are more valuable than light rare earth elements (LREEs), which are typically more abundant.

Second, the market for rare earths is small and opaque, which means pricing and production information is not readily available. The uncertainty that creates for investors means the only way a new project can make it to production is if the company has an offtake agreement with an end user.

And because each rare earths deposit is unique in terms of its mineral makeup, the metallurgical process must be tailor-made for each project. That involves a pilot plant — an expensive and lengthy step that’s also necessary to prove the end product will meet the requirements of the end user.

Finally, new applications for REEs are continually being developed, says Don Bubar, president and CEO of Avalon Rare Metals (AVL-T), which means that a deposit whose makeup is skewed toward REEs that are less valuable today, may be prized tomorrow.

“There’s no perfect deposit and if you do find one, it won’t be perfect in a few years,” Bubar said. Avalon is developing the Nechalacho REE deposit, in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

One other notable characteristic of the rare earths business is illustrated by veteran miner Molycorp.

The company is developing proprietary new technologies that use cerium, an LREE it produces that’s already in oversupply. Because you can’t leave the less valuable minerals behind, “that is a really good strategy,” says Lux Research’s Hartshorn.

While no one at the conference predicted a shortage of lithium any time soon, many commented that the domination of the market by a very few large suppliers — in Chile, Argentina, Australia and China (with minor production coming from the U.S.) — is a problem for automakers looking to bring electric vehicles to market.

While hybrid cars largely use nickel metal hydride batteries, electric cars that are due in show rooms as early as late next year, starting with the Nissan Leaf, will use still-to-be-perfected lithium ion batteries, which require high-grade lithium carbonate.

Future demand for lithium, which makes for lightweight, powerful batteries, really depends on how well-received electric vehicles are.

Jay Chmelauskas, president of Western Lithium Canada (WLC-V), said “true believers” think there will be a 10% adoption rate of electric cars, and in that scenario, the world will definitely need more lithium production.

“We will not run out of lithium, but we need to bring on more supply,” he said.

But the current hoopla around lithium could lead to oversupply, Hartshorn said.

Based on a recent electric vehicle report produced by Lux Research, he said there would be no pressure on lithium from this pivotal end user over the next 10 years.

The projections indicate a looming lithium battery oversupply will be upon us in 2015 “and easily beyond that,” Hartshorn says. Indeed, the best-case scenario for lithium producers, which assumes an oil price of US$200 per barrel, predicts an adoption rate (worldwide) of 0.3% for electric vehicles by 2020, with plug-in hybrids at 3.7%.

The study took into account different existing vehicle fleets, fuel prices and incentives in different parts of world.

Irving Mintzer, a principal of energy consulting firm MEG LLC disagreed on electric vehicle takeup, saying that changes in values, rather than economic drivers like oil, would prompt a shift to electric cars. He predicted that by 2030, as many as one-third of vehicles purchased in the U.S., or about 5 million cars, could have electric drive trains.

The amount of takeup depends not only on incentives offered by governments, but also on infrastructure, which Hartshorn noted depends on action by typically slow-moving utilities. Only a few have started to consider electric vehicles as a critical part of their future planning.

What’s certain is that all the recent hoopla around lithium and the electric car has spurred a flood of juniors to explore for the metal. Dominated as the industry is by a few giants, like Chile’s Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM-N) (SQM), that may be a risky place to be.

Novis Smith, vice-president technology of LithChem Energy International, had a warning for new entrants into the lithium space, reminding the audience that SQM has blown away the competition in the past by dropping prices. SQM, which produces lithium from brines in Chile as a byproduct of potash, is the world’s largest producer of the metal.

“They’re the 800-pound gorilla in the room and they’ll do what they want to do,” Smith cautioned.

Copyright © 2009 The Northern Miner.

By STEVE GORMAN – REUTERS – Published: Aug 31, 2009

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods.

That makes Toyota’s market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world’s dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand swells.

Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed. One promising U.S. source is a rare earths mine slated to reopen in California by 2012.

Among the rare earths that would be most affected in a shortage is neodymium, the key component of an alloy used to make the high-power, lightweight magnets for electric motors of hybrid cars, such as the Prius, Honda Insight and Ford Focus, as well as in generators for wind turbines.

Close cousins terbium and dysprosium are added in smaller amounts to the alloy to preserve neodymium’s magnetic properties at high temperatures. Yet another rare earth metal, lanthanum, is a major ingredient for hybrid car batteries.

Production of both hybrids cars and wind turbines is expected to climb sharply amid the clamor for cleaner transportation and energy alternatives that reduce dependence on fossil fuels blamed for global climate change.

Toyota has 70 percent of the U.S. market for vehicles powered by a combination of an internal-combustion engine and electric motor. The Prius is its No. 1 hybrid seller.

Jack Lifton, an independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert, calls the Prius “the biggest user of rare earths of any object in the world.”

Each electric Prius motor requires 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of neodymium, and each battery uses 10 to 15 kg (22-33 lb) of lanthanum. That number will nearly double under Toyota’s plans to boost the car’s fuel economy, he said.

Toyota plans to sell 100,000 Prius cars in the United States alone for 2009, and 180,000 next year. The company forecasts sales of 1 million units per year starting in 2010.

As China’s industries begin to consume most of its own rare earth production, Toyota and other companies are seeking to secure reliable reserves for themselves.

Reuters reported last year that Japanese firms are showing strong interest in a Canadian rare earth site under development at Thor Lake in the Northwest Territories.

A Toyota spokeswoman in Los Angeles said the automaker would not comment on its resource development plans. But media accounts and industry blogs have reported recently that Toyota has looked at rare earth possibilities in Canada and Vietnam.

(Editing by Alan Elsner and Mary Milliken)

Copyright © Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

I recently read an Autoblog.com article entitled “Chevy Volt’s 230 mpg rating, ad campaign comes under fire from Bill Ford, AdAge“. It was poorly edited, poorly fact-checked and poorly written. William Clay Ford, could not have said what the article attributed to him in the context described.

The Ford Motor Company has a first-class battery development group directed by Ted Miller. That group developed its own version of the rare earth metal-based  nickel metal hydride (NiMH)  battery in-house, and then bid out the mass production of that battery to experienced manufacturers. The winners for the mass production contract were Sanyo and Panasonic, which are today the primary and alternate suppliers of this type of battery, for the four full-hybrid models offered by Ford. Ford has so-far sold 100,000 full hybrids utilizing NiMH batteries and the future looks very promising for its best-in-class Ford Fusion Hybrid.  This is a fantastic machine that gets 700 miles on a tank of gas, and can go nearly 50 miles an hour in electric mode only-albeit for just a few miles at that speed.

So, if “Bill” Ford was saying, as the article implies, that his company doesn’t “have any particular expertise in batteries,” [and that therefore] they’ll probably buy the batteries from established manufacturers for their own electrified cars, he must have been talking about lithium-ion batteries. However, this is a suspect interpretation also, because Miller’s team has a great deal of experience in lithium-ion batteries also. Miller himself came to Ford from France’s SAFT, a pioneering company in lithium-ion battery technology.

I don’t know what Bill Ford said in the interview quoted by Autoblog.com, but then again they don’t either.

Ford has vastly more experience of vehicle electrification than GM. The nonsense about the MPG rating of the Chevrolet Volt only reinforces the consequences of Ford’s superior expertise.

All the recent nonsense about the Chevrolet Volt’s fuel use and performance is just hot air, until the car is on the road and its actual performance under real driving conditions and with ordinary drivers is measured. I propose a side-by-side test of the Prius and the Chevrolet Volt to settle which is the more practical and versatile car.

A friend of mine who lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has driven a 2007 Toyota Prius, which he bought new, for the last two years.

He does not garage his Prius in the winter and told me last summer, when I was visiting, that during the winter of 2007-8 the air temperature in Saskatoon reached -30 °F on more than one occasion.

Nonetheless, he said, his Prius never once failed to start on any winter morning.

Yes, the Prius nickel-metal-hydride battery has a heating and cooling system, which drains some power from the battery to maintain it above a set temperature in the winter and below a set temperature in the summer, but his Prius has made it through two Saskatoon winters without a failure to start or operate.

I was in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada two weeks ago, and I noted that the Yellowknife Fire Department Chief’s car is a Prius. I asked a lady fire captain who was driving the car if the department had had any weather problems with the car. She said “no” even on the day that yellowknife experienced an air temperature of -50 °F in the winter of 2007-8. Admittedly the car is garaged, but it was in use at -50 °F.

Yes, I know that the Prius is a full hybrid with a gasoline fueled ICE and the Volt is an “extended range” plug-in hybrid (whatever that actually means), but I would never even consider buying a Chevrolet Volt until I know in what air temperature range it can be operated. I live in Detroit where below 0 °F winters are common, and I think the Volt is a fair weather car.

I want General Motors to succeed, so I ask, politely, that a Chevrolet Volt and a Toyota Prius and, to be fair, A Ford Fusion be run through their paces by ordinary drivers in a variety of climate extremes, road conditions, and road grades.

No matter how the EPA calculates MPG it won’t matter at all if the car’s range is small, or if it won’t function in extremes likely to be met daily by most drivers outside of Southern California.

I really don’t think GM’s engineers have solved all of the basic problems faced by the Volt, and I think that all of the talk about fuel economy and acceleration is just to mask how impractical such a car is and what a tiny market segment it really has.

If I’m wrong just match it up now with existing EVs and let’s see the results that prove me wrong.

Bloomberg, for August 12, 2009, published the following report:

Sumitomo Corp. to Form Venture With Kazatomprom, Nikkei Says

By Fergus Maguire
Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) — Sumitomo Corp. will form a venture this year with Kazatomprom, the Kazakhstan government-owned nuclear power company, to produce rare-earth metals, Nikkei English News said, without citing anyone.

Annual output is expected to reach 3,000 tons in 2010, the report said. Sumitomo is seeking to increase its supply of the metals used in hybrid and other environmentally friendly vehicles, the report said.

Separately, Toyota Motor Corp.’s Toyota Tsusho unit plans to spend 40 billion yen ($417 milllion) to develop resource supplies, mainly rare earths, over the next five years, the report said.

There is one story here but it is of two different time frames for producing new supplies of the critical rare earth metals needed by Japanese industry to ensure that:

1. In the near term, it can continue to make (high temperature operation) permanent magnets for electric motors for green applications, and
2. In the long term, it can continue to make nickel metal hydride batteries for the Japanese OEM automotive industry.

1There is only one way at all that Kazakhstan, without an existing producing or ready-to-produce rare earth mine, could conceivably produce, within a year, rare earths at a 3,000 metric tons (t) per annum rate. That would be if Sumitomo were going to extract rare earths from the tailings (residues) from uranium mining in which rare earths and thorium are almost always found. I suspect that Sumitomo has already developed a process to extract rare earths from the possibly immense tailings, which began to accumulate in the Soviet era when Kazakhstan was the Soviet bloc’s main supplier of uranium. It may also be true that Kazatomprom has already constructed such a plant but didn’t have either or both an efficient technology and the capital to put the plant into operation. Sumitomo is a supplier to, among others, Toyota, and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of Toyota’s 40 billion Yen for rare earths has been used to buy an off-take of selected rare earth metals from this project..

I do not know how a rare earth refinery with a 3,000 t per year throughput could be built and in operation within a year, so either it already exists or a deal has been made with China!

2With a long term view Toyota Tsusho has already announced it will particiapte in the funding of the development of the very large Dong Po rare earth deposit in Viet Nam, but this development will easily take 3-7 years to bring a new mine into production, develop an extraction metallurgy, and build a refinery to separate and purify the metals.

Japanese gologists have lately been looking to confirm rare earth and other mineral deposits in Canada. Could something be brewing along the lines of what’s happening in Kazakhstan and Viet Nam in our northern mineral rich neighbor?

The cart is dragging the horse as the economically and electrical engineering clueless are now debating where to put the infrastructure for recharging (fueling) electrified motor vehicles. All we have to do, they say, is change the transportation fueling, the shopping habits, and the daily routines we have built up over the last 100 years as soon as possible.

They skirt around the fact that we will also have to reconstruct our electric power distribution grid, and do so in the light of changing our electricity demand cycles, and avoid fast charging except in emergency situations while we’re at it. But wait. What was that last thing we need to do???

There is today NO widely distributed system to provide fast-charging stations for large numbers of electrified motor vehicle batteries to be recharged at random times.

The reason is simple; it is FAR EASIER, safer, more economical, and less time consuming, to swap a charged battery for an exhausted one than to give a “low” battery a “fast charge.” Why is this, you ask? It is because “fast charging” a battery shortens its cycle life. It is an emergency procedure only for today’s universally used lead-acid storage batteries. GOT THAT? Fast charging is deleterious to the mechanical structure of all known existing widely used storage batteries. Plus since we don’t have a fast charging network isn’t it easier to build vehicles that will not need one?

No lithium-ion, nickel metal hydride, or lead-acid storage battery system existing or under development has been shown to be able to survive multiple fast charges without degrading its performance, structure, and its cycle life. Some lithium-ion battery types, including the most power efficient, the lithium-cobalt-oxide type – today widely used for lap top computers – are likely to overheat during a fast charge and rapidly degrade without much advance notice.

Fast charging of a storage battery of any type used today is an emergency system only; it is not practical, economical, or safe for routine daily use!

So why do we keep hearing that THEY will solve the problem of the amount of time it takes to fully recharge a battery by making it so that the battery can be fast charged?

In general the answer is that stock promoters, poorly educated journalists, and college professors with ideas for building “advanced” batteries cannot raise money by highlighting technological problems, so they resort to glossing them over, or, in the case of neighborhood recharging stations and “fast charging”, they simply make lemonade from lemons. They tell you that the problem is an opportunity to make even more money by building charging stations in Big Box store parking lots, where people can spend more time than they could economically (for the fueling station) at a fueling station, at which fueling station the wait even to fast charge a car battery would be many times the wait for a gasoline or diesel fill-up. They also tell you that every business, public parking lot, and state park can make money putting in fast charging stations; it’s as easy as that. Just open your wallet.

Think of a battery as a 5 gallon container with a narrow filling neck. If you pour electricity into it one cupful at a time then it will take whatever time it takes you to fill, carry, and dump 80 cups into the container. Obviously if you bring the electricity in gallon jars it will only take 5 trips, and if you deliver the 5 separate gallons in the same time as the 80 cups you will be fast filling the container.

Some of my readers will say that you can also widen the filling neck.The way you do this with electricity is to raise the voltage. But if you raise the voltage and the current carrying capacity of a home or “gas station” it will be just to fuel electrififed motor vehicles. It is economic nonsense to equip every home with the equipment to “fast charge” a car, because the equipment would sit idle almost all of the time. At a gas station even a fast charge for a Chevrolet Volt would take 15-45 minutes (by contrast with overnight at standard “normal” household voltage and current capacity.) Compare this with the 5-6 minutes it akes to deliver 20 gallons of liquid hydrocarbon fuel, and you will see immediately the birth of a bottleneck for fueling stations.

All other issues being ignored, it is impossible to see how a fueling station operating only as a fueling station could service cars coming in (only) for a fast charge, unless the station had a huge parking area and a huge supply of electricity from the grid around the clock. Do Los Angeles brown-outs from air conditioning overuse come to mind?

If our society were being logical in prioritizing the electrification of the personal motor vehicle for private passenger carrying use, then the government would create a “National Committee to engineer an electrified motor vehicle and develop a fueling system for it.”

The Committee would inquire: WITHOUT ANY INITIAL REGARD for the personal enrichment of the shareholders OR MANAGERS of any particular existing company:

1. Which is the best way to electrify the personal private passenger carrying motor car? Should it be:
   1. A hybrid of some type;
   2. A battery powered only vehicle;
   3. A vehicle connected to a grid by wire or induction?
2. Having chosen a system, such as one above, the committee would then ask: does the USA have the natural, intellectual, and industrial resources to do the job?
3. Then the committee would ask: Can the political objections to producing the natural resources, finished goods, and rights of way (e.g., for a national smart grid) be overcome?
4. If and only if a system has been chosen and the resource and politcal impediments are agreed to be surmountable, then the committee must ask:
   1. What steps, in what order, must be taken to accomplish the goal of electrifying the personal motor car for private use with the chosen power train;
   2. What timetable will be optimal for solving the basic problems (how do we prioritize the R&D?);
   3. How do we as a nation underwrite the very long term investments, i.e. those with very far out returns on investment that will be necessary to privately:
      1. produce the natural resources and design, engineer, and build facilities for manufacturing the necessary equipment (such as batteries or fuel cells), and
      2. Build the necessary infrastructures in terms of power plants, a national smart grid, and local fueling stations.

Politicians do not like to think in terms of cures for diseases they prefer to offer free band-aids.

The political and Wall Street solution to the problem of fast-charging, is to gloss over it and to try to be sure that every lab experiment on fast charging is promoted as the “solution” to the problem.

We are going at the electrification of the personal privately owned motor car ass backwards. We need to identify the roadblocks and see if there is a solution possible in a reasonable time for ALL of them. If we do not we are just pouring our nation’s resources of money and time down a black hole.

The solution is to determine if we can electrify the nation’s motor car fleet economically and in a reasonable time.  This requires that the US Congress and public be educated and an agenda to answer the question be set and followed by those without a conflict of interest or hidden agenda of personal gain from a specific technology or political solution!

There is no way at all to FAST CHARGE this scenario. If we continue on the path we are on we will accomplish nothing and waste our precious resources.

French car maker, Peugeot, has matched its long history of making and marketing diesel cars, with the solid performance history of reliable and long-lived nickel metal hydride battery packs – similar to those made and used by Toyota in the Prius “full” hybrid – to introduce the first diesel hybrid powered car to enter the global marketplace in mass production.

Did Peugeot engineers and marketers choose reliability over hype?

I think that one reason that Peugeot chose to go with the rare earth based nickel metal hydride battery for its first-in-class diesel hybrid sedan was, simply, because it still could.

The critical metal in a nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery,  is the second most abundant of the rare earth metals, lanthanum. A state-of-the-art NiMH battery today, for a vehicle with the size and performance of the Toyota Prius, for example, uses between 12 and 20 kg of (primarily) lanthanum containing some neodymium and a little praseodymium in its overall construction. Additionally, the battery uses up to five times as much nickel metal as it does lanthanum and a small amount of cobalt. Thus the manufacturing of a NiMH battery pack requires a lot of rare metals as well as a lot of engineering.

The difference between a NiMH battery and a lithium-ion battery is primarily that the NiMH battery has been used in over a million full hybrids in which a battery powered electric motor is matched with a gasoline powered internal combustion engine, in a power train where both can be coupled to the drive shaft and either can be used to propel the car by itself.

Most of the full hybrid cars built in the last decade primarily by Toyota, Honda, and Ford are still on the road and provide daily testimony to the reliability of the NiMH battery pack for full hybrid operation.

By selecting the NiMH battery pack for expansion of the commercial full hybrid car to include the diesel hybrid, Peugeot is preferring caution to experiment. Lithium-ion battery powered full hybrids have not yet begun even to be tested in mass-produced cars, so therefore there is no long-term real time operating data for any of the more than 20 types of lithium ion batteries that are being proposed for use in electrified vehicles.

Peugeot is a conservative company with one of the longest histories of producing cars for mass consumption. It is also a long-standing mass producer of diesel engines and diesel engined cars and trucks.

By choosing the NiMH battery pack for use in a car that will define Peugeot’s continuing record of diesel engine innovation and leadership, Peugeot has also challenged Toyota for leadership in full hybrids in Europe. Honda recently did the same thing in Japan and the US, by introducing a smaller full hybrid sedan, priced at less than the category-leading Prius.

Toyota pioneered the full hybrid, mass-produced passenger car with its Prius. The third generation of the Prius, the 2010 model, has just gone on sale in Japan and the US and is a hit. Toyota has said that it will roll out an additional 3 models of the Prius “brand” along with additional Lexus hybrids in the next calendar year. Honda at the same time has expanded its full NiMH-using hybrid line, with a smaller Prius-fighter and a new Insight model. Ford this year expanded its line of NiMH using full hybrids, from 2 to 4 models, including the new Fusion hybrid, which many reviewers think is the best overall full hybrid of all, so far.

Now Peugeot has entered the fray with a diesel NiMH using full hybrid to get increased fuel economy, longer range, and lower carbon dioxide emissions (already lower than those of the Prius, which itself is no slouch in the low carbon dioxide emissions category).

While the press celebrates the spending of billions of dollars on the “development” of a hodgepodge of lithium-ion technologies and on the building of “factories” to make the different types of lithium batteries in mass production before anyone has any idea at all of their durability, longevity, safety, and cycle life, the rational investor should take note of the conservative direction taken by some of the world’s best car makers, Toyota, Honda, Ford, and Peugeot. They will continue to use what works and what is reliable as well as economical for their largest segment of customers, and they will always do so. That’s why Peugeot isn’t going bankrupt.