Are Batteries the Future? - 5/4/09

America does not seem to get excited about electric cars and hybrids.  Many think it is hard for a semi-truck to run on an electric engine.  This may be very short sighted according to Ryan Russell contributor to the Dow Theory Letters. 

Russell points out that battery life is not an issue.  Better Place, an Israeli company has come up with an automatic recharging process; you drive into a station and a robotic arm removes your battery and replaces it with a fresh one and you never leave your car.  The system in Israel and Denmark will have a grid of stations completed by 2011.  Australia and the Bay Areas region in California will soon start their own Better Place projects.

According to Russell the biggest problem with wind and solar energy is storage; you may have an abundance at one point and time and not another.  The beauty of the “battery stations” is they can be connected to the grid and use the extra power produced by wind and solar at “off peak” hours and store it in batteries.

Russell believed transportation can be “transformed” by leaders in the battery industry like BYD co. LTD based in China.  They make batteries for Apple and are the world’s leading supplier of cell phone batteries.  The company is moving into the auto battery industry.  The company employs 130,000 workers lead by 10,000 engineers.  CEO Wang Chuan-fu hires and trains employees from the very best of China’s schools.  He says, “They are the top of the top”.

BYD has developed a battery so “green” that CEO Wang has drank the battery fluid in demonstrations. 

Warren Buffet wanted to buy one quarter of BYD but CEO Wang declined.  It is reported Buffet has purchased shares in the company. 
 
Batteries need electricity so one of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire owned companies, Mid-American Energy may partner with BYD to produce an American network of recharging stations.  Utility companies will have a big hand in the electric car future. 

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