image taken from despair.com’s latest t-shirt Before we get to this message’s main event, I’ll throw another brief shoutout to Pope Francis. Sure, he leads one of the world’s socially most regressive organizations, but he seems to be pulling in the right direction, and ultimately, he’s not in fact that powerful — his
Continue readingTag: EV’s (incl. PHEV’s)
Eclectic Lip: British Columbia hits 1,000 EV’s (and gov’t drops support)
image of Tesla Model S’s at a rally, from Consumer Reports British Columbians have now purchased more than 1,000 plug-in electric vehicles. Add in low-speed neighbourhood electric vehicles and owner conversions, and the number will be a bit higher. As of Jan 31, 2014 Polk research (now a division
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The 1-2-3′s of EV market share in the US
My article on the 1-2-3′s of electric vehicle adoption in the U.S. went up on GreenCarReports on the weekend. The commentary went through a title change – a procedure familiar to many famous writers, and many more of us unknown mediocrities. 🙂 About fifteen years after a publisher’s first impression
Continue readingEclectic Lip: December: a podcast premiere
The nice folks at http://www.thisweekinenergy.tv/ (TWiE) invited me to guest on their podcast on their late November episode, Good News, Bad News, Ugly News. While most of their guests are leading experts in their fields, and I’m just a talkative and reasonably-knowledgeable former fuel cell engineer, I heeded Gore Vidal’s
Continue readingEclectic Lip: November EV (and FCV) musings
It’s been a busy month — busy enough that though one in seven Canadians crossed the border for Black Friday, I wasn’t one of them. (Like a further one in three Canadians, I did my shopping online. Bought me some books — and by books, I mean books so nerdy
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The quest for the golden meme
Golden mean image sourced here. It’s been a pretty good month, in terms of writing. Over at GreenCarReports, I had my piece on September EV sales in Canada, a Canadian Thanksgiving-centric story riffing on the country’s nationwide EV charging network, and discussed what our EV drivers do, to get through
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Wiki-immortality!
My August Canadian EV car sales stats update went up recently. Which was cool. Cooler still, I had a chance to wax poetic about sustainability, and my new-found optimism that we’ll avoid the worst of our dystopian horrors. I was invited to be a guest lecturer for an engineering course
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Passing Gas – EV’s now outnumber gas stations, in America
My latest piece is up on GreenCarReports, here. It’s where I sourced the photo from. 🙂 And yes, putting “Passing Gas” in the title was deliberate. Hey, it’s catchy! From what I can tell, electric vehicles also outnumber gas stations in Japan as well. Alas, Canadians are somewhat behind our
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Toyota edition
This car — yes, this car — has impeded Toyota’s electric efforts My post on how The Innovator’s Dilemma explains why Toyota lags in electric vehicles — and how Kleiber’s Law explains there’s nothing for them to worry about (yet), is now up on GreenCarReports. While the Tesla stats were
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The witless wisdom of Shai Agassi
Dunning-Kruger effect graphed by AddAttack on DeviantArt. LinkedIn has an “opinion leader” piece from Shai Agassi, founder of bankrupt car-battery-switcher Better Place, telling carmakers how they need to respond to Tesla’s success. Who better to give them advice than a guy who raised $850 million for an ignorant, impractical, impossible
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Electron democracy
A long-belated companion to Steven Chu’s “Time to fix the wiring” essay I posted earlier, this is the white paper I co-authored for the same McKinsey & Company series. Given the roughly five-month delay in uploading this, I suppose “Time to post the writing” might be an apt subtitle… 🙂
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Number one!
Clearly, people really enjoyed the Canadian Tesla sales stats I was able to pull up via vehicle registration records. The article is now number one for the week! An article on Canadian stats topping an American website’s “recently popular” list. How about that! 🙂 I noticed that the good folks
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Tesla sales in Canada, Jan-May 2013
My GreenCarReports article on Tesla Model S sales in Canada this year has been popular enough to reach second-place in GCR’s “Most Popular this week” sidebar. Very cool, and almost certainly indicative of the fact that Tesla fans are starved for sales data! After all, the company is about as
Continue readingEclectic Lip: April 2013 Canadian plug-in electric vehicle sales
My April update on Canadian plug-in car sales stats in Canada is now up at GreenCarReports. The Volt’s title reign continues — while the Prius Plug-in Prius dropped to fourth place! As noted in the article, I think some of the Prius Plug-in’s challenges come from the fact that it’s
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Feb 2013 Canadian plug-in electric vehicle sales
Been a bit quiet on the blogging front recently, due to some gratifyingly awesome progress on separate writing projects — a trend likely to continue for another couple weeks at least. In the meanwhile, my post on Canadian plug-in electric vehicle sales in Feb 2013, went up last week at
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Plug-in electric car sales in Canada, January 2013 (via GreenCarReports)
My column on plug-in car sales in Canada for January 2013, is now up at GreenCarReports. Since it’s hard to write ~600 words about sales statistics in the very small Canadian market, I discuss how Quebec — not B.C.! — is the leading province for plug-in vehicle adoption, and reasons
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Plug-in electric car sales in Canada, 2012 (via GreenCarReports)
My new adventures as a Canadian correspondent for GreenCarReports.com begin with this post. Readers are encouraged to show them some love. 🙂 My ongoing efforts to track Canadian EV sales figures (and those of a few other countries) remain visible here.
Continue readingEclectic Lip: EV stats for British Columbia (2012)
The kind people at CEV for BC sent over some statistics on Clean Energy Vehicle rebates issued by the provincial government. While the CEV rebates were available for electric, natural gas, and fuel cell vehicles, my understanding is that the rebates break down as follows: – 308x EV’s – 0
Continue readingEclectic Lip: VEVA: end-of-2012 stats updates, and Vancouver area charging station updates
(Cross-posted from the VEVA mailing list and LinkedIn group) A few final updates, before the end of the year. 🙂 a) Metrotown’s charging stations — all 10 of them — should be up and running in January. I’ve been in touch with one of their project managers, who said he’d
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Prius: a Crystal Anniversary (15 years)
A few Prius-inclined websites noted last week that Dec 10, 2012 marked the 15th anniversary of the Prius’ introduction in Japan. With the Prius (temporarily?) becoming the world’s 3rd-best-selling car brand in 2012, the anniversary probably deserves some reflection. 🙂 > As near as I can figure, Malcolm Gladwell-type book
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