Car Companies Lose Money To Be Green

As part of their Goodwill hunting auto companies are trying to out green their competition.  The auto companies do not want to suffer the same fate as the tobacco companies hence they will use the “green” defense when the lawsuits come for damages caused by rising sea levels and severe weather.

Two example of the goodwill hunting are Toyota and Nissan.  With a lot of fanfare Toyota announced the launch of their Hydrogen Fuel Cell car in Japan and the US.

http://insideevs.com/toyota-fuel-cell-sedan-makes-us-debut/

I wrote a university level text book on hydrogen and fuel cells and therefore know a little about this subject.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0070YIZWY

Toyota is probably losing $100,000 to $200,000 on each fuel cell vehicle they will sell.  But that is a small price to pay for the publicity and goodwill.  It is kind of like a super bowl ad. 

Nissan is greening up with their Leaf Plug In.  They announced the cost to consumers for the replacement set of batteries.

http://insideevs.com/breaking-nissan-prices-leaf-battery-replacement-5499-new-packs-heat-durable/

The  price is a another loss leader and probably they will lose $5,000 on each set of batteries.  But they are also clever in requiring the owner of the car to have to trade in the old battery that they will probably use for grid electricity storage.

The fools in the green press believe the pricing is based on cost.  It simply is based on what the market will bear and the losses are simply the costs associated with the development of green goodwill and for the legal defense if and when global warming lawsuits come against the auto companies.  The oil companies have already lost their billions on the greenwashing they all came up with supporting bio fool  (fuel) startups.    The cost of a lithium ion battery pack is still above $600 per kwh and the cost of a fuel cell with 80 kw of power is still over $200,000.  The Green Machine is not fooled by the pricing.

Talking about Bio Fools.  Vinod Khosla is about to put KIOR into bankruptcy.  Vinod has a zero batting average in the bio fuel space.  His failures in the fuel space include Cello, Range, Kior, Amyris, Gevo, and LS 9.  The problem for Vinod is he did not have as much money as Shell Oil to waste on Bio Fools.  Shell actually knew it was all BS and wanted the Green defense against future lawsuits but Vinod really thought he could defeat the the laws of thermodynamics by green talk.  Of late, Condi Rice has been amazingly quiet on both Iraq and KIOR.    The BBC reported that the Russians will supply fighter jets to the Iraqis, I guess Malaki got tired of waiting for bio jet fuel from the US.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28042302

The Russians won’t be losing a trillion dollars in Iraq.  Only the US and the global oil and auto companies can afford to lose money to win the hearts and minds of people.