$247 A Barrel Crude & REEs.

‘[Terra 51] is the world’s only DC rapid charger that can connect interoperably with other systems using something called OCPP, Open Charge Point Protocol,’ ABB’s UK head of sales for EV charging, Martin Hale, told The Engineer.

Yesterday the Paris based International Energy Agency released a report forecasting the price of a barrel of crude oil reaching $247 by 2035. Who knows, such long range forecasting depends very much on the assumptions used, and inputs into the business model, but the IEA ought to have one of the more sophisticated models around. Of course if anything happened to the oil production from the Saudi’s giant Ghawar oilfield we will probably get there sooner, but that’s an article for a different blog.

From our RMB perspective it adds to the likelihood of a sustained  switch over to electric motoring, and with it the likelihood of strong demand for rare earth metals. Predicting the future can be tricky, of course, as can be seen daily by our squabbling politicians and economists. But there was other good news for EVs yesterday as GM’s Chevy Volt was declared safe by America’s NHTSA, after months of testing concluding that no “discernible defect trend exists” with the battery.

IEA Sees 2035 Crude at $247 Barrel, Almost Twice OPEC’s Forecast
By Ayesha Daya - Jan 24, 2012 3:37 PM GMT

Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The International Energy Agency expects nominal crude prices to reach $247 a barrel by 2035, almost twice the $133 assumed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, even as expectations for demand converge.
more


In the UK too, there was a recent development in the support structure for EV motoring with opening by engineering giant ABB, of their first of many fast charging DC stations.  With hardly any EVs on the UK’s roads yet, putting in the support infrastructure will proceed on money efficiency basis, but its good to see that the industry has already put in place standards and OCPP, the open charge point protocol. Though there’s no money to be made yet out of charging facilities, I suspect a decade on we’ll be kicking ourselves for the missed opportunity.

Company unveils UK's first EV rapid-charging station
19 January 2012
The UK’s first private electric-vehicle rapid-charging station was launched yesterday, highlighting the need for infrastructure to encourage the sale of EVs.

Power-technology firm ABB claims its Terra 51 DC charger reduces charging times from eight hours to 15–30 minutes for an 80 per cent top-up, and is currently the only rapid model that can connect to networks of other charging stations via the internet.

The installation of a Terra 51 at the site of Nottinghamshire printing company RCS is seen as the start of the creation of a network of privately owned rapid-charging stations needed to help overcome consumers’ fears about running out of power (referred to as ’range anxiety’).

----The charging technology uses specialised software to enable it to continuously talk to the car’s battery-management system, in order to control how the large amount of power needed for rapid charging is fed into the battery without damaging it and reducing its life.

ABB’s software follows the Japanese CHAdeMO standard, making it compatible with cars such as Nissan’s Leaf, but also uses freely available open-source software and additional programming to allow the charging station to connect to the internet.

----Applying OCPP to rapid chargers enables them to connect to back-office infrastructure so their use can be monitored for customer billing and for remote diagnostics. It also allows them to link to networks of conventional chargers that already run payment schemes.

‘Before this there was no way of taking any income or managing it,’ said Hale. ‘All these different regional membership schemes will be able to link up so when you buy a car you can use one RFID card, for example, to have access to all that.’

 more

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943