The fate of the electric vehicle

It's important to try to stay somewhat aware of what's going around in the corporate world around us. One of my major concerns of late has been the environment and the energy crisis that all countries will soon face. To that end, I've started to do some research about the electric vehicle that GM developed in the late '90s, trying to dig up what happened, why they shredded the vehicles, and where the patent for the batteries went.

While I'd love to assemble some sort of synthesis of the data, it makes more sense to put together a list of references that have tried to shine some light into the dark world of big oil.

For starters, here's a sort-of-sloppy site http://www.ev1.org/ which, honestly, looks like a conspiracy-theorist gone wild. Give it a chance. The site claims that mutual funds owning 42% of GM own more than 10x that market share in oil companies, and had a strong incentive to use this controlling position in GM to shut down the electric vehicle. While I don't hasten to believe that it's a matter of collusion among Wall Street mavens, I can't help but see that big oil has a strong interest in having the EV silenced. Billions, nay trillions, are on the line here. Of course, on the other hand, so are the glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park.

Next, take some time to do a search on the US Patent & Trade Office's website and notice that numerous patents on NiMH battery technology are held by a company in Michigan called Ovonic Battery Company, Inc. or Texaco Ovonic Battery Company, Inc.Here's The Motley Fool's assessment of Ovonic, a company that has been sitting on NiMH battery patents. While they take a rather technically pessimistic slant, others suggest that sitting on these patents genuinely hurts progress.

A one-year old post to Americans for Energy Independence talks about the beneficial effects that could be realized from moving from oil-based energy to solar- and electric-based energy.

Toshiba has developed a battery that uses nanotechnology to recover as much as 80% of its full capacity within a minute.

What we are seeing is a convergence of the technology that is needed to turn the electric vehicle into a reality. All that is needed now is a "good" company that's willing to make some money off of a good thing - that is, helping America to achieve energy independence... A place not constrained by the legacy of big oil or deep-seated greed and uncertainty. Hopefully we'll see these vehicles hitting the road soon.

More links:
Doug Korthof, a leading EV spokesman (interview)

DontCrush, promoting plug-in cars

Tesla, demonstrating EV can be hot... Get yours for only $92k

Phoenix MotorCars, another company on the cusp

Chevron's press release, re: Ovonic