Project Better Place has agreements with the governments of Israel and Denmark to begin mass deployment of electric cars. Their business plan is innovative. Start with taxis and delivery vehicles in cities, then expand from there. Create charging spots and battery swap stations. Yes, battery swaps. If the battery is low, just quickly swap it out for another one.

Plus, they want to use a cell phone model, which is to virtually give away the phones and generate income from a monthly flat fee. PBP plans to, are you ready, give away the car and charge $550 a month for 18,000 miles a year. This includes the car, battery leasing, and the cost of electricity. And you don’t have to pay for gas.

Deutsche Bank crunched the numbers and said their plan could work even in the US, and at a lower cost per mile than with gas-powered cars. Hey, gas alone for 1500 miles a month with a 20 mpg car is $300 a month when gas is $4 a gallon.

Electric vehicles will be a major part of the transportation future. This PBP venture could help us get there.

TriplePundit has more.

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Don White, Los Angeles area activist for many decades, died recently from a heart attack. Everyone in the progressive community in L.A. knew Don and liked him. He was active in multiple organizations. I knew him a bit while helping organize antiwar demonstrations in L.A.

He had a gift for calming troubled waters and I’m told more than once walked into the middle of potentially serious confrontations between police and demonstrators and in his low key way, managed to defuse the tension.

KPFK has a tribute page.

Don was simply a one-man progressive movement for peace and for social, economic and political justice. To say that he will be missed, is trite beyond words.

With deep regrets,
Jim Lafferty,
interim General Manager

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This is quite amazing. Several lions attack water buffalo and drag a calf into a river. A crocodile tries to grab it from them but they get it back onshore. The calf is still alive. Then the lions are surrounded by water buffalo who attack, driving them away. One water buffalo tosses a lion into the air then chases it. The calf walks back into the herd.

This would seem to show caring, planning, teamwork, and determination on the part of the water buffalo.

Via Pluperfecter

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That’s what TheStreet.com says.

Winter oil prices have declined only twice over the past 10 years. That means that 80% of the time, signing up for a fixed-price program was the right decision.

Unfortunately that means locking in the price at $4.60 a gallon for next winter, when the fixed-price was $2.60 at this time last year.

When we lived in Connecticut this past winter, heating oil was $3.50-3.72 and we were paying $150 a week to heat the house in the worst of winter, this with the thermostat set at 64 during the day and 55 at night. At $4.60 a gallon, it will cost the average homeowner there $800-1000 more to heat during the winter than at $3.72. And if they don’t lock in and prices go to $5 or $6…

Locking in prices is done via the futures market. The heating oil vendor buys contracts for delivery of oil at a future date based on the current futures price. Thus, his supply is guaranteed at that price. Aside from speculation, this is a major function of futures, to lock in prices. Jewelery manufacturers routinely do this. A customer says, I want 5000 gold bracelets to be delivered next month. They lock in the gold price now, base their price to the customer on that, then take delivery of the gold next month when they need it. Thus, they don’t have to worry about price fluctuations. And neither do homeowners if they lock in heating oil prices.

This of course applies to homeowners who can afford such prices. Some will not be able to.

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Financially wobbly GM has hired financially wobbly Citibank to help it “review the options” for Hummer, whose sales have dropped so far off the cliff no one can even see the bottom. However, some might question the logic of hiring a bank that itself is in serious financial trouble to help one get out of financial trouble.

Rumors that GM may try to blame the whole debacle on Arnold Schwarzenegger because he started the whole danged Hummer thing when he got the Army to give him four Humvees are probably baseless, while some want to sell Hummer to him because at least he’s still solvent.

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A carbon-neutral coal plant? Sounds crazy but maybe not. Here’s the idea. Use carbon emissions from coal plants to grow algae which would then be converted to fuel for the power plant or into biodiesel and ethanol.

Preliminary tests shows the idea has promise. Let’s hope it scales and can be done on a mass basis.

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