Lithium Battery Maker Bankrupt

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by Ike, Oct 16, 2012.

  1. daiquiri
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    daiquiri Engineering and Design

    Not enough, as long as there is the competition form China, with it's long-term, State-sponsored and State-imposed program for economic growth and world-wide expansion.

    Fact is, Hoyt, excessively de-regulated private entities have one goal only - the short-term profit, at any cost. Nothing else matters. They lack a morality (yes, that), a sensibility for the commons and lack the wider vision of long-term future.

    The State is necessary as a guardian or the referee of the game, or else the world would become a playground for a suicidal no-holds-barred game.
     
  2. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    When private entities make money, they spend it on goods, benefiting others. Acting in self-interest is not necessarily a bad thing.
     
  3. daiquiri
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    daiquiri Engineering and Design

    You know some private corporation which works for your benefit or profit? :p
    No Sir. Your profit through their business is just the stuff which military call "the collateral damage". ;)
     
  4. Steve W
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    Steve W Senior Member

    Good to know Jeremy, where i live its a hotbed of prius hybrids and i have never seen one with a hitch let alone actually towing something,ill have to look into if hitches are available here, up until this year where i have been doing a lot more long distances i thought the hybrid would work well for me as they claim there best economy in city driving where the diesel is best on the highway. Im assuming your 60mpg is imperial gallons. How well do you think it would do towing say, an 800-1000lb boat/trailer combo through several hundred miles of mountains?

    Steve.
     
  5. Steve W
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    Steve W Senior Member

    ealand last year and went with my brother to buy a battery for his Nissan van( from a place that rebuilds batteries) and noticed 10 of the goofy looking 1st generation prius lined up in their parking lot, curious,i asked and was told they were all in for new battery packs and they apparently had developed some alternative which was only about $2000.

    Steve.
     
  6. WestVanHan
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    WestVanHan Not a Senior Member

    A majority of it goes offshore where it benefits a few banks,or ends up going back to support the Chinese state owned companies.

    I have aplace in Germany- and have afew cars. Two models being the Audi A2 3l and the VW Lupo 3l.
    They get 2.3 litres per 100 km at -80 kmh..which is about 100 mpg-US-at 45 mph. I've wound both of them out on the autobahn to 170 kmh.
    Also have a BMW 335 td..twin turbo diesel 3 litres with almost 300 hp and 430 lb ft.

    Keep your hybrids.. :)
     
  7. wardd
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    wardd Senior Member

    can you say bank bailouts?
     
  8. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    Yes. Yes.
     
  9. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    Phonetically pronounced Oh-Ba-Ma-nomics. :!:
     
  10. WestVanHan
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    WestVanHan Not a Senior Member

    ..and I hardly call it free market when the oil and gas companies-in the US- get about $150 to $250 BILLION dollars of taxpayer aid every year.

    Plus how much does it cost every year to have the USN 4th fleet anchored in Hormuz the last 40 years? Air bases in Saudi Arabia? etc etc.

    Hardly free market.
     
  11. wardd
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    wardd Senior Member


    i thought that was under bush, pronounced bushonomics
     
  12. kerosene
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    kerosene Senior Member

    we can bicker of all that but the real big bailout decisions aren't even remotely part of any kind of democratic or departmental process.

    FED gave 9 trillion of "emergency" lending in autumn '08 and the only reason why we know it is wikileaks. Also 1.2 trillion was spent on mortgage backed securities.

    Now some of these decisions might not be bad per se. But they are totally without oversight of any kind. Educating oneself on how fed operates and who is in the power there is not fun but eye opening.

    Having lived 9 yrs in the US and just moved back to Finland I am utterly convinced that the best system is NOT either or. Certain things can be done publicly much better than privately and vise versa. Huge lobbying system in the US makes the so called private often just a another bizarre version of distorted markets.

    The idea that ANY publicly operated services or steering of market behavior is inherently bad is silly. Finland has features that are hard to compare to the US being small and homogenic culture but I think its fair to say that public education for example has been crucial to little success the country has had. Naturally as anywhere some things (public or private) can be done in a better or worse manner. And EU as a whoel certainly has a perverse love in controlling, regulating and then enforcing things that don't really matter but only result in an army of bureaucrats and valuable effort wasted in non-productive work.

    Personally I think the biggest problem in the US is 2 party system. 3-4 legit parties would help the discourse from current idiocy quite a bit. Now even decent ideas get handicapped because the other side always has to be against it and most of the time its enough to try to prove that "the others" are worse.


    Anyway, bummer on the A123, I think they were counting on a major deal with big auto manufacturer and that never happened in the scale hoped for. I haven't yet read the article...
     
  13. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    I thought that was Bu-Sha-lo-ney.
     
  14. Timothy
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    Timothy Senior Member

    If as it seems solar cells are or will be more efficient than photosynthesis for harnessing the suns energy, then perhaps the question is, in the future when we have used the worlds available oil, which will be the best storage solution, bio fuels produced from corn, sugar cane, hemp or algae, or batteries? If the answer is batteries, can private enterprise withstand the costs ( losses) over the protracted development period, or will it require the almost unlimited capital that only a state financed enterprise can provide? The failure of A123 systems could be an indicator that the west might indeed have to concede the technology to the Chinese.
     

  15. hoytedow
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    hoytedow Carbon Based Life Form

    Look at the oil oozing out of the ground. Tons of it, all from photosynthesis either directly or indirectly through animals having eaten plant matter.

    Drill, baby, drill.
     
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