Bullet train: 202 / 128,000 = 0.16%. But enough to pay workers. A reminder: active duty military in California won't be paid if the federal government shuts down.
California gasoline prices: less expensive than one year ago, but average price back over $6 / gallon, summer/winter blend switch-over, link to AAA:
Court rules XOM can't truck oil over US Highway 101 and State Route166 -- this "battle" has been going on since 2015.Link here.This is a pretty lousy article; I'm sure there are better ones out there.I have little interest in the story.
I'm too tired -- actually not tired, but hungry, so I'm going to post the map and links to two stories and readers can sort it out.
Thank you to the reader who alerted me to the story.
This story has become very, very complicated due to late-developing changes. I think I have it figured out and the solution(s) seem(s) pretty straightforward. I'll let readers sort it out for themselves.
So, without further ado, the map, and the links to the three articles.
A one-two punch that very few people saw coming is now posing sudden,
unexpected, and potentially unanswerable questions about the viability
of ExxonMobil’s proposal to transport up to 70 truckloads of crude from
its Las Flores Canyon facility on the Gaviota Coast to Phillips 66’s
Santa Maria Pump Station outside of Santa Maria.
Early the Thursday
morning of August 13, Phillips announced its intention to shut down its
oil refining operations at the company’s Rodeo refinery located outside
San Francisco — the ultimate destination for ExxonMobil’s Las Flores
crude — and repurpose that industrial facility into a refinery for fats,
greases, soybean oils, and other renewable energy sources.
According to
a Phillips press release, the company hopes that production can begin
as soon as 2024. The same statement reported the company’s intention to
shut down the Santa Maria transfer facility, where the Las Flores crude
was to have been transferred from trucks into Phillips’s Line 300
pipeline to the Rodeo facility. The Santa Maria facility is scheduled to
be shut down in 2023.
Electric vehicle companies are enjoying an incredible moment in 2020, spearheaded by Tesla (TSLA), which saw shares surge 600% from their March lows, and Chinese rival Nio (NIO), also enjoying a similar 700% pop.
Investors also battled over shares in electric truck maker Nikola (NKLA) earlier this year, which debuted via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) in June as shares spiked about 110% in the week following its debut.
Now, yet another Tesla rival is looking to make its public debut — this time in the form of Austin, Texas-based electric trucking companyHyliion.
The company announced in June it would be following Nikola’s lead by going public via a reverse merger with Tortoise Acquisition Corp. (SHLL) to trade on the New York Stock Exchange in a deal the company said would net $560 million in proceeds.
But rather than start by only manufacturing electric trucks from the ground up, Hyliion is taking a different approach by offering to retrofit existing trucks with its electric drivetrain.
“What we're doing is actually focusing on the drivetrain of the vehicle as opposed to re-inventing the entire vehicle from the ground up,” Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy tells Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM. “The benefit of this is it's a lot quicker of a development.”
I don't now if CNBC addressed this company today (I had CNBC on mute) but SHLL was "all over" the crawler today. As far as I know, Phil LeBeau spent a lot of time on TSLA and F but failed to mention this one.
May 8, 2022: Rivian crashed and burn, taking Amazon with it. How bad was it?Delivers 1,015 vehicles in 2021. Market cap $25 billion after huge plunge in share value.
December 31, 2021: earnings.
September 15, 2021: Amazon-backed Rivian announces first EV pick-up truck rolls off the assembly line. Rivian says they were the first.
Note: Toyota Motors is not shown in the graphic above. Market
value of TM is $175 billion, about 70% that of Tesla. The graph above
says as much about the "craziness" of Tesla valuation as the sad state
of affairs for the legacy automobile industry. Did GM not see this
coming? Did Mercedes not see this coming?
It appears that major specialty truck manufacturers were
looking at electric drivetrains as early as 2018, if not before, with
commercial production anticipated for 2021 or shortly thereafter. It
appears that, based on headlines, we may be reaching a tipping point.
This is simply fascinating. What's in a name? Coincidence? Serendipity? The Transformers: The Last Knight movie, featuring a Western Star truck was released in 2017 just about the time we saw the transformation to EVs taking place.
One thing led to another. Random data points regarding EV.
************************************
Which Led Me To This
Nikola (NKLA);
market cap: $20 billion
Nikola shares are up more than 60% since it went public last month (June, 2020)
Rivian doesn't exactly live on hype as many electric vehicle manufacturers do. It can afford not to, because it seems like every other month the company—which has yet to release its first trucks, the R1T pickup and R1S SUV—gets another huge cash infusion from excited believers. Today, Rivian announced it's closed its biggest investment round yet, raising a further $2.5 billion with a B in support of its vision for the electrified future.
It's notable that this round wasn't driven by companies like Ford or Amazon that have already signed production deals with Rivian and have a concrete interest in getting its factories up and running.
This time, funding was led by financial firms like T. Row Price Associates (also a previous investor), Soros Fund Management, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Coatue, and Baron Capital Group. Amazon also pitched in a little more money, following its September 2019 order for 100,000 electric delivery vans.
The $2.5 billion investment is the first cash influx Rivian has received in 2020. In 2019, the electric truck brand received four separate investments that totaled $2.85 billion. In addition to the Amazon van deal, it was originally reported that Ford's involvement meant Lincoln would be teaming up with Rivian for the luxury brand's first electric SUV, however those specific plans fell through in April due to the ongoing pandemic and resulting economic downturn.
But Ford still plans to use the Rivian "skateboard" EV chassis as a base for future vehicles.
Scaringe has also indicated that he has no plans to take Rivian public anytime soon, so this likely won't be the last big funding round for the company as investors eying Tesla's soaring stock price scramble to get in on the ground floor of any serious EV play.
We just hope some of that cash goes towards developing more excellent paint colors like that yellow number up top.
Spartan Energy Acquisition: in talks
to buy EV company, Fisker Inc. Spartan shares soared more than 38% on
the news. "Stock in electrical-vehicle makers are on fire. Special
purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are doing even better." -- Barron's, July 9, 2020. Reuters link here.
Electric vehicle maker Fisker Inc is in talks to go public through a
sale to a so-called blank-check acquisition company, modeled after a
successful deal earlier this year by peer Nikola Corp NKLA.O, people
familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The deal is estimated to be in the range of $2 billion.
Velodyne Lidar: an autonomous vehicle technology company agrees to be bought by blank-check company Graf Industrial for $1.6 billion.
Tortoise Acquisition: another example of a "blank-check" company. Link here.
Tortoise is a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), meaning a company that has no business plans of its own but that seeks to acquire other businesses. (Put another way, it's a shell company, which explains its cheeky name and ticker symbol.)
Last month, Tortoise announced plans to merge with Hyliion, a maker of hybrid and electric drivetrains for heavy trucks, in a deal similar to the one that took rival electric-truck start-up Nikola public in early June. In a nutshell, Tortoise and Hyliion will merge, some outside investors will add additional funds, the merged company will be named Hyliion, and Tortoise's former shares will continue to trade under the new ticker HYLN.
Daimler Trucks will launch a full line of electric trucks and buses
starting with small scale pilot programs later this year and ramping up
to full-scale production by 2021.
The company unveiled a nearly silent, electric version of its flagship Freightliner Cascadia
heavy-duty truck at the Portland International Raceway during a meeting
with Wall Street analysts and investors in Portland, Oregon, Tuesday (2018).
A joint project between Rivian and Ford to build a Lincoln-branded
electric vehicle has been canceled as the auto industry struggles to
navigate the coronavirus pandemic.
While there were never specific details about the product, where it
would be built or timing for its launch, the automakers planned to build
the new vehicle using startup electric truck manufacturer Rivian’s
platform.
“Given the current environment, Lincoln and Rivian have decided not to
pursue the development of a fully electric vehicle based on Rivian’s
skateboard platform,” Lincoln said in a statement Tuesday. “Ford Motor
Company’s strategic commitment to Lincoln, Rivian and electrification
remains unchanged and Lincoln’s future plans will include an
all-electric vehicle.”
Ford, which last year invested $500 million in Rivian,
said Tuesday the partnership “remains strong,” and the companies
continue to work together on an alternative vehicle based on Rivian’s
platform.
********************************
SPICKS AND SPACS
Spicks and Specks, The Bee Gees
And, of course that led me to Lana Del Rey, Radiohead, and The Hollies but that will be a story for another day. Or not.
****************************
TCM
Two Peters Sellers movies in one night followed by a classic film noir movie. What could be finer? Film noir, The Bodyguard, 1948. A Pontiac station wagon and a Ford Woody Estate Wagon.
Factoid: Station Wagons originated from the age of train travel where they assisted in carriage. They were known as hacks, short for hackney carriage which was an old name for taxis. They also came to be known as "Carryalls" and "Suburbans."
Don pointed out a huge -- at least I consider it a huge -- error in this story, because:
it makes a huge difference;
Elon Musk always brags about it with regard to his trucks; and,
any truck driver worth his salt would see the error
Can you spot the error in these two paragraphs below? From this article in Bloomberg Businessweek, "this electric truck will probably beat Tesla's to market." Here are the paragraphs; see if you can spot the error:
As [Dakota] Semler drives the ET1 [his all-electric semi truck] around Hollywood, gawkers whip out their phones
to take photos.
The heavy-duty semi, which has a 22-inch touchscreen on
its dashboard and a winged black logo splashed across its grille, uses a
beach-ball-size electric motor and a couple of large battery packs to
carry as much as 80,000 pounds of cargo, the industry standard for the
highest class of truck. When it starts shipping in 2019, the ET1 will
have a $150,000 starting price tag and a 300-mile range, meaning it’ll
compete with medium-duty delivery trucks.
The error: no truck in the US is allowed to carry 80,000 pounds of cargo
(exceptions, of course, with special permits for very, very rare
and specific reasons). From wiki, the entire tractor, trailer, fuel, cargo,
passengers, etc. cannot weight more than 80,000 pounds. Obviously the
cargo is going to be around half that amount, maximum.
From wiki, the "highest class truck is a Class 8 or a Class 9, which is a special duty Class 8 truck. But in this case, both Dakota Semler and Elon Musk are talking about the 18-wheelers we see everyday on the highway, which are Class 8 trucks.
The practical gross vehicle weight limit in the USA for Class 8 trucks is determined by per-axle weight limits set by the Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula on interstate highways. Longer 18-wheelers can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. In most states, exceptions to these limits can be made for an Oversize load but they require special permits and handling on a designated route.
So, next time you hear anyone talking about a Class 8 truck hauling 80,000 pounds of cargo down the interstate, you now know more than the guy talking to you. But it explains why Elon Musk and others keep talking about "80,000 pounds of cargo." Because 80,000 pounds is the most allowed by the US -- but that's for the entire enchilada (the tractor; the fuel; the passenger(s); the trailer; and, the cargo.
Three natural gas-related companies want to know how many operators
using diesel fuel in the Bakken would convert to natural gas.
Companies
have struggled with what should come to the area first, natural gas
vehicles or fueling infrastructure. GoCH4 and partners MicroLNG and
AmeriFlare, wants to take the first step by providing the equipment to
fuel the vehicles if there are enough companies ready to make the
switch.
From my vantage point, not going to happen in my investing lifetime which is now down to ten years, decreasing, and counting.
The companies are still debating "compressed" vs "liquified" and I am unable to keep the pros and cons of each straight. In a more temperate climate it would be confusing enough; throw in two months of sub-zero weather and the calculus is overwhelming. At least for me.
The three companies issued a call for submissions for the purchase of
compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas to determine if the
market exists to support the investment.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you might have read here.
The first full-sized, full-powered, 12-liter heavy-duty trucking engines powered by pure natural gas to be commercially produced are now in service in Georgia.
And you can expect to see many more of them in the near future.Modern Transportation, a Pennsylvania-based fleet operations company, has purchased and put into service two natural gas-powered Freightliner Cascadia trucks in Georgia.
The trucks will carry supplies from Sanford, North Carolina to Owens Corning's roofing plant in Savannah, Georgia. This marks a new era in commercial transportation.
While natural gas engines are nothing new in lighter-duty commercial vehicles, such as buses, some construction vehicles, and trucks of 16,000 gross vehicle weight (GVW) and lower, they are relatively new to the heavy-hauling, full-sized semi-truck sector.
Cummins-Westport, one of the world's largest heavy-duty engine makers, has built natural gas engines for some time. Last year, they began offering a spark-ignited 11.9-liter dedicated natural gas engine, the ISX12 G, to truck makers.
The engine has been adopted by several major truck manufacturers, including Freightliner, Paccar (Kenworth and Peterbilt brands), Mack and others. Among the first full-sized, commercial semi-trucks to roll off the line with the engines in them were Freightliner Cascadias, two of which were purchased by Modern Transportation.
The tide is turning. We may have hit a tipping point in natural gas transportation.
A reader sent me a reminder of something I noted when I was in the Bakken about six months ago: impossible to get maintenance work done on heavy machinery or trucks in the Williston area; mechanics are overwhelmed.
Trucking companies would buy a new truck to replace one that required maintenance.
Now, this note from a reader:
Butler Machinery, a heavy equipment dealer for the state: the dealer now trucks equipment to Fargo and Grand Forks for maintenance and repair. Turnaround time is about a week.
That makes sense: one day travel time on a flatbed to Grand Forks or Fargo; one day back; about three days in shop and one gets one-week turnaround time.
And, of course, there's a whole new industry growing in North Dakota: trucking heavy equipment back and forth between Williston and Grand Forks/Fargo. [Side note: it is interesting that the 4-lane divided highway from Williston to Grand Forks was completed literally just before the Bakken boom began. Purely serendipity. But what great serendipity.]
While out in the Bakken, I met a young man who had just bought a four-stall garage for large trucks for maintenance. This would be a drop in the bucket for all that needs to be done, but I'm sure he's busy as he can be and loving every minute of it.
