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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Wave disk engine
http://gas2.org/2011/03/21/the-wave-disk-engine-cheap-efficient-clean-and-different/
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The Wave Disk Engine: Cheap, Efficient, Clean, and Different
13 comments
March 21, 2011 in Engines
The basic design of the internal combustion engine has not changed much in the last 100-something years. I think its time for a change, and the disk wave engine could be the answer to a future free of combustion engines.
To power any combustion engine you need fuel, air, and either compression or spark to cause an explosion that provides the moving power most of us rely on. The wave disk engine is no different, as it combines air, fuel, and compression to produce power. Developed by researchers at the University of Michigan, this small engine could be up to 3.5 times more efficient than the piston-driven engines found in most cars. How? Well the engine does away with those heavy pistons and replaces them with a single disk with small channels carved out to carry air and fuel…any fuel, from hydrogen to gas to biodiesel. The inside and outside edges of the disk alternately open and close to combine the air and fuel, and shockwaves produced from the rotation of the disk compress and ingite the combination. By hooking the engine up to a generator, you can produce electricity to feed the motor, while getting almost four times better gas mileage and producing 95% less carbon dioxides.
Image: The New Scientist
Considering that today’s most advanced, expensive, and efficient combustion engines only put out between 15% and 40% tops of the energy (fuel) put into them, an improvement of 3.5 times more efficiency would mean more power and more miles-per-gallon from an engine that is 20% smaller and estimated to cost just $500 for a unit large enough to power a car. And since I’m sure somebody will mention this, turbine engines can achieve up to 70% energy efficiency….but I don’t think the average person wants to drive a jet (I do but I’m nuts.) The U.S. alone burns through something like 19 million barrels of oil per day, so we’re wasting anywhere from 60% to 85% of that potential energy. Imagine if we could harness most of that wasted energy?
Why we’d use a fraction of the oil we do, saving money, natural resources, and the air we breathe. And this wave disk engine could be an important step towards seriously cutting back on our oil usage. Of course, there is a catch (as there always is.) The engine is only most effective at high RPMs, meaning that it has the same problem as turbine cars; namely, acceleration sucks. But it could provide more than enough electricity to an electric motor, serving as a much cheaper range extender than your typical detuned combustion engine. Between this and the Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder (OPOC) engine, there might yet be a future for combustion-type engines. The researchers from the University of Michigan already have a working prototype, and they hope to have a car-sized wave disk engine completed by the end of the year. Whether or not that engine will cost more than $500 remains to be seen, though I might even have a few cars I could donate to the cause…as long as I get to keep the finished product.
Source: The New Scientist
Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMIs. You can read about his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout or follow his non-nonsensical ramblings on Twitter @harshcougar.
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Tags:
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* engine efficiency
* how efficient are combustion engines
* shock wave
* shock wave engine
* shockwave engine
* wave disk engine
* wavedisk
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1.
Jason Lancaster 7 days ago
Knowing you Chris, you’ll argue that this engine should have been designed 100 years ago and that, despite it’s clear benefits, you’d rather have a bicycle! :-)
Seriously, cool post. Very interesting news.
Reply
2.
Alan McInnes 7 days ago
Another engine that you may want to investigate/write about is the MYT engine by Raphial Morgado at http://angellabsllc.com/ I don’t know if the technology is for real, but the videos on YouTube look very convincing and his web site seems to explain a lot about how it works. Your idea of a generator creating electricity for an electric motor is great. At the very least you get rid of transmission losses and you can run at constant RPM and tune the engine for the most efficient combustion at that RPM. This is why I would love to see a diesel/electric car.
Reply
3.
Tim Cleland 7 days ago
It’s a great idea for Volt-type cars and may eventually catch on. If it’s really that efficient, who needs the Volt’s batteries?! Just have it run as a generator all the time. If it truly is inexpensive and practical, then the market will eventually give it its due.
Reply
4.
Ed 7 days ago
Huge claims – but absolutely no credibility
3.5X more efficient than today’s engines. Today’s engines are 43%-48% efficient so 3.5X would be 170% efficient… WRONG!
Turbines are 70% efficient… WRONG! Best mobile turbine engines are maybe 50%
95% less carbon dioxides – Did anyone even check these numbers before spouting them out? You still have to burn the fuel so unless the fuel is suddenly free from carbon this is ridiculous.
Reply
*
Christopher DeMorro 7 days ago
@ Ed
Where are you getting your info for ICE engine efficiency? Because even the MOST efficient ICE engines get, at most, 40% efficiency. Most are less than 20% efficient when it comes to converting energy to forward motion.
Reply
5.
Mac McDougal 7 days ago
Is there a good animation of how it works? That would be pretty cool.
Reply
6.
grayjay 6 days ago
Researching the 3.5X claims a bit, it looks like they are citing a 15% OVERALL efficiency (power to the wheels)for a conventional IC engine vehicle and saying that a hybrid system using the wave disk might thus be able to achieve 52% efficiency overall.
So, efficiency of the wave disk is probably on-par with a conventional turbine engine but perhaps there are fewer difficulties with construction and operation of the wave disk as compared to a turbine?
Reply
7.
Felix 5 days ago
Why not bind this with a Hybrid and use electric motors to save all the acceleration problems?
Reply
*
Lee 4 days ago
Like the article said, wave disk + generator + electric motor.
Reply
8.
Tomek 4 days ago
Read this.
Numerical investigation of the Wave Disk Micro-Engine
wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/gtsj/jgpp/v02n01tp01.pdf
Reply
9.
Uncle B 2 days ago
Folks! Even if this engine surpassed all expectations, even if it proved to be a ‘Miracle of American Design’, even if it were more economical, reliable, than turbo-diesel engines from Europe. Would the current Corporatist,Capitalist controllers of America relent and allow it to progress? For a Fact: Diesel fuel was traditionally much cheaper than gasoline – enter successful Euro-diesel designs, diesel fuel prices rose even higher than gasoline, and Americans took a screwing from the oil barons.
A strong accusation, right? Unfounded? Hell No! Google, torrent, the documentary, “Who Stole The Electric Car”. Study it. Ask, Where did these miracle batteries that worked so well, go? Who buried them? Why were the advanced, super-magnet motors destroyed? Who benefited? Who lost? Why? Did corporate interests stand to lose on their investments in gasoline engines? oil investments? transmission factories? Sunk Capital? Did the American patriots lose a good reliable workable non-polluting, domestic energy powered means of transportation? Just what was this Corporate play all about? Why the strong-arm techniques?The secrecy? In ‘Free’ America? Did these cars run for cheaper than gasoline ones? Did they emit less CO2? Did they require no OPEC, parasite nations, foreign oil to run? Why, if they needed destroying so badly, are we now encouraged to buy the new Chev battery/hybrid? The same car, reworked to consume gasoline?
This ‘new’ engine design comes from a a whole series of engine designs, swash plate engines,high reving engines, slow combustion engines, you name it, in the 1930′s they had dozens of promising designs – Straight four cylinder, V-8′s and straight 6 cylinder engines won out in America, not by accident, but by good sound engineering principles.Why the notion that these folks missed something? All gasoline engines require compression and burning, expansion of gasses to operate, and by the laws of Thermodynamics can only attain certain. predictable, efficiencies – same with diesels, only due to higher compression ratios, diesels are a full 40% more efficient than current day gasoline engines.
America, look to thorium fueled nuclear reactor sourced electricity and electric bullet trains and their networks, associated infrastructures, for the future of America. Oil is a commodity that is finite on this planet, and limited in its energy content. Thorium is not! There is enough Thorium in America to power her for centuries to come! Barring Solar, Wind Wave, Hydro Tidal, Geothermal schemes, which are all perpetual, or renewable, if you prefer, sources of electricity, Thorium reactors and their associated potential for radiation leaks are the best, fastest, option for an energy starved America.
Reply
Continuing the Discussion
1. Efficiency Improvements for Internal Combustion Engines - Page 25 - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com
7 days ago
2. 燃料を選ばない高効率ディスクエンジン(Wave Disk Engine) : monogocoro ものごころ
7 days ago
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The World's Most Fuel Efficient Car: 285 MPG, Not A Hybrid
*
Engines
wavedisk2
The Wave Disk Engine: Cheap, Efficient, Clean, and Different
*
EV Charging
quick-charge
I Want it Now: New Batteries Can Charge EVs in Seconds
*
Offbeat
bananacar
Scientists Make Lightweight Plastics from Fruit
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19 posts in the past 7 days
Team
Editor-in-Chief
*
Christopher DeMorro
*
Nick Chambers
All Contributors
*
Jo Borras
*
Susanna Schick
* Support this Author Directly
Christopher DeMorro
Lover of all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis
[close]
Help our Authors out!
Gas 2.0's authors are supported by a revenue-sharing agreement with the company that operates Gas 2.0, Important Media. Of course, it's never enough to make a real living (you've heard about this problem, yes?), so if you want to make sure this author keeps making great info available, consider a tip for them via Paypal donation.
The Wave Disk Engine: Cheap, Efficient, Clean, and Different
13 comments
March 21, 2011 in Engines
The basic design of the internal combustion engine has not changed much in the last 100-something years. I think its time for a change, and the disk wave engine could be the answer to a future free of combustion engines.
To power any combustion engine you need fuel, air, and either compression or spark to cause an explosion that provides the moving power most of us rely on. The wave disk engine is no different, as it combines air, fuel, and compression to produce power. Developed by researchers at the University of Michigan, this small engine could be up to 3.5 times more efficient than the piston-driven engines found in most cars. How? Well the engine does away with those heavy pistons and replaces them with a single disk with small channels carved out to carry air and fuel…any fuel, from hydrogen to gas to biodiesel. The inside and outside edges of the disk alternately open and close to combine the air and fuel, and shockwaves produced from the rotation of the disk compress and ingite the combination. By hooking the engine up to a generator, you can produce electricity to feed the motor, while getting almost four times better gas mileage and producing 95% less carbon dioxides.
Image: The New Scientist
Considering that today’s most advanced, expensive, and efficient combustion engines only put out between 15% and 40% tops of the energy (fuel) put into them, an improvement of 3.5 times more efficiency would mean more power and more miles-per-gallon from an engine that is 20% smaller and estimated to cost just $500 for a unit large enough to power a car. And since I’m sure somebody will mention this, turbine engines can achieve up to 70% energy efficiency….but I don’t think the average person wants to drive a jet (I do but I’m nuts.) The U.S. alone burns through something like 19 million barrels of oil per day, so we’re wasting anywhere from 60% to 85% of that potential energy. Imagine if we could harness most of that wasted energy?
Why we’d use a fraction of the oil we do, saving money, natural resources, and the air we breathe. And this wave disk engine could be an important step towards seriously cutting back on our oil usage. Of course, there is a catch (as there always is.) The engine is only most effective at high RPMs, meaning that it has the same problem as turbine cars; namely, acceleration sucks. But it could provide more than enough electricity to an electric motor, serving as a much cheaper range extender than your typical detuned combustion engine. Between this and the Opposed Piston Opposed Cylinder (OPOC) engine, there might yet be a future for combustion-type engines. The researchers from the University of Michigan already have a working prototype, and they hope to have a car-sized wave disk engine completed by the end of the year. Whether or not that engine will cost more than $500 remains to be seen, though I might even have a few cars I could donate to the cause…as long as I get to keep the finished product.
Source: The New Scientist
Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMIs. You can read about his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout or follow his non-nonsensical ramblings on Twitter @harshcougar.
Print Friendly Print Get a PDF version of this webpage PDF
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13 comments
Tags:
* engine
* engine efficiency
* how efficient are combustion engines
* shock wave
* shock wave engine
* shockwave engine
* wave disk engine
* wavedisk
Renewable energy and climate change questions and answers
Advertise on this site
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1.
Jason Lancaster 7 days ago
Knowing you Chris, you’ll argue that this engine should have been designed 100 years ago and that, despite it’s clear benefits, you’d rather have a bicycle! :-)
Seriously, cool post. Very interesting news.
Reply
2.
Alan McInnes 7 days ago
Another engine that you may want to investigate/write about is the MYT engine by Raphial Morgado at http://angellabsllc.com/ I don’t know if the technology is for real, but the videos on YouTube look very convincing and his web site seems to explain a lot about how it works. Your idea of a generator creating electricity for an electric motor is great. At the very least you get rid of transmission losses and you can run at constant RPM and tune the engine for the most efficient combustion at that RPM. This is why I would love to see a diesel/electric car.
Reply
3.
Tim Cleland 7 days ago
It’s a great idea for Volt-type cars and may eventually catch on. If it’s really that efficient, who needs the Volt’s batteries?! Just have it run as a generator all the time. If it truly is inexpensive and practical, then the market will eventually give it its due.
Reply
4.
Ed 7 days ago
Huge claims – but absolutely no credibility
3.5X more efficient than today’s engines. Today’s engines are 43%-48% efficient so 3.5X would be 170% efficient… WRONG!
Turbines are 70% efficient… WRONG! Best mobile turbine engines are maybe 50%
95% less carbon dioxides – Did anyone even check these numbers before spouting them out? You still have to burn the fuel so unless the fuel is suddenly free from carbon this is ridiculous.
Reply
*
Christopher DeMorro 7 days ago
@ Ed
Where are you getting your info for ICE engine efficiency? Because even the MOST efficient ICE engines get, at most, 40% efficiency. Most are less than 20% efficient when it comes to converting energy to forward motion.
Reply
5.
Mac McDougal 7 days ago
Is there a good animation of how it works? That would be pretty cool.
Reply
6.
grayjay 6 days ago
Researching the 3.5X claims a bit, it looks like they are citing a 15% OVERALL efficiency (power to the wheels)for a conventional IC engine vehicle and saying that a hybrid system using the wave disk might thus be able to achieve 52% efficiency overall.
So, efficiency of the wave disk is probably on-par with a conventional turbine engine but perhaps there are fewer difficulties with construction and operation of the wave disk as compared to a turbine?
Reply
7.
Felix 5 days ago
Why not bind this with a Hybrid and use electric motors to save all the acceleration problems?
Reply
*
Lee 4 days ago
Like the article said, wave disk + generator + electric motor.
Reply
8.
Tomek 4 days ago
Read this.
Numerical investigation of the Wave Disk Micro-Engine
wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/gtsj/jgpp/v02n01tp01.pdf
Reply
9.
Uncle B 2 days ago
Folks! Even if this engine surpassed all expectations, even if it proved to be a ‘Miracle of American Design’, even if it were more economical, reliable, than turbo-diesel engines from Europe. Would the current Corporatist,Capitalist controllers of America relent and allow it to progress? For a Fact: Diesel fuel was traditionally much cheaper than gasoline – enter successful Euro-diesel designs, diesel fuel prices rose even higher than gasoline, and Americans took a screwing from the oil barons.
A strong accusation, right? Unfounded? Hell No! Google, torrent, the documentary, “Who Stole The Electric Car”. Study it. Ask, Where did these miracle batteries that worked so well, go? Who buried them? Why were the advanced, super-magnet motors destroyed? Who benefited? Who lost? Why? Did corporate interests stand to lose on their investments in gasoline engines? oil investments? transmission factories? Sunk Capital? Did the American patriots lose a good reliable workable non-polluting, domestic energy powered means of transportation? Just what was this Corporate play all about? Why the strong-arm techniques?The secrecy? In ‘Free’ America? Did these cars run for cheaper than gasoline ones? Did they emit less CO2? Did they require no OPEC, parasite nations, foreign oil to run? Why, if they needed destroying so badly, are we now encouraged to buy the new Chev battery/hybrid? The same car, reworked to consume gasoline?
This ‘new’ engine design comes from a a whole series of engine designs, swash plate engines,high reving engines, slow combustion engines, you name it, in the 1930′s they had dozens of promising designs – Straight four cylinder, V-8′s and straight 6 cylinder engines won out in America, not by accident, but by good sound engineering principles.Why the notion that these folks missed something? All gasoline engines require compression and burning, expansion of gasses to operate, and by the laws of Thermodynamics can only attain certain. predictable, efficiencies – same with diesels, only due to higher compression ratios, diesels are a full 40% more efficient than current day gasoline engines.
America, look to thorium fueled nuclear reactor sourced electricity and electric bullet trains and their networks, associated infrastructures, for the future of America. Oil is a commodity that is finite on this planet, and limited in its energy content. Thorium is not! There is enough Thorium in America to power her for centuries to come! Barring Solar, Wind Wave, Hydro Tidal, Geothermal schemes, which are all perpetual, or renewable, if you prefer, sources of electricity, Thorium reactors and their associated potential for radiation leaks are the best, fastest, option for an energy starved America.
Reply
Continuing the Discussion
1. Efficiency Improvements for Internal Combustion Engines - Page 25 - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com
7 days ago
2. 燃料を選ばない高効率ディスクエンジン(Wave Disk Engine) : monogocoro ものごころ
7 days ago
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Who Killed the Electric Car?
[close]
Who Killed the Electric Car?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Who Killed the Electric Car?
DVD cover
Directed by Chris Paine
Produced by Jessie Deeter
Written by Chris Paine
Starring Tom Hanks (from a recording)
Mel Gibson
Chelsea Sexton
Ralph Nader
Joseph J. Romm
Phyllis Diller
Narrated by Martin Sheen
Music by Michael Brook
Cinematography Thaddeus Wadleigh
Editing by Michael Kovalenko
Chris A. Peterson
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s) Sundance Film Festival
January 23, 2006
United States
June 28, 2006
United Kingdom
August 4, 2006
Australia
November 2, 2006
Running time 92 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Gross revenue $1,764,304 (worldwide)[1]
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary film that explores the creation, limited commercialization, and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid 1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the US government, the Californian government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles, and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.
After a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, it was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics in June, 2006 and then on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on November 14, 2006.
During an interview with CBS News, director Chris Paine announced that he had started a new documentary about electric cars with a working title of Who Saved the Electric Car?,[2] later renamed Revenge of the Electric Car, which will have its world premiere at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival on Earth Day, April 22, 2011.[3]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Topics addressed
* 2 Interviews
* 3 Production
* 4 The suspects
o 4.1 US consumers
o 4.2 Batteries
o 4.3 Oil companies
o 4.4 Car companies
o 4.5 US government
o 4.6 California Air Resources Board
o 4.7 Hydrogen fuel cell
* 5 Response from General Motors
* 6 Reception
* 7 See also
* 8 References
* 9 External links
Topics addressed
The film deals with the history of the electric car, its modern development, and commercialization. The film focuses primarily on the General Motors EV1, which was made available for lease mainly in Southern California, after the California Air Resources Board passed the Zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 to combat urban air pollution. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Nissan, and Chrysler; and then later destroyed . Also discussed are the implications of the events depicted for air pollution, oil dependency, Middle East politics, and global warming.
The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.
A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them. A few were disabled and given to museums and universities, but almost all were found to have been crushed. GM never responded to the EV drivers' offer to pay the residual lease value ($1.9 million was offered for the remaining 78 cars in Burbank before they were crushed). Several activists, including actresses Alexandra Paul and Colette Divine, are arrested in the protest that attempted to block the GM car carriers taking the remaining EV1s off to be crushed.
The film explores some of the motives that may have pushed the auto and oil industries to kill off the electric car. Wally Rippel offers, for example, that the oil companies were afraid of losing their monopoly on transportation fuel over the coming decades; while the auto companies feared short term costs for EV development and long term revenue loss because EVs require little maintenance and no tuneups. Others explained the killing differently. GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss argued it was lack of consumer interest due to the maximum range of 80–100 miles per charge, and the relatively high price.
The film also showed the failed attempts by electric car enthusiasts trying to combat auto industry moves, and save the surviving vehicles. Towards the end of the film, a deactivated EV1 car #99 is found in the garage of Petersen Automotive Museum, with former EV sales representative, Chelsea Sexton, invited for a visit.
The film also explores the future of automobile technologies including a deeply critical look at hydrogen vehicles, an upbeat discussion of plug-in hybrids, and examples of other developing EV technologies such as the Tesla Roadster (released on the market two years after the film).
Interviews
The film features interviews with celebrities who drove the electric car, such as Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Alexandra Paul, Peter Horton, Ed Begley, Jr., a selection of prominent US political figures including Ralph Nader, Frank Gaffney, Alan Lloyd, Jim Boyd, Alan Lowenthal, S. David Freeman, and ex-CIA head James Woolsey, as well as news footage from the development, launch and marketing of EVs.
The film also features interviews with some of the engineers and technicians who led the development of modern electric vehicles and related technologies, such as Wally Rippel, Chelsea Sexton, Alec Brooks, Alan Cocconi, Paul MacCready, Stan, Iris M. Ovshinsky and other experts, such as Joseph J. Romm (author of Hell and High Water and The Hype about Hydrogen). Romm gives a presentation intended to show that the government's "hydrogen car initiative" is a bad policy choice and a distraction that is delaying the exploitation of more promising technologies, like electric and hybrid cars that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase America's energy security. Also featured in the film are spokesmen for the automakers, such as GM's Dave Barthmuss, a vocal opponent of the film and the EV1, and Bill Reinert from Toyota.
Production
The film was written and directed by Chris Paine, and produced by Jessie Deeter, and executive produced by Tavin Marin Titus, Richard D. Titus of Plinyminor and Dean Devlin, Kearie Peak, Mark Roskin, and Rachel Olshan of Electric Entertainment. The documentary was featured at the Sundance, San Francisco, Tribeca, Los Angeles, Berlin, Deauville, and Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festivals and was released in theaters worldwide in June 2006. The film features a score composed by Michael Brook and also features music by Joe Walsh, DJ Harry and Meeky Rosie. Jeff Steele, Kathy Weiss, Natalie Artin and Alex Gibney were also part of the producing team.
The suspects
The film features the symbolic EV1 funeral held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery as a protest to General Motors decision to terminate all EV1 leases and crush the electric cars.
The later portion of the film is organized around the following hypothesized culprits in the downfall of the electric car:
US consumers
While few American consumers ever heard of the electric cars in California, those that did were not necessarily critical mass for this new technology. Thanks to lower gas prices and infatuation with SUVs, few people sought out this new technology. While some were fans (as chronicled in the film), many more needed time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of these new cars whether freedom from oil or with the perceived limitations of a city car with 100 mile range. Although allegations are made about consumers by industry reps in the film, perhaps explaining the film's "guilty" verdict, the actual consumers interviewed in the film were either unaware an electric car was ever available to try, or dismayed that they could no longer obtain one.
Batteries
In a bit of an unexpected turn, the film's sole "not-guilty" suspect is batteries, one of the chief culprits if you asked the oil or auto industries. At the time GM's EV1 came to market, it came with a lead acid battery with a range of 60 miles. The film suggests that since the average driving distance of Americans in a day is 30 miles or less and so for 90% of Americans, electric cars would work as a daily commute car or second car. The second generation EV1 (and those released by Honda, Toyota, and others) from 1998 to the end of the program, featured nickel-metal or even lithium (Nissan) batteries with a ranges of about 100 or more miles. The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be influenced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to Chevron/Cobasys. As part of the not-guilty verdict, the famed engineer Alan Cocconi explains that with laptop computer lithium ion batteries, the EV1 could have been upgraded to a range of 300 miles per charge. He makes this point in front of his T-Zero prototype, the car that inspired the Tesla Roadster.
Oil companies
The oil industry, through its major lobby group the Western States Petroleum Association, is brought to task for financing campaigns to kill utility efforts to build public car charging stations. Through astroturfing groups like "Californians Against Utility Abuse" they posed as consumers instead of the industry interests they actually represented. Mobil and other oil companies are also shown to be advertising directly against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars seem little to do with their core business. At the end of the film Chevron bought patents and controlling interest in Ovonics, the advanced battery company featured in the film ostensibly to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in non-hybrid electric cars. The documentary also refers to manipulation of oil prices by overseas suppliers in 1980s as an example of the industry working to kill competition and keep customers from moving toward alternatives to oil.
Car companies
The film features the "Don't Crush Campaign" protest
Crushed EV1s in a junk yard are shown in the film
With GM as its primary example, the film documents that car makers engaged in both positive and negative marketing of the electric car as its intentions toward the car and California legislation changed. In earlier days GM ran Super Bowl ads produced by ILM for the EV1. In later days it ran "award winning" doomsday style advertising featuring the EV1 and ran customer surveys which emphasized drawbacks to electronic vehicle technology which were not actually present in the EV1.[4] (As a side note, CARB officials were quoted claiming that they removed their zero emission vehicle quotas in part because they gave weight to such surveys purportedly showing no demand existing for the EV1s. ) Other charges raised on GM included sabotaging their own product program, failing to produce cars to meet existing demand, and refusing to sell cars directly (it only leased them).
The film also describes the history of automaker efforts to destroy competing technologies, such as their destruction through front companies of public transit systems in the United States in the early 20th century. In addition of EV1, the film also showed Toyota RAV4 EV, Honda EV Plus were being cancelled by their respective car companies, with the crushing of Honda EV Plus gained attention only after appearing quite by accident on an episode of PBS's California Green with Huell Howser.
In an interview with retired GM board member Tom Everhart, the film points out that GM killed the EV1 to focus on more immediately profitable enterprises such as its Hummer and truck brands instead of preparing for future challenges. Ralph Nader, in a brief appearance, points out that auto makers usually only respond to government regulation when it comes to important advances whether seat belts, airbags, catalytic converters, mileage requirements or, by implication, hybrid/electric cars. The film suggests Toyota supported the production of Toyota Prius hybrid in part as a response to Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles and other US Government pressure that was later dropped.
Though GM cited cost as a deterrent to continuing with the EV1, the film interviewed critics contending that the cost of batteries and electric vehicles would have been reduced significantly if mass production began, due to economies of scale. There is also discussion about electric cars threatening dealer profits since they have so few service requirements—no tuneups, no oil changes, and less brake jobs because of regenerative braking.
US government
While not overtly political, the film documents that the US federal government under the George W. Bush Administration joined the auto industry suit against California in 2002 - pushing California to finally abandon its ZEV mandate regulation. The film notes that Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card had recently been head of the American Automobile Manufacturers Alliance in California and then joined the White House with Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other federal officials who were former executives or board members of oil and auto companies. By failing to increase mileage standards in a meaningful way since the 1970s and now interfering in California, the federal government had again served short term industry interests at the expense of long range leadership on issue of oil dependency and cleaner cars.
California Air Resources Board
In 2003, the CARB, headed by Democrat Alan Lloyd, finally caved to industry pressure and drastically scaled back the ZEV mandate after defending the regulation for more than 12 years. While championing CARB's efforts on behalf of California's with its 1990 mandate (and other regulations over the years), the film suggests Lloyd may have had a conflict of interest as the director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. The ZEV change allowed a marginal amount of hydrogen fuel cell cars to be produced in the future versus the immediate continued growth of its electric car requirement. Footage shot in the meetings showed Lloyd shutting down battery electric car proponents while giving the car makers all the time they wanted to make their points.
Hydrogen fuel cell
The hydrogen fuel cell was presented by the film as an alternative that distracts attention from the real and immediate potential of electric vehicles to an unlikely future possibility embraced by auto makers, oil companies and a pro-business administration in order to buy time and profits for the status quo. The film corroborates the claim that hydrogen vehicles are a mere distraction by stating that "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses three to four times more energy than a car powered by batteries" and by interviewing the author of The Hype About Hydrogen, who lists five problems he sees with hydrogen vehicles: High cost, limits on driving range due to current materials, expense of hydrogen fuel, the need for an entire new fueling infrastructure, and competition from other technologies in the marketplace, such as hybrids.
Response from General Motors
General Motors (GM) responded in a 2006 blog post entitled Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?[5] by Dave Barthmuss of their communications department. In his June 15, 2006 (13 days before the film was released in the US) blog post he states not to have seen the movie, but believes "there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers.". He repeats GM's claims that, "despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers — including the filmmaker — the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success."
He submits it is "good news for electric car enthusiasts" that electric vehicle technology since the EV1 was still being used in two-mode hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicle programs.
Barthmuss also cites "GM's leadership" in flex-fuel vehicles development, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and their new "active fuel management" system which improving fuel economy, as reasons they feel they are "doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy, and emissions from vehicles."
Responding to the film's harsh criticisms for discontinuing the EV1, he outlines GM's reasons for doing so, implying that GM did so because of poor consumer demand despite "significant sums (spent) on marketing and incentives develop a mass market for it," and inadequate support from parts suppliers, which would have made "future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible." He also expressed that, "no other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways."
Lastly, Barthmuss personally regretted the way the decision not to sell EV1s was handled, but stated that GM also discontinued it because they would no longer be able to repair it or "guarantee it could be operated safely over the long term."
In March 2009, however, the outgoing CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, said the biggest mistake he ever made as chief executive was killing the EV1 car, and failing to direct more resources to electrics and hybrids after such an early lead in this technology. (LA Times, March 31, 2009, Dan Neil). GM has since championed its electric car expertise as a key factor in development of its 2010, Chevrolet Volt.
Reception
As of December 2010, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes indicates an 88% approval rating among 103 critics polled.[6] Metacritic, another review collator, indicates a positive rating of 70, based on 28 reviews polled.[7]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "It's a story Mr. Paine tells with bite. In 1996 a Los Angeles newspaper reported that 'the air board grew doubtful about the willingness of consumers to accept the cars, which carry steep price tags and have a limited travel range.' Mr. Paine pushes beyond this ostensibly disinterested report, suggesting that one reason the board might have grown doubtful was because its chairman at the time, Alan C. Lloyd, had joined the California Fuel Cell Partnership."[8]
Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter noted Alan Lloyd's conflict of interest in the film.[9][dead link]
Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat commented, "Boasting a particularly articulate and colorful bunch of noncelebrity talking heads, including former Jimmy Carter energy adviser S. David Freeman and Bill Reinert, the straight-shooting national manager of advanced technologies for Toyota who doesn't exactly sing the praises of the much-touted hydrogen fuel cell, the lively film maintains its challenging pace."[10]
Matt Coker of OC Weekly stated, "Like most documentaries, 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' works best when it sticks to the facts. Showing us the details about the California Air Resources Board caving in to the automakers and repealing their 1990 Zero Emissions Mandate, for example, is much more effective than coverage of some goofy mock funeral for the EV1 with Ed Begley Jr. providing the eulogy. As most of the lazy media, prodded by the shameless oil men in the White House, spin their wheels over false 'solutions' like hybrids and biodiesel and hydrogen and ethanol and ANWAR, Korthof and his all-electric army continue to boost EV technology." Coker also interviewed EV activist Doug Korthof, who stated, :"We don't deserve the catastrophe in Iraq, and the two madmen arguing over oil supply lines seem intent on martyrdom for Iraq in a widening war. With EV, we need not get involved in seizing and defending the oil supplies of the Mideast; nor need we maintain fleets, bomb and incarcerate people we can't stand, give foreign aid to oily dictators, and so on. It's not anything to laugh about."[11]
The film won 2006 Mountain Film (Telluride) Special Jury Prize, Canberra International Film Festival Audience Award, and also nominated for Best Documentary in 2006 Environmental Media Awards, Best Documentary in Writers Guild of America, 2007 Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Documentary Feature. In 2008 socially conscious musician Tha truth released a song that summarized the film on the CD Tha People's Music.[citation needed]
See also
* Battery electric vehicle
* Compressed air car
* Electric vehicle
* Future car technologies
* General Motors EV1
* Great American streetcar scandal
* Hybrid vehicle
* Hydrogen vehicle
* Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries
* Plug-in hybrid
* Revenge of the Electric Car
* The Hype about Hydrogen
* Tribrid vehicle
* Zero-emissions vehicle
References
1. ^ "Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whokilledtheelectriccar.htm. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
2. ^ David Pogue (2007-09-16). "Could The Electric Car Save Us?". CBSNews. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/06/sunday/main3239838.shtml. Retrieved 2008-05-21. "Chris Paine is excited; in fact, he's making a sequel to his movie"
3. ^ "Revenge of the Electric Car: World Premiere Announced". Revenge of the Electric Car website. 2011-03-14. http://www.revengeoftheelectriccar.com/_blog/The_Blog/post/World_Premiere_Announced/. Retrieved 2011-03-16.
4. ^ Welch, David (August 14, 2000). "The Eco-Cars". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3694130.arc.htm. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
5. ^ Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car? blog post copy in PDF format
6. ^ Who Killed the Electric Car?, Rotten Tomatoes, accessed December 28, 2010
7. ^ MetaCritic review
8. ^ Dargis, Manohla. "'Who Killed the Electric Car?': Some Big Reasons the Electric Car Can't Cross the Road", The New York Times, June 28, 2006
9. ^ Rechtshaffen, Michael. Hollywood Reporter Review, The Hollywood Reporter[dead link]
10. ^ Vonder Haar, Pete. "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?" Film Threat, January 25, 2006
11. ^ Coker, Matt. "Baby You Can Still Drive My Electric Car", OC Weekly, May 16, 2006
External links
* Who Killed the Electric Car? Official website
* Who Killed the Electric Car? at the Sony Classics website
* Who Killed the Electric Car? at the Internet Movie Database
* PBS interview with director Chris Paine, including video
* Art Film Talk #14 Chris Paine – interview with director Chris Paine (audio)
* Article on MSNBC about the removal of the last remaining operational EV1 from the museum just one week before the film's opening
* Watch: Director Chris Paine interviewed at the Woods Hole Film Festival on independentfilm.com
* CBC Video: Who Killed the Electric Car?
[hide]v · d · eAlternative fuel vehicles
Compressed-air engine
Compressed air car · Compressed-air vehicle
Electric motor
Battery electric vehicle · Electric aircraft · Electric bicycle · Electric boat · Electric car · Electric vehicle · Electric motorcycles and scooters · Hybrid electric vehicle · Motorized bicycle · Neighborhood Electric Vehicle · Plug-in electric vehicle · Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle · Solar vehicle · Wind-powered vehicle
Biofuel ICE
Alcohol fuel · Biodiesel · Biogas · Butanol fuel · Common ethanol fuel mixtures · E85 · Ethanol fuel · Flexible-fuel vehicle · Methanol economy · Methanol fuel
Hydrogen
Fuel cell vehicle · Hydrogen economy · Hydrogen vehicle · Hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle
Others
Autogas · Hybrid electric vehicle · Liquid nitrogen vehicle · Natural gas vehicle · Propane · Steam car · Wood gas
Multiple-fuel
Bi-fuel vehicle · Flexible-fuel vehicle · Hybrid vehicle · Multifuel · Plug-in hybrid
Documentaries
Who Killed the Electric Car? · What Is the Electric Car?
See also
Zero-emissions vehicle
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F"
Categories: American films | English-language films | 2006 films | 2000s documentary films | Documentary films about transport | Independent films | Electric vehicles | Sony Pictures Classics films | Documentary films about environmental issues
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Who Killed the Electric Car?
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Who Killed the Electric Car?
DVD cover
Directed by Chris Paine
Produced by Jessie Deeter
Written by Chris Paine
Starring Tom Hanks (from a recording)
Mel Gibson
Chelsea Sexton
Ralph Nader
Joseph J. Romm
Phyllis Diller
Narrated by Martin Sheen
Music by Michael Brook
Cinematography Thaddeus Wadleigh
Editing by Michael Kovalenko
Chris A. Peterson
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s) Sundance Film Festival
January 23, 2006
United States
June 28, 2006
United Kingdom
August 4, 2006
Australia
November 2, 2006
Running time 92 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Gross revenue $1,764,304 (worldwide)[1]
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 documentary film that explores the creation, limited commercialization, and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid 1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the US government, the Californian government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles, and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.
After a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, it was released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics in June, 2006 and then on DVD by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on November 14, 2006.
During an interview with CBS News, director Chris Paine announced that he had started a new documentary about electric cars with a working title of Who Saved the Electric Car?,[2] later renamed Revenge of the Electric Car, which will have its world premiere at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival on Earth Day, April 22, 2011.[3]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Topics addressed
* 2 Interviews
* 3 Production
* 4 The suspects
o 4.1 US consumers
o 4.2 Batteries
o 4.3 Oil companies
o 4.4 Car companies
o 4.5 US government
o 4.6 California Air Resources Board
o 4.7 Hydrogen fuel cell
* 5 Response from General Motors
* 6 Reception
* 7 See also
* 8 References
* 9 External links
Topics addressed
The film deals with the history of the electric car, its modern development, and commercialization. The film focuses primarily on the General Motors EV1, which was made available for lease mainly in Southern California, after the California Air Resources Board passed the Zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 to combat urban air pollution. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by GM, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Nissan, and Chrysler; and then later destroyed . Also discussed are the implications of the events depicted for air pollution, oil dependency, Middle East politics, and global warming.
The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.
A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them. A few were disabled and given to museums and universities, but almost all were found to have been crushed. GM never responded to the EV drivers' offer to pay the residual lease value ($1.9 million was offered for the remaining 78 cars in Burbank before they were crushed). Several activists, including actresses Alexandra Paul and Colette Divine, are arrested in the protest that attempted to block the GM car carriers taking the remaining EV1s off to be crushed.
The film explores some of the motives that may have pushed the auto and oil industries to kill off the electric car. Wally Rippel offers, for example, that the oil companies were afraid of losing their monopoly on transportation fuel over the coming decades; while the auto companies feared short term costs for EV development and long term revenue loss because EVs require little maintenance and no tuneups. Others explained the killing differently. GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss argued it was lack of consumer interest due to the maximum range of 80–100 miles per charge, and the relatively high price.
The film also showed the failed attempts by electric car enthusiasts trying to combat auto industry moves, and save the surviving vehicles. Towards the end of the film, a deactivated EV1 car #99 is found in the garage of Petersen Automotive Museum, with former EV sales representative, Chelsea Sexton, invited for a visit.
The film also explores the future of automobile technologies including a deeply critical look at hydrogen vehicles, an upbeat discussion of plug-in hybrids, and examples of other developing EV technologies such as the Tesla Roadster (released on the market two years after the film).
Interviews
The film features interviews with celebrities who drove the electric car, such as Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Alexandra Paul, Peter Horton, Ed Begley, Jr., a selection of prominent US political figures including Ralph Nader, Frank Gaffney, Alan Lloyd, Jim Boyd, Alan Lowenthal, S. David Freeman, and ex-CIA head James Woolsey, as well as news footage from the development, launch and marketing of EVs.
The film also features interviews with some of the engineers and technicians who led the development of modern electric vehicles and related technologies, such as Wally Rippel, Chelsea Sexton, Alec Brooks, Alan Cocconi, Paul MacCready, Stan, Iris M. Ovshinsky and other experts, such as Joseph J. Romm (author of Hell and High Water and The Hype about Hydrogen). Romm gives a presentation intended to show that the government's "hydrogen car initiative" is a bad policy choice and a distraction that is delaying the exploitation of more promising technologies, like electric and hybrid cars that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase America's energy security. Also featured in the film are spokesmen for the automakers, such as GM's Dave Barthmuss, a vocal opponent of the film and the EV1, and Bill Reinert from Toyota.
Production
The film was written and directed by Chris Paine, and produced by Jessie Deeter, and executive produced by Tavin Marin Titus, Richard D. Titus of Plinyminor and Dean Devlin, Kearie Peak, Mark Roskin, and Rachel Olshan of Electric Entertainment. The documentary was featured at the Sundance, San Francisco, Tribeca, Los Angeles, Berlin, Deauville, and Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festivals and was released in theaters worldwide in June 2006. The film features a score composed by Michael Brook and also features music by Joe Walsh, DJ Harry and Meeky Rosie. Jeff Steele, Kathy Weiss, Natalie Artin and Alex Gibney were also part of the producing team.
The suspects
The film features the symbolic EV1 funeral held at Hollywood Forever Cemetery as a protest to General Motors decision to terminate all EV1 leases and crush the electric cars.
The later portion of the film is organized around the following hypothesized culprits in the downfall of the electric car:
US consumers
While few American consumers ever heard of the electric cars in California, those that did were not necessarily critical mass for this new technology. Thanks to lower gas prices and infatuation with SUVs, few people sought out this new technology. While some were fans (as chronicled in the film), many more needed time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of these new cars whether freedom from oil or with the perceived limitations of a city car with 100 mile range. Although allegations are made about consumers by industry reps in the film, perhaps explaining the film's "guilty" verdict, the actual consumers interviewed in the film were either unaware an electric car was ever available to try, or dismayed that they could no longer obtain one.
Batteries
In a bit of an unexpected turn, the film's sole "not-guilty" suspect is batteries, one of the chief culprits if you asked the oil or auto industries. At the time GM's EV1 came to market, it came with a lead acid battery with a range of 60 miles. The film suggests that since the average driving distance of Americans in a day is 30 miles or less and so for 90% of Americans, electric cars would work as a daily commute car or second car. The second generation EV1 (and those released by Honda, Toyota, and others) from 1998 to the end of the program, featured nickel-metal or even lithium (Nissan) batteries with a ranges of about 100 or more miles. The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be influenced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to Chevron/Cobasys. As part of the not-guilty verdict, the famed engineer Alan Cocconi explains that with laptop computer lithium ion batteries, the EV1 could have been upgraded to a range of 300 miles per charge. He makes this point in front of his T-Zero prototype, the car that inspired the Tesla Roadster.
Oil companies
The oil industry, through its major lobby group the Western States Petroleum Association, is brought to task for financing campaigns to kill utility efforts to build public car charging stations. Through astroturfing groups like "Californians Against Utility Abuse" they posed as consumers instead of the industry interests they actually represented. Mobil and other oil companies are also shown to be advertising directly against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars seem little to do with their core business. At the end of the film Chevron bought patents and controlling interest in Ovonics, the advanced battery company featured in the film ostensibly to prevent modern NiMH batteries from being used in non-hybrid electric cars. The documentary also refers to manipulation of oil prices by overseas suppliers in 1980s as an example of the industry working to kill competition and keep customers from moving toward alternatives to oil.
Car companies
The film features the "Don't Crush Campaign" protest
Crushed EV1s in a junk yard are shown in the film
With GM as its primary example, the film documents that car makers engaged in both positive and negative marketing of the electric car as its intentions toward the car and California legislation changed. In earlier days GM ran Super Bowl ads produced by ILM for the EV1. In later days it ran "award winning" doomsday style advertising featuring the EV1 and ran customer surveys which emphasized drawbacks to electronic vehicle technology which were not actually present in the EV1.[4] (As a side note, CARB officials were quoted claiming that they removed their zero emission vehicle quotas in part because they gave weight to such surveys purportedly showing no demand existing for the EV1s. ) Other charges raised on GM included sabotaging their own product program, failing to produce cars to meet existing demand, and refusing to sell cars directly (it only leased them).
The film also describes the history of automaker efforts to destroy competing technologies, such as their destruction through front companies of public transit systems in the United States in the early 20th century. In addition of EV1, the film also showed Toyota RAV4 EV, Honda EV Plus were being cancelled by their respective car companies, with the crushing of Honda EV Plus gained attention only after appearing quite by accident on an episode of PBS's California Green with Huell Howser.
In an interview with retired GM board member Tom Everhart, the film points out that GM killed the EV1 to focus on more immediately profitable enterprises such as its Hummer and truck brands instead of preparing for future challenges. Ralph Nader, in a brief appearance, points out that auto makers usually only respond to government regulation when it comes to important advances whether seat belts, airbags, catalytic converters, mileage requirements or, by implication, hybrid/electric cars. The film suggests Toyota supported the production of Toyota Prius hybrid in part as a response to Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles and other US Government pressure that was later dropped.
Though GM cited cost as a deterrent to continuing with the EV1, the film interviewed critics contending that the cost of batteries and electric vehicles would have been reduced significantly if mass production began, due to economies of scale. There is also discussion about electric cars threatening dealer profits since they have so few service requirements—no tuneups, no oil changes, and less brake jobs because of regenerative braking.
US government
While not overtly political, the film documents that the US federal government under the George W. Bush Administration joined the auto industry suit against California in 2002 - pushing California to finally abandon its ZEV mandate regulation. The film notes that Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card had recently been head of the American Automobile Manufacturers Alliance in California and then joined the White House with Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other federal officials who were former executives or board members of oil and auto companies. By failing to increase mileage standards in a meaningful way since the 1970s and now interfering in California, the federal government had again served short term industry interests at the expense of long range leadership on issue of oil dependency and cleaner cars.
California Air Resources Board
In 2003, the CARB, headed by Democrat Alan Lloyd, finally caved to industry pressure and drastically scaled back the ZEV mandate after defending the regulation for more than 12 years. While championing CARB's efforts on behalf of California's with its 1990 mandate (and other regulations over the years), the film suggests Lloyd may have had a conflict of interest as the director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. The ZEV change allowed a marginal amount of hydrogen fuel cell cars to be produced in the future versus the immediate continued growth of its electric car requirement. Footage shot in the meetings showed Lloyd shutting down battery electric car proponents while giving the car makers all the time they wanted to make their points.
Hydrogen fuel cell
The hydrogen fuel cell was presented by the film as an alternative that distracts attention from the real and immediate potential of electric vehicles to an unlikely future possibility embraced by auto makers, oil companies and a pro-business administration in order to buy time and profits for the status quo. The film corroborates the claim that hydrogen vehicles are a mere distraction by stating that "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses three to four times more energy than a car powered by batteries" and by interviewing the author of The Hype About Hydrogen, who lists five problems he sees with hydrogen vehicles: High cost, limits on driving range due to current materials, expense of hydrogen fuel, the need for an entire new fueling infrastructure, and competition from other technologies in the marketplace, such as hybrids.
Response from General Motors
General Motors (GM) responded in a 2006 blog post entitled Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?[5] by Dave Barthmuss of their communications department. In his June 15, 2006 (13 days before the film was released in the US) blog post he states not to have seen the movie, but believes "there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers.". He repeats GM's claims that, "despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers — including the filmmaker — the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success."
He submits it is "good news for electric car enthusiasts" that electric vehicle technology since the EV1 was still being used in two-mode hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell vehicle programs.
Barthmuss also cites "GM's leadership" in flex-fuel vehicles development, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and their new "active fuel management" system which improving fuel economy, as reasons they feel they are "doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy, and emissions from vehicles."
Responding to the film's harsh criticisms for discontinuing the EV1, he outlines GM's reasons for doing so, implying that GM did so because of poor consumer demand despite "significant sums (spent) on marketing and incentives develop a mass market for it," and inadequate support from parts suppliers, which would have made "future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible." He also expressed that, "no other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways."
Lastly, Barthmuss personally regretted the way the decision not to sell EV1s was handled, but stated that GM also discontinued it because they would no longer be able to repair it or "guarantee it could be operated safely over the long term."
In March 2009, however, the outgoing CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, said the biggest mistake he ever made as chief executive was killing the EV1 car, and failing to direct more resources to electrics and hybrids after such an early lead in this technology. (LA Times, March 31, 2009, Dan Neil). GM has since championed its electric car expertise as a key factor in development of its 2010, Chevrolet Volt.
Reception
As of December 2010, the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes indicates an 88% approval rating among 103 critics polled.[6] Metacritic, another review collator, indicates a positive rating of 70, based on 28 reviews polled.[7]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "It's a story Mr. Paine tells with bite. In 1996 a Los Angeles newspaper reported that 'the air board grew doubtful about the willingness of consumers to accept the cars, which carry steep price tags and have a limited travel range.' Mr. Paine pushes beyond this ostensibly disinterested report, suggesting that one reason the board might have grown doubtful was because its chairman at the time, Alan C. Lloyd, had joined the California Fuel Cell Partnership."[8]
Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter noted Alan Lloyd's conflict of interest in the film.[9][dead link]
Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat commented, "Boasting a particularly articulate and colorful bunch of noncelebrity talking heads, including former Jimmy Carter energy adviser S. David Freeman and Bill Reinert, the straight-shooting national manager of advanced technologies for Toyota who doesn't exactly sing the praises of the much-touted hydrogen fuel cell, the lively film maintains its challenging pace."[10]
Matt Coker of OC Weekly stated, "Like most documentaries, 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' works best when it sticks to the facts. Showing us the details about the California Air Resources Board caving in to the automakers and repealing their 1990 Zero Emissions Mandate, for example, is much more effective than coverage of some goofy mock funeral for the EV1 with Ed Begley Jr. providing the eulogy. As most of the lazy media, prodded by the shameless oil men in the White House, spin their wheels over false 'solutions' like hybrids and biodiesel and hydrogen and ethanol and ANWAR, Korthof and his all-electric army continue to boost EV technology." Coker also interviewed EV activist Doug Korthof, who stated, :"We don't deserve the catastrophe in Iraq, and the two madmen arguing over oil supply lines seem intent on martyrdom for Iraq in a widening war. With EV, we need not get involved in seizing and defending the oil supplies of the Mideast; nor need we maintain fleets, bomb and incarcerate people we can't stand, give foreign aid to oily dictators, and so on. It's not anything to laugh about."[11]
The film won 2006 Mountain Film (Telluride) Special Jury Prize, Canberra International Film Festival Audience Award, and also nominated for Best Documentary in 2006 Environmental Media Awards, Best Documentary in Writers Guild of America, 2007 Broadcast Film Critics Association Best Documentary Feature. In 2008 socially conscious musician Tha truth released a song that summarized the film on the CD Tha People's Music.[citation needed]
See also
* Battery electric vehicle
* Compressed air car
* Electric vehicle
* Future car technologies
* General Motors EV1
* Great American streetcar scandal
* Hybrid vehicle
* Hydrogen vehicle
* Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries
* Plug-in hybrid
* Revenge of the Electric Car
* The Hype about Hydrogen
* Tribrid vehicle
* Zero-emissions vehicle
References
1. ^ "Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whokilledtheelectriccar.htm. Retrieved September 8, 2009.
2. ^ David Pogue (2007-09-16). "Could The Electric Car Save Us?". CBSNews. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/06/sunday/main3239838.shtml. Retrieved 2008-05-21. "Chris Paine is excited; in fact, he's making a sequel to his movie"
3. ^ "Revenge of the Electric Car: World Premiere Announced". Revenge of the Electric Car website. 2011-03-14. http://www.revengeoftheelectriccar.com/_blog/The_Blog/post/World_Premiere_Announced/. Retrieved 2011-03-16.
4. ^ Welch, David (August 14, 2000). "The Eco-Cars". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/archives/2000/b3694130.arc.htm. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
5. ^ Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car? blog post copy in PDF format
6. ^ Who Killed the Electric Car?, Rotten Tomatoes, accessed December 28, 2010
7. ^ MetaCritic review
8. ^ Dargis, Manohla. "'Who Killed the Electric Car?': Some Big Reasons the Electric Car Can't Cross the Road", The New York Times, June 28, 2006
9. ^ Rechtshaffen, Michael. Hollywood Reporter Review, The Hollywood Reporter[dead link]
10. ^ Vonder Haar, Pete. "WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?" Film Threat, January 25, 2006
11. ^ Coker, Matt. "Baby You Can Still Drive My Electric Car", OC Weekly, May 16, 2006
External links
* Who Killed the Electric Car? Official website
* Who Killed the Electric Car? at the Sony Classics website
* Who Killed the Electric Car? at the Internet Movie Database
* PBS interview with director Chris Paine, including video
* Art Film Talk #14 Chris Paine – interview with director Chris Paine (audio)
* Article on MSNBC about the removal of the last remaining operational EV1 from the museum just one week before the film's opening
* Watch: Director Chris Paine interviewed at the Woods Hole Film Festival on independentfilm.com
* CBC Video: Who Killed the Electric Car?
[hide]v · d · eAlternative fuel vehicles
Compressed-air engine
Compressed air car · Compressed-air vehicle
Electric motor
Battery electric vehicle · Electric aircraft · Electric bicycle · Electric boat · Electric car · Electric vehicle · Electric motorcycles and scooters · Hybrid electric vehicle · Motorized bicycle · Neighborhood Electric Vehicle · Plug-in electric vehicle · Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle · Solar vehicle · Wind-powered vehicle
Biofuel ICE
Alcohol fuel · Biodiesel · Biogas · Butanol fuel · Common ethanol fuel mixtures · E85 · Ethanol fuel · Flexible-fuel vehicle · Methanol economy · Methanol fuel
Hydrogen
Fuel cell vehicle · Hydrogen economy · Hydrogen vehicle · Hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle
Others
Autogas · Hybrid electric vehicle · Liquid nitrogen vehicle · Natural gas vehicle · Propane · Steam car · Wood gas
Multiple-fuel
Bi-fuel vehicle · Flexible-fuel vehicle · Hybrid vehicle · Multifuel · Plug-in hybrid
Documentaries
Who Killed the Electric Car? · What Is the Electric Car?
See also
Zero-emissions vehicle
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F"
Categories: American films | English-language films | 2006 films | 2000s documentary films | Documentary films about transport | Independent films | Electric vehicles | Sony Pictures Classics films | Documentary films about environmental issues
Hidden categories: All articles with dead external links | Articles with dead external links from December 2010 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from September 2010
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Monday, March 28, 2011
5 experts: Where to invest in 2011
5 experts: Where to invest in 2011
In a post-recession world, you need serious experience to guide your portfolio. So we sat down with five pros who have the right guidance for these troubled times.
Roundtable interview by Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large
THE LINEUP:
Renée Haugerud
Galtere Ltd.
Wally Weitz
Weitz Funds
Abhay Deshpande
First Eagle Investment Management
James Swanson
MFS Investment Management
Dave Ellison
FBR Fund Advisors
The financial crisis is over -- right? Just one problem: The markets haven't settled down, and investing hasn't become any easier. In a post-crisis environment where industries, economies, and currencies are all in turmoil, deciding which way to turn feels at least as tough as ever.
For guidance, we convened five battle-tested investing pros with diverse perspectives. Abhay Deshpande runs funds at First Eagle Investment Management, which oversees some $40 billion. He's a value stock investor who owns gold. David Ellison is president of FBR Fund Advisers; he brings long experience investing in shares of financial firms. Renée Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of hedge fund Galtere Ltd., disdains all stocks in favor of grains and other commodities. James Swanson is chief investment strategist of MFS Investment Management, which offers more than 60 mutual funds pursuing a range of strategies. Omaha-based Wally Weitz is a longtime value investor who manages or co-manages four of his firm's eight funds.
When the members of our investing dream team sat down recently with Fortune's Geoff Colvin, they disagreed on some large issues, such as the wisdom of buying gold. But they all saw market opportunities -- yes, even in U.S. equities -- and were willing to offer specific ideas. Here are edited excerpts from the discussion:
We hear a lot of concern now about America's fiscal future and the economy's growth, or lack of it. Abhay, is the U.S. a good place for investors to be long term?
Deshpande: We're global investors, so we can invest around the world. We don't have to invest anywhere in particular, but we do tend to find more value in the United States than in some more popular areas -- emerging markets, for instance. That doesn't reflect our macro thesis. It's just that we see more value available in the U.S. than elsewhere.
Deshpande: "The value of a business is a function of the cash flows generated over its entire life, not over the next year or two."
So it's a matter of price?
Deshpande: It's a matter of price. Investors spend a lot of time on these macro issues, and it's scary. The fiscal situation is certainly poor, but that creates opportunities for value investors like us. We tend to thrive when there's a lot of uncertainty, which creates volatility. With a time horizon of three, five, 10, or 15 years, we can almost ignore what's going to happen over the next couple of years. The value of a business is a function of the cash flows generated over its entire life, not over the next year or two. With Wall Street focused on the next three to six months, that creates an arbitrage opportunity for us as long-term investors.
Jim, you're looking at big-picture themes. How does the U.S. look to you?
Swanson: Labor costs are very important here and everywhere in the world. Unit labor costs are rising in Europe, in Japan, and in most emerging-market countries. They're falling in the U.S. Look at the productivity numbers here and at the profit story -- we're maximizing our workforce, and the benefits are accruing to the owners of capital. You can see that in the numbers, and it's been consistently showing up quarter after quarter, not just during the recession.
Wally, you're a value investor -- what do you think?
Weitz: I don't know about the macro picture of the world. We're one-stock-at-a-time value investors. We need a more or less stable, predictable environment, and we'd like to know whether we have an economic headwind or tailwind. But we don't try to get much fancier than that. Our take is that the debt and the asset bubble were so big and so long in coming that it's going to take a lot longer than people think to work our way through them. Maybe this is analogous to the period from 1966 to 1982, when the Dow stayed in a 600-to-1,000 range for 16 years. There was a big bear market in the middle of that period. The market then came back strongly in the next year and a half, like we just did, but it was six more years before you really went to new high territory.
A discouraging picture.
Weitz: "The debt and the asset bubble were so big and so long in coming that it's going to take a lot longer than people think to work our way through them."
Weitz: It's great for value investors, because as Abhay said, we're looking for mispriced assets. We can have a great time with a company that's growing slowly but faces overly negative perceptions. We're fine with six years of sideways growth if the next big move is on the upside.
Deshpande: I'd add one thing. It's not enough to think about what's going on in the United States. The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that almost 40% of U.S. corporate profits come from foreign affiliates. Even if you're indexed to the S&P 500 (SPX), you're in fact a global investor. For example, half of 3M's (MMM) earnings come from outside the U.S.
Weitz: Coke (KO) has 80%.
So far we've been talking about where to buy stocks, but Renée, you're saying don't buy them at all. How come?
Haugerud: We think stocks are the most overinvested, overvalued asset class in the world because everyone everywhere owns them. Everyone said in 2008, "Oh, look at asset-class synchronicity. The whole world isn't decoupling. It's synchronized." Of course the equity markets are synchronized -- everyone owns them and, in our estimation, owns too many of them.
That gets to the larger issue of asset allocation. Where do most individual investors go wrong?
Swanson: It depends on your time horizon, your risk preference, and how old you are, but Americans probably over-invest in the U.S., even though I happen to like U.S. equities right now. And the flows would suggest that America is becoming too addicted to fixed-income investing at very low returns. There's downside risk with fixed income, and you can get totally lopsided and ignore what's happening in commodities or equities.
Weitz: I agree. All the flows we see are into bond funds, and it's over our protests because there's really nothing very good that can happen from 0% interest rates.
Every financial expert I talk to, without exception, says individual investors are putting too much into bonds. It's a logical point, but whenever everybody agrees, I get nervous. In this case are all the experts actually right?
Deshpande: On this question of, Is it a bubble or not a bubble in Treasuries, it probably is a bubble. But is it irrational for an aging population to seek income? Probably not. There's an element of rational behavior. The question I have is, Why isn't some of that dedicated to equities, which themselves pay income? There are many dividend-oriented securities in our portfolio yielding well over 3%. In some cases, these are companies like the 3Ms of the world that have some pricing power. You can potentially have, in effect, an inflation-protected security with a much higher yield than TIPS.
As we sit here today, gold is close to $1,400. Is it a good buy at that price?
Haugerud: We think gold will eventually go higher, but it's a very volatile commodity. Close to 50% of the demand is investment flow, as opposed to industrial demand, jewelry fabrication, or whatever. But we do think gold will go up in the long term because of our dollar view. As long as the dollar goes down, we see gold going up.
Abhay, about 12% of your global fund is in gold-related investments. How do you like gold at today's price?
Deshpande: We have no view on the future direction of the price of gold. Generally speaking, in a fiat-money world we believe it's almost a mathematical identity that the value of gold will go up. Gold ETFs, such as GLD (GLD), have of course risen. GLD may be the fifth-largest holder of gold in the world, after the central banks of the world. So people from the ground up have chosen to put some of their reserves in gold as a hedge against the currency. To me, it doesn't feel like speculation like in the late 1990s with Internet stocks, or the credit bubble. This seems to be rational behavior. Whether we're ahead of ourselves temporarily or not, I have no clue. What we've said for ages is keep 5% to 10% of your assets in gold, just in case.
Swanson: "I go back to Shakespeare, who said, 'How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!' "
Jim, does it make sense to you that some small percentage of an individual's assets should be in gold?
Swanson: No, it makes no sense to me. All through my career I've looked for reliable or reasonably growing streams of income. That is how I've built my idea of how you can do well from financial markets. Gold has to be stored, it has to be insured, and then what is it used for? I go back to Shakespeare, who said, "How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!"
I'm paying $1,400 for gold today because I hope someone will pay more for it next year. And what will they do with it? They hope someone else will come. Eventually you end up with a psychological asset class that I'm not comfortable with. Even if they're devaluing the currencies of the world, you have to ask yourself, Where does this end? And I do know the price can fall. It does when the Fed funds rate rises above 2%. So I'm not a fan of gold. I don't know how to value it.
Wally, you say you're finding the best bargains in large, high-quality companies. What are some of them?
Weitz: Texas Instruments (TXN) has gone up some the past few months, but it's a cyclical growth company that is a leader in its field and that reinvents itself every eight or 10 years as its world changes. It's growing probably more than 10% a year. It took advantage of the recession to buy assets from bankrupt competitors at 10¢ on the dollar and to buy a significant amount of its own shares at cheap prices. Management is very shareholder-oriented. They're authorized to buy in another 30% of their stock. And unlike a lot of companies that talk about buying back stock, Texas Instruments really does it. Even if the economy goes sideways for quite a while, there will be strong demand for game consoles and retrofitting motors for energy efficiency and other things that most of us don't often think about.
You manage or co-manage a number of funds, but the top holdings in all of them are pretty much the same: Liberty Media, Omnicare, Berkshire Hathaway, and Microsoft. Any of those that you like even at today's prices?
Weitz: Berkshire (BRKA) I think we don't need to talk a lot about. It's the best asset allocator out there, generating tons of cash, and probably selling at 75¢ on the dollar. I love Berkshire. Omnicare (OCR) is a more obscure company that d
elivers pills to nursing homes. It's the biggest at what it does. Omnicare has disappointed people over the years because it's had trouble digesting acquisitions. Even though the stock was cheap, the company's main stumbling block was a CEO whom we were not fond of. The board finally took over. Denny Shelton, whom we've known from other companies, is running the company, changing the culture, making employees excited about working there again. The stock is at $22 or $23, and the business is generating over $3 a share of free cash available to the shareholders and growing. I'm in heaven buying it at seven times free cash, growing, with management I like.
Haugerud: "We think stocks are the most overvalued, overinvested asset class in the world because everyone everywhere owns them."
Renée, how should individuals invest in the commodities that you favor?
Haugerud: Wealth is shifting from developed economies to developing ones. As incomes grow, you move up the protein food chain. So you eat more meat, chicken, beef, and pork, which creates more demand for grain. In addition, populations in emerging economies are generally younger, and younger people eat a lot more than older people. So we like corn, beans, wheat, rice, cattle.
But should ordinary investors be in those markets?
Haugerud: Passive commodity indices are not the way to go unless maybe you're looking out 20 or 30 years. But if you're looking for a return in two, five, 10 years, we think you should either hire an active commodity manager or do it yourself. The investment community has convinced everyone that commodities are complicated, but I would argue that commodities are the easiest asset class to understand. Do your own homework, just like you do on stocks, and it's going to be easier, I would say, because a bushel of corn can't commit fraud. It can go up or down in price, and it can't go to zero.
Dave, you've been investing in financial companies for a long time. No sector has been through more drama in the past two or three years. What do you like now?
Ellison: Credit cards are one of the more attractive areas now because the yields on the assets are still very high, meaning you're making credit card loans at 10%, 12%, 15%, 20%. That's a lot better than making a mortgage loan at 4%, especially when you have people strategically defaulting on their debts. So I'd rather get 12% and take my chances on defaults, because I can have a lot more defaults and still make money. I like transaction-oriented companies like Capital One (COF) and Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA), even Discover. The government stabilized the economy, so I don't think transactions are going to fall that much. I'm also a fan of credit collectors like Portfolio Recovery Associates (PRAA). I think we've had north of $3 trillion of loans written off in the U.S. alone since 2007. These companies buy loans at very low prices and then work them out. If the economy improves and jobs come back even a little bit, people will be able to make those payments. Another attractive area would be small, well- capitalized banks that can take advantage of consolidation in the financial sector.
Such as?
Ellison: You've got Danvers Bancorp (DNBK) in Massachusetts, Washington Federal in Seattle. I'm holding maybe 15 or 20 of those names in my portfolio. I tend to take the group-hug approach when it comes to investing in that class.
Ellison: "Credit cards are one of the more attractive areas now because the yields on the assets are still very high."
What else?
Ellison: Firms that have bought a lot of toxic assets. KKR (KKR) is a good example. If they bought those assets at 10¢ on the dollar and sell them for 20¢ on the dollar or hold them to maturity, you can make money that way.
Deshpande: Financials are a broad category. Our portfolio is full of misfit toys, a lot of the wrongly accused and the underappreciated or misunderstood. In financials we found companies that have suffered collateral damage. Bank of New York Mellon (BK), for instance, is mostly a case of mistaken identity. It is not a bank at all -- 80% of the business is actually non-interest-bearing, fee-based revenue, custodial business, and that kind of asset management. Only 20% is net interest income, and that's really corporate trust business. It's not even at-risk business. These business lines are packed with underappreciated earnings power. We're talking about potential normalized earnings of $2.80, $2.90 a share, so the stock is trading for less than 10 times earnings.
Wally, why do you like Liberty Media so much?
Weitz: Liberty has split itself into six or eight different pieces, one of which is Liberty Media Interactive (LINTA), which is basically QVC. It's going to become an independent company, getting out from under the tracker-stock confusion. QVC grew right through the recession. It's doing beautifully. It doesn't have to worry about bricks and mortar. It can change its product mix on the fly, as the presenters are showing their cookware or whatever. We think the QVC business itself, which also does business in Germany, Japan, England, and Italy now, is worth $16 or $18 a share, and it's got another $5 or $6 a share of marketable securities. That adds up to $21 to $24 a share, and the stock's currently at about $15.50. Not only do you have good assets, you have liquid assets that [founder and CEO] John Malone can do something else with.
Then there's Aon (AON), the insurance broker. It was put together through acquisitions. There's new management that rationalized those acquisitions and improved their execution quite a bit. But the stock has been depressed because Aon bought Hewitt and issued a lot of shares, which disturbed some people. More important, we have a soft insurance market, and Aon makes commissions on the policies that it sells. The stock is at 13 times earnings, growing at double-digit rates, and generating tons of cash. There will be a hard market at some point. You don't want to cheer for things like hurricanes, but when people decide they like insurance brokers, they'll probably sell at 14, 15, 16 times earnings. So you get earnings growth, a dividend, and then a shift up in P/E at some point.
Abhay, what other names get you excited?
Deshpande: As value investors, we tend to like dull and boring. While everyone else gets excited about China and Brazil and India, we go for rocks in the ground, companies like Martin Marietta (MLM) and Vulcan Materials (VMC) -- we own both of those. Internationally we own a company called Heidelberg Cement, German listed, probably the biggest aggregates company you've never heard of. The combination of poor operating metrics and poor sentiment equals opportunity for us. In the U.S., aggregate volumes are down about 35%, but pricing's up 20%. Cash flows in 2009 were actually up close to peak. Nobody wants a quarry in his or her backyard, so competition is naturally limited. When you combine pricing power, cost control, and long-lived assets -- aggregates don't decay -- you have the hallmarks of a great business.
Heidelberg owns a controlling interest in a publicly listed company called IndoCement that's got the No. 1 position in Jakarta and is growing 8% a year. Their stake is worth €3 billion. Heidelberg's market cap is €8 billion. On a normalized basis, Heidelberg trades for maybe 12 times earnings. Considering it's got pricing power, cost control, and very long-lived assets, I believe that's too low a multiple.
Weitz: We own Vulcan and Martin Marietta also. One extra layer of comfort you get besides those rocks in the ground: These companies are not going to sell themselves, but I think either of those two could sell themselves at a 50% premium with one phone call.
Jim, what are the specific themes that you like right now?
Swanson: People say the U.S. doesn't make anything. Yet today the biggest market-cap sector of the S&P 500 is -- guess what? IT. And we do make that. We export it. We're good at it. The rest of the world loves this. It's a sector that has doubled and tripled the free cash flow margins and EBIT margins it had 10 years ago when people were paying 40 times earnings. Today that sector is trading at only about 16 times earnings. The growing middle classes of China and India want our smartphones, they want the apps, they want all these devices and the software that comes with them. And these companies are sitting on massive amounts of cash. Either there's going to be dividend increases or mergers, or they're going to buy back their shares. The cash is just sitting there like a time bomb waiting to go off. Valuations are not rich, and yet earnings are spectacular.
Can I get anybody to weigh in on Apple (AAPL) at $320?
Deshpande: Love the products, hate the stock price.
In a post-recession world, you need serious experience to guide your portfolio. So we sat down with five pros who have the right guidance for these troubled times.
Roundtable interview by Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large
THE LINEUP:
Renée Haugerud
Galtere Ltd.
Wally Weitz
Weitz Funds
Abhay Deshpande
First Eagle Investment Management
James Swanson
MFS Investment Management
Dave Ellison
FBR Fund Advisors
The financial crisis is over -- right? Just one problem: The markets haven't settled down, and investing hasn't become any easier. In a post-crisis environment where industries, economies, and currencies are all in turmoil, deciding which way to turn feels at least as tough as ever.
For guidance, we convened five battle-tested investing pros with diverse perspectives. Abhay Deshpande runs funds at First Eagle Investment Management, which oversees some $40 billion. He's a value stock investor who owns gold. David Ellison is president of FBR Fund Advisers; he brings long experience investing in shares of financial firms. Renée Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of hedge fund Galtere Ltd., disdains all stocks in favor of grains and other commodities. James Swanson is chief investment strategist of MFS Investment Management, which offers more than 60 mutual funds pursuing a range of strategies. Omaha-based Wally Weitz is a longtime value investor who manages or co-manages four of his firm's eight funds.
When the members of our investing dream team sat down recently with Fortune's Geoff Colvin, they disagreed on some large issues, such as the wisdom of buying gold. But they all saw market opportunities -- yes, even in U.S. equities -- and were willing to offer specific ideas. Here are edited excerpts from the discussion:
We hear a lot of concern now about America's fiscal future and the economy's growth, or lack of it. Abhay, is the U.S. a good place for investors to be long term?
Deshpande: We're global investors, so we can invest around the world. We don't have to invest anywhere in particular, but we do tend to find more value in the United States than in some more popular areas -- emerging markets, for instance. That doesn't reflect our macro thesis. It's just that we see more value available in the U.S. than elsewhere.
Deshpande: "The value of a business is a function of the cash flows generated over its entire life, not over the next year or two."
So it's a matter of price?
Deshpande: It's a matter of price. Investors spend a lot of time on these macro issues, and it's scary. The fiscal situation is certainly poor, but that creates opportunities for value investors like us. We tend to thrive when there's a lot of uncertainty, which creates volatility. With a time horizon of three, five, 10, or 15 years, we can almost ignore what's going to happen over the next couple of years. The value of a business is a function of the cash flows generated over its entire life, not over the next year or two. With Wall Street focused on the next three to six months, that creates an arbitrage opportunity for us as long-term investors.
Jim, you're looking at big-picture themes. How does the U.S. look to you?
Swanson: Labor costs are very important here and everywhere in the world. Unit labor costs are rising in Europe, in Japan, and in most emerging-market countries. They're falling in the U.S. Look at the productivity numbers here and at the profit story -- we're maximizing our workforce, and the benefits are accruing to the owners of capital. You can see that in the numbers, and it's been consistently showing up quarter after quarter, not just during the recession.
Wally, you're a value investor -- what do you think?
Weitz: I don't know about the macro picture of the world. We're one-stock-at-a-time value investors. We need a more or less stable, predictable environment, and we'd like to know whether we have an economic headwind or tailwind. But we don't try to get much fancier than that. Our take is that the debt and the asset bubble were so big and so long in coming that it's going to take a lot longer than people think to work our way through them. Maybe this is analogous to the period from 1966 to 1982, when the Dow stayed in a 600-to-1,000 range for 16 years. There was a big bear market in the middle of that period. The market then came back strongly in the next year and a half, like we just did, but it was six more years before you really went to new high territory.
A discouraging picture.
Weitz: "The debt and the asset bubble were so big and so long in coming that it's going to take a lot longer than people think to work our way through them."
Weitz: It's great for value investors, because as Abhay said, we're looking for mispriced assets. We can have a great time with a company that's growing slowly but faces overly negative perceptions. We're fine with six years of sideways growth if the next big move is on the upside.
Deshpande: I'd add one thing. It's not enough to think about what's going on in the United States. The Bureau of Economic Analysis says that almost 40% of U.S. corporate profits come from foreign affiliates. Even if you're indexed to the S&P 500 (SPX), you're in fact a global investor. For example, half of 3M's (MMM) earnings come from outside the U.S.
Weitz: Coke (KO) has 80%.
So far we've been talking about where to buy stocks, but Renée, you're saying don't buy them at all. How come?
Haugerud: We think stocks are the most overinvested, overvalued asset class in the world because everyone everywhere owns them. Everyone said in 2008, "Oh, look at asset-class synchronicity. The whole world isn't decoupling. It's synchronized." Of course the equity markets are synchronized -- everyone owns them and, in our estimation, owns too many of them.
That gets to the larger issue of asset allocation. Where do most individual investors go wrong?
Swanson: It depends on your time horizon, your risk preference, and how old you are, but Americans probably over-invest in the U.S., even though I happen to like U.S. equities right now. And the flows would suggest that America is becoming too addicted to fixed-income investing at very low returns. There's downside risk with fixed income, and you can get totally lopsided and ignore what's happening in commodities or equities.
Weitz: I agree. All the flows we see are into bond funds, and it's over our protests because there's really nothing very good that can happen from 0% interest rates.
Every financial expert I talk to, without exception, says individual investors are putting too much into bonds. It's a logical point, but whenever everybody agrees, I get nervous. In this case are all the experts actually right?
Deshpande: On this question of, Is it a bubble or not a bubble in Treasuries, it probably is a bubble. But is it irrational for an aging population to seek income? Probably not. There's an element of rational behavior. The question I have is, Why isn't some of that dedicated to equities, which themselves pay income? There are many dividend-oriented securities in our portfolio yielding well over 3%. In some cases, these are companies like the 3Ms of the world that have some pricing power. You can potentially have, in effect, an inflation-protected security with a much higher yield than TIPS.
As we sit here today, gold is close to $1,400. Is it a good buy at that price?
Haugerud: We think gold will eventually go higher, but it's a very volatile commodity. Close to 50% of the demand is investment flow, as opposed to industrial demand, jewelry fabrication, or whatever. But we do think gold will go up in the long term because of our dollar view. As long as the dollar goes down, we see gold going up.
Abhay, about 12% of your global fund is in gold-related investments. How do you like gold at today's price?
Deshpande: We have no view on the future direction of the price of gold. Generally speaking, in a fiat-money world we believe it's almost a mathematical identity that the value of gold will go up. Gold ETFs, such as GLD (GLD), have of course risen. GLD may be the fifth-largest holder of gold in the world, after the central banks of the world. So people from the ground up have chosen to put some of their reserves in gold as a hedge against the currency. To me, it doesn't feel like speculation like in the late 1990s with Internet stocks, or the credit bubble. This seems to be rational behavior. Whether we're ahead of ourselves temporarily or not, I have no clue. What we've said for ages is keep 5% to 10% of your assets in gold, just in case.
Swanson: "I go back to Shakespeare, who said, 'How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!' "
Jim, does it make sense to you that some small percentage of an individual's assets should be in gold?
Swanson: No, it makes no sense to me. All through my career I've looked for reliable or reasonably growing streams of income. That is how I've built my idea of how you can do well from financial markets. Gold has to be stored, it has to be insured, and then what is it used for? I go back to Shakespeare, who said, "How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!"
I'm paying $1,400 for gold today because I hope someone will pay more for it next year. And what will they do with it? They hope someone else will come. Eventually you end up with a psychological asset class that I'm not comfortable with. Even if they're devaluing the currencies of the world, you have to ask yourself, Where does this end? And I do know the price can fall. It does when the Fed funds rate rises above 2%. So I'm not a fan of gold. I don't know how to value it.
Wally, you say you're finding the best bargains in large, high-quality companies. What are some of them?
Weitz: Texas Instruments (TXN) has gone up some the past few months, but it's a cyclical growth company that is a leader in its field and that reinvents itself every eight or 10 years as its world changes. It's growing probably more than 10% a year. It took advantage of the recession to buy assets from bankrupt competitors at 10¢ on the dollar and to buy a significant amount of its own shares at cheap prices. Management is very shareholder-oriented. They're authorized to buy in another 30% of their stock. And unlike a lot of companies that talk about buying back stock, Texas Instruments really does it. Even if the economy goes sideways for quite a while, there will be strong demand for game consoles and retrofitting motors for energy efficiency and other things that most of us don't often think about.
You manage or co-manage a number of funds, but the top holdings in all of them are pretty much the same: Liberty Media, Omnicare, Berkshire Hathaway, and Microsoft. Any of those that you like even at today's prices?
Weitz: Berkshire (BRKA) I think we don't need to talk a lot about. It's the best asset allocator out there, generating tons of cash, and probably selling at 75¢ on the dollar. I love Berkshire. Omnicare (OCR) is a more obscure company that d
elivers pills to nursing homes. It's the biggest at what it does. Omnicare has disappointed people over the years because it's had trouble digesting acquisitions. Even though the stock was cheap, the company's main stumbling block was a CEO whom we were not fond of. The board finally took over. Denny Shelton, whom we've known from other companies, is running the company, changing the culture, making employees excited about working there again. The stock is at $22 or $23, and the business is generating over $3 a share of free cash available to the shareholders and growing. I'm in heaven buying it at seven times free cash, growing, with management I like.
Haugerud: "We think stocks are the most overvalued, overinvested asset class in the world because everyone everywhere owns them."
Renée, how should individuals invest in the commodities that you favor?
Haugerud: Wealth is shifting from developed economies to developing ones. As incomes grow, you move up the protein food chain. So you eat more meat, chicken, beef, and pork, which creates more demand for grain. In addition, populations in emerging economies are generally younger, and younger people eat a lot more than older people. So we like corn, beans, wheat, rice, cattle.
But should ordinary investors be in those markets?
Haugerud: Passive commodity indices are not the way to go unless maybe you're looking out 20 or 30 years. But if you're looking for a return in two, five, 10 years, we think you should either hire an active commodity manager or do it yourself. The investment community has convinced everyone that commodities are complicated, but I would argue that commodities are the easiest asset class to understand. Do your own homework, just like you do on stocks, and it's going to be easier, I would say, because a bushel of corn can't commit fraud. It can go up or down in price, and it can't go to zero.
Dave, you've been investing in financial companies for a long time. No sector has been through more drama in the past two or three years. What do you like now?
Ellison: Credit cards are one of the more attractive areas now because the yields on the assets are still very high, meaning you're making credit card loans at 10%, 12%, 15%, 20%. That's a lot better than making a mortgage loan at 4%, especially when you have people strategically defaulting on their debts. So I'd rather get 12% and take my chances on defaults, because I can have a lot more defaults and still make money. I like transaction-oriented companies like Capital One (COF) and Visa (V) and MasterCard (MA), even Discover. The government stabilized the economy, so I don't think transactions are going to fall that much. I'm also a fan of credit collectors like Portfolio Recovery Associates (PRAA). I think we've had north of $3 trillion of loans written off in the U.S. alone since 2007. These companies buy loans at very low prices and then work them out. If the economy improves and jobs come back even a little bit, people will be able to make those payments. Another attractive area would be small, well- capitalized banks that can take advantage of consolidation in the financial sector.
Such as?
Ellison: You've got Danvers Bancorp (DNBK) in Massachusetts, Washington Federal in Seattle. I'm holding maybe 15 or 20 of those names in my portfolio. I tend to take the group-hug approach when it comes to investing in that class.
Ellison: "Credit cards are one of the more attractive areas now because the yields on the assets are still very high."
What else?
Ellison: Firms that have bought a lot of toxic assets. KKR (KKR) is a good example. If they bought those assets at 10¢ on the dollar and sell them for 20¢ on the dollar or hold them to maturity, you can make money that way.
Deshpande: Financials are a broad category. Our portfolio is full of misfit toys, a lot of the wrongly accused and the underappreciated or misunderstood. In financials we found companies that have suffered collateral damage. Bank of New York Mellon (BK), for instance, is mostly a case of mistaken identity. It is not a bank at all -- 80% of the business is actually non-interest-bearing, fee-based revenue, custodial business, and that kind of asset management. Only 20% is net interest income, and that's really corporate trust business. It's not even at-risk business. These business lines are packed with underappreciated earnings power. We're talking about potential normalized earnings of $2.80, $2.90 a share, so the stock is trading for less than 10 times earnings.
Wally, why do you like Liberty Media so much?
Weitz: Liberty has split itself into six or eight different pieces, one of which is Liberty Media Interactive (LINTA), which is basically QVC. It's going to become an independent company, getting out from under the tracker-stock confusion. QVC grew right through the recession. It's doing beautifully. It doesn't have to worry about bricks and mortar. It can change its product mix on the fly, as the presenters are showing their cookware or whatever. We think the QVC business itself, which also does business in Germany, Japan, England, and Italy now, is worth $16 or $18 a share, and it's got another $5 or $6 a share of marketable securities. That adds up to $21 to $24 a share, and the stock's currently at about $15.50. Not only do you have good assets, you have liquid assets that [founder and CEO] John Malone can do something else with.
Then there's Aon (AON), the insurance broker. It was put together through acquisitions. There's new management that rationalized those acquisitions and improved their execution quite a bit. But the stock has been depressed because Aon bought Hewitt and issued a lot of shares, which disturbed some people. More important, we have a soft insurance market, and Aon makes commissions on the policies that it sells. The stock is at 13 times earnings, growing at double-digit rates, and generating tons of cash. There will be a hard market at some point. You don't want to cheer for things like hurricanes, but when people decide they like insurance brokers, they'll probably sell at 14, 15, 16 times earnings. So you get earnings growth, a dividend, and then a shift up in P/E at some point.
Abhay, what other names get you excited?
Deshpande: As value investors, we tend to like dull and boring. While everyone else gets excited about China and Brazil and India, we go for rocks in the ground, companies like Martin Marietta (MLM) and Vulcan Materials (VMC) -- we own both of those. Internationally we own a company called Heidelberg Cement, German listed, probably the biggest aggregates company you've never heard of. The combination of poor operating metrics and poor sentiment equals opportunity for us. In the U.S., aggregate volumes are down about 35%, but pricing's up 20%. Cash flows in 2009 were actually up close to peak. Nobody wants a quarry in his or her backyard, so competition is naturally limited. When you combine pricing power, cost control, and long-lived assets -- aggregates don't decay -- you have the hallmarks of a great business.
Heidelberg owns a controlling interest in a publicly listed company called IndoCement that's got the No. 1 position in Jakarta and is growing 8% a year. Their stake is worth €3 billion. Heidelberg's market cap is €8 billion. On a normalized basis, Heidelberg trades for maybe 12 times earnings. Considering it's got pricing power, cost control, and very long-lived assets, I believe that's too low a multiple.
Weitz: We own Vulcan and Martin Marietta also. One extra layer of comfort you get besides those rocks in the ground: These companies are not going to sell themselves, but I think either of those two could sell themselves at a 50% premium with one phone call.
Jim, what are the specific themes that you like right now?
Swanson: People say the U.S. doesn't make anything. Yet today the biggest market-cap sector of the S&P 500 is -- guess what? IT. And we do make that. We export it. We're good at it. The rest of the world loves this. It's a sector that has doubled and tripled the free cash flow margins and EBIT margins it had 10 years ago when people were paying 40 times earnings. Today that sector is trading at only about 16 times earnings. The growing middle classes of China and India want our smartphones, they want the apps, they want all these devices and the software that comes with them. And these companies are sitting on massive amounts of cash. Either there's going to be dividend increases or mergers, or they're going to buy back their shares. The cash is just sitting there like a time bomb waiting to go off. Valuations are not rich, and yet earnings are spectacular.
Can I get anybody to weigh in on Apple (AAPL) at $320?
Deshpande: Love the products, hate the stock price.
Indonesian Government scholarships for Masters Degree Program, 2011
Foreign Funded Scholarship Programs
Indonesian Government scholarships for Masters Degree Program, 2011
Indonesian Government has offered scholarships, under its scheme Beasiswa Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (KNB) or Developing Countries Partnership (DCP), for pursuing Master studies in various universities of Indonesia for the Academic Session 2011-12. The details are as under:
Goal:
The scholarship aims:
1. To promote deeper cultural understanding among developing countries.
2. To strengthen the relationship and mutual cooperation among developing countries
3. To contribute to the development of human resource quality
Eligibility Criteria:
I. The maximum of age is 35 years.
II. Has a completed four (4) years Bachelors Degree or equivalent.
III. Has a TOEFL score of 450 or equivalent
IV. Completes and submits the application form and must be nominated by the respective government.
V. If successful, while studying in Indonesia:
a. Will comply with the Indonesian Government and host university regulations
b Will not work or join any political activity
c. Agrees not to change the place of study and study program selected
d. Sign the statement letter prior to departure
Study Programs Offered:
The scholarship is offered to postgraduate students (Master Degree) to study at one of the universities in Indonesia for 3 years, consisting of one year of the Indonesian Language and Preparatory Programs and 2 years of Master Program with the arrangement below.
1. Language
All lectures and thesis writing will be in the Indonesian language.
2. Fields of study (be advised that not every university offers the following fields of study)
a. Humanities
1. Literary studies
2. Linguistics
3. History
4. Philosophy
5. Anthropology
6. Cultural Studies
b. Science
1. Biology
2. Physics
3. Geography
4. Chemistry
5. Remote sensing
6. Computer
7. Mathematics
8. Statistics
9. Environmental Sciences
10. Public Health
11. Sports Sciences
12. Medical Studies
13. Pharmacy Studies
c. Agricultural Sciences
1. Agricultural Economics
2. Agronomy
3. Soil Science
4. Plant Pathology
5. Entomology
6. Forestry
7. Animal Science
8. Veterinary Science
9. Agricultural Engineering
10. Food Science & Technology
11. Estate Crop Product Technology
12. Marine Science
13. Fisheries
d. Social Science
1. Public Administration
2. Political Science
3. Sociology
4. Psychology
5. Economic Development Study
6. Management
7. Law
8. International Relations
9. Accounting
10. Communication and Media Studies
11. Community Empowerment Studies
e. Engineering
1. Chemical Engineering
2. Civil Engineering
3. Architectural Engineering
4. Electrical Engineering and Informatics
5. Mechanical Engineering
6. Geological Engineering
7. Naval Architect Engineering
8. Environmental Engineering
9. Informatics Engineering
f. Education
1. Education Management
2. Education Research and Evaluation
3. Social Science Education
4. Natural Science Education
5. Mathematics Education
6. Vocational and Technology Education
7. Out of School/Informal Education
8. Applied Linguistics
9. History Education
10. Instructional Education
11. Indonesian Education
12. Sports Education
13. Educational Science
14. Primary School Teacher Education
g. Multi-disclipinary Studies
1. Performing Arts and Arts Studies
2. Comparative Religious Studies
3. Tourism Studies
4. Bio Technology
3. Period of Study:
a. Indonesian Language : 8 Months
b. Master Preparatory Programs : 4 Months
c. Master Programs : 24 Months (4 Semester)
4. Research:
a. Research in the framework of the graduate program should be carried out in Indonesia.
b. Should the research be carried in the respective home country, all the cost will be borne by the respective student.
Period of Study:
a. Indonesian Language : 8 months
b. Master Preparatory Programs : 4 months
c. Master Programs : 24 months (4 semesters)
Research:
a. Research in the framework of the graduate program should be carried out in Indonesia.
b. Should the research be carried in the student’s home country, all the cost will be borne by the respective students.
How to Apply:
1. Fill ONLINE Scholarship Application form from http://www.knb.diknas.go.id/daftar.php After filling take out its print (by clicking Print Detail Ini) and attach the required documents mentioned below:
a. Attested photocopies of all the academic certificates / degrees/ transcripts.
b. A TOEFL score certificate obtained within the last 12 months.
c. A health certificate from a recognized / authorized medical doctor.
d. A photocopy of Passport or National Identity Card.
2. Fill HEC Application form and attach the copies of the same documents mentioned above. (Click here to download)
3. Attach proof of payment with HEC application form only. All payments are to be made to HEC through HBL online facility. This facility is available in all branches of Habib Bank Ltd. A separate bank Account No. 17427900133401 is being maintained for the purpose. A Proforma for depositing funds is available at the following URL www.hec.gov.pk/payment Deposit an amount of Rs. 300/- (non-refundable), in favor of HEC, as described here. Attach portion of payment receipt (in original) along with application form, without which your application form will NOT be accepted / processed.
4. Do not attach both HEC and Indonesian Scholarship forms with each other. Keep them separate.
5. The documents should be properly attached with the application forms and must be in tidy form.
6. Send the application package to the address mentioned below before 15th April, 2011:
Asif Kaleem Malik
Project Manager (FFSP/Indonesia)
HRD Division,
Higher Education Commission
Islamabad
Indonesian Government scholarships for Masters Degree Program, 2011
Indonesian Government has offered scholarships, under its scheme Beasiswa Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (KNB) or Developing Countries Partnership (DCP), for pursuing Master studies in various universities of Indonesia for the Academic Session 2011-12. The details are as under:
Goal:
The scholarship aims:
1. To promote deeper cultural understanding among developing countries.
2. To strengthen the relationship and mutual cooperation among developing countries
3. To contribute to the development of human resource quality
Eligibility Criteria:
I. The maximum of age is 35 years.
II. Has a completed four (4) years Bachelors Degree or equivalent.
III. Has a TOEFL score of 450 or equivalent
IV. Completes and submits the application form and must be nominated by the respective government.
V. If successful, while studying in Indonesia:
a. Will comply with the Indonesian Government and host university regulations
b Will not work or join any political activity
c. Agrees not to change the place of study and study program selected
d. Sign the statement letter prior to departure
Study Programs Offered:
The scholarship is offered to postgraduate students (Master Degree) to study at one of the universities in Indonesia for 3 years, consisting of one year of the Indonesian Language and Preparatory Programs and 2 years of Master Program with the arrangement below.
1. Language
All lectures and thesis writing will be in the Indonesian language.
2. Fields of study (be advised that not every university offers the following fields of study)
a. Humanities
1. Literary studies
2. Linguistics
3. History
4. Philosophy
5. Anthropology
6. Cultural Studies
b. Science
1. Biology
2. Physics
3. Geography
4. Chemistry
5. Remote sensing
6. Computer
7. Mathematics
8. Statistics
9. Environmental Sciences
10. Public Health
11. Sports Sciences
12. Medical Studies
13. Pharmacy Studies
c. Agricultural Sciences
1. Agricultural Economics
2. Agronomy
3. Soil Science
4. Plant Pathology
5. Entomology
6. Forestry
7. Animal Science
8. Veterinary Science
9. Agricultural Engineering
10. Food Science & Technology
11. Estate Crop Product Technology
12. Marine Science
13. Fisheries
d. Social Science
1. Public Administration
2. Political Science
3. Sociology
4. Psychology
5. Economic Development Study
6. Management
7. Law
8. International Relations
9. Accounting
10. Communication and Media Studies
11. Community Empowerment Studies
e. Engineering
1. Chemical Engineering
2. Civil Engineering
3. Architectural Engineering
4. Electrical Engineering and Informatics
5. Mechanical Engineering
6. Geological Engineering
7. Naval Architect Engineering
8. Environmental Engineering
9. Informatics Engineering
f. Education
1. Education Management
2. Education Research and Evaluation
3. Social Science Education
4. Natural Science Education
5. Mathematics Education
6. Vocational and Technology Education
7. Out of School/Informal Education
8. Applied Linguistics
9. History Education
10. Instructional Education
11. Indonesian Education
12. Sports Education
13. Educational Science
14. Primary School Teacher Education
g. Multi-disclipinary Studies
1. Performing Arts and Arts Studies
2. Comparative Religious Studies
3. Tourism Studies
4. Bio Technology
3. Period of Study:
a. Indonesian Language : 8 Months
b. Master Preparatory Programs : 4 Months
c. Master Programs : 24 Months (4 Semester)
4. Research:
a. Research in the framework of the graduate program should be carried out in Indonesia.
b. Should the research be carried in the respective home country, all the cost will be borne by the respective student.
Period of Study:
a. Indonesian Language : 8 months
b. Master Preparatory Programs : 4 months
c. Master Programs : 24 months (4 semesters)
Research:
a. Research in the framework of the graduate program should be carried out in Indonesia.
b. Should the research be carried in the student’s home country, all the cost will be borne by the respective students.
How to Apply:
1. Fill ONLINE Scholarship Application form from http://www.knb.diknas.go.id/daftar.php After filling take out its print (by clicking Print Detail Ini) and attach the required documents mentioned below:
a. Attested photocopies of all the academic certificates / degrees/ transcripts.
b. A TOEFL score certificate obtained within the last 12 months.
c. A health certificate from a recognized / authorized medical doctor.
d. A photocopy of Passport or National Identity Card.
2. Fill HEC Application form and attach the copies of the same documents mentioned above. (Click here to download)
3. Attach proof of payment with HEC application form only. All payments are to be made to HEC through HBL online facility. This facility is available in all branches of Habib Bank Ltd. A separate bank Account No. 17427900133401 is being maintained for the purpose. A Proforma for depositing funds is available at the following URL www.hec.gov.pk/payment Deposit an amount of Rs. 300/- (non-refundable), in favor of HEC, as described here. Attach portion of payment receipt (in original) along with application form, without which your application form will NOT be accepted / processed.
4. Do not attach both HEC and Indonesian Scholarship forms with each other. Keep them separate.
5. The documents should be properly attached with the application forms and must be in tidy form.
6. Send the application package to the address mentioned below before 15th April, 2011:
Asif Kaleem Malik
Project Manager (FFSP/Indonesia)
HRD Division,
Higher Education Commission
Islamabad
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